Over the Tatras

In Krakow, sometime during the first week of our 2015 world travel adventure, Meghan asked, “What do you think about hiking from Poland, over the mountains, to Slovakia?” 

I’m sorry…what? Fortunately, Meghan had read this was actually possible (“somewhere on the internet,” she claimed). So we started doing our research. The Polish tourist haven of Zakopane, a two hour bus ride from Krakow, was our jumping off point. And when I say tourist haven, I truly mean it. The main walking drag in Zakopane resembles Main Street in Disneyland: tons of people and tons of street vendors selling chotzkies, fast food, and the local, salty mountain cheese. Zakopane sits on the north side of the Tatra Mountains that stretch east to west along the Poland-Slovakia border. And based on the number of people in Zakopane, and along the trail we started to hike on, half of Poland comes to the Tatra Mountains during the common holiday month of August. 

As we started off on our journey, we discovered that hiking in the High Tatras is very different from the Pacific Crest Trail. For all we know, these differences apply to hiking all over Europe. First off, our detailed map of the region and subsequent trail signs listed the distance between places in time, not length: e.g., 1 hour and 50 minutes to Schronisko PTTK Murowaniec. According to who? Certainly not us. During our first couple days, we discovered that the times listed were a bit shorter than we hike not including breaks. 

The second big difference from the PCT: the trails we were on tended to go straight up and straight down hillsides instead of gently contouring up and down. And they did so using giant stone steps rather than smoothed dirt paths. I think we left our knees somewhere near a creekbed on day 2. By the time we made it to Slovakia on day 3, we were popping ibuprofen like tic tacs.

Finally, we were amazed at the average speed of the European hikers. We’ve never been the fastest hikers, but after spending a couple months hiking before we left for Europe, we felt in pretty good shape. Maybe it’s the walking culture over here, but we were passed by all types of different hikers including grandmas and families with 6 year old kids. This was all discovered on our first day of hiking.

 We arrived at our first Schronisko (Mountain Inn) about two hours after starting. We have no idea how far we hiked. The inn was bigger than we anticipated. There must have been 20-30 rooms. Each with a number of bunk beds. And the restaurant/beer hall was enormous with lots of picnic tables outside too. The culture there reminded us of “apres-ski” at a big ski lodge. But instead, this was apres-hike. Upon arrival, we dropped off our bigger bags, and took a loop hike that gave us our first real sense of the Tatras.   

  
The next day we tried to pick a route to our next mountain inn that would avoid any big climbs. We knew the following day’s climb up Rysy, the tallest mountain in Poland and the border between Poland and Slovakia, would be exhausting. However, relaxed hiking was not to be. We hiked a fairly forested route that still climbed and dropped on stone steps as if the trail designers just tried to make a straight line between two points.  

 Our final few miles that day were on a paved road packed with tourists walking up to Morskie Oko, a popular lake, and our second mountain inn. Our roommates that night were a lovely family from Warsaw who gave us delicious tea and recommendations for the Polish dinner menu at the inn.  

 We checked the weather report for our coming day’s climb over Rysy and discovered thunderstorms were forecasted for the afternoon. Of course, this came as no surprise to us since thunderstorms seem to be following us everywhere this summer. We set our alarm for 3am to get out early and avoid the predicted storms.  

The route to Rysy’s summit is only 2.5 miles, but is predicted to take 4 hours (we did it in 5). It climbs 900 meters: 100 meters in the first 1.5 miles, and 800 meters in the last mile. There are chains to help along the way when the path turns to rock scrambling. One section close to the top had you hold a chain as you edged along a wall with very narrow folds in the rock for foot holds and nothing but a huge drop off below. That part was short but terrifying. 

We were some of the first out in the morning, and we were passed by about 20 people, so the top was crowded, but not too bad. And an incredible victory! We took one picture and a short break for food, but we headed down shortly after as clouds were gathering for the promised storms.  

 The way down on the Slovakia side was much less steep. We made our way to a cool inn just below the top ridge in a barren rock field. We had a nice break there since we didn’t take any real breaks on the way up, and we watched a couple people trekking up supplies to the inn. It looked insane: a keg of beer, cases of soda, etc, all piled in a high tower on their backs. Then we decided to push on to get down to our hotel for the night. 

 
Heading down the rocky stepped path, we felt the first few drops of rain only 15-20 minutes below the inn, too late to turn back, but still 2 hours from the hotel. We donned our raincoats just as the skies opened and released a torrent of rain and hail. The hail came down heavy and painful, a mix of peas and garbanzo beans. At the same time, we reached a section of trail with chains again. We tried to take some shelter near a rock, but it was no good, so we pushed on to try the chains. The rocks weren’t too slippery, and we were able to make it down the chains despite climbing down through rivers of water and hail. Oh yes, and thunder. We were gripping metal holdings on exposed rock (the closest tree was still an hour or so away) in a pouring hail thunderstorm… with 500 of our closest friends (Thankfully most of them taller than us!). The hail finished but the rain continued, and we pushed on in the line of people, down and down, balancing from rock to rock, past a couple lakes at the base of the exposed bowl we were in. Unfortunately the storm didn’t move, it just dumped everything it had on top of us. We probably would have hiked more slowly in nice weather, but we wanted out of the storm. Despite our rapid (though slower than European) pace, we got down without slipping. The rain let up eventually, and we were able to pull our hoods off by the time we reached the trees, though anything not covered by raincoats was soaked through. We arrived at our hotel at last, 9.5 crazy hours after leaving the last one and literally grateful to have survived the day. We celebrated with beef goulash, bread, cabbage and beer after a short nap.  
 The next day only called for a 3 mile, fully downhill hike into the town of Strbske Pleso. Of course, we got caught in another thunderstorm, but luckily we could wait out most of this one amongst some trees. We made it into town and celebrated (again) having hiked from Poland to Slovakia. One more adventure in the books!