I wrote an article about alpine touring in Slovakia for Backcountry Magazine's December 2013 issue. The Backcountry team did a great job on the content, the photos and the layout of both the article and the entire December issue, the Photo Annual. It is beautiful. You can buy it here and subscribe to Backcountry here.
I love how they presented the article, but I am a writer, which means I have more to say, and exploring Slovakia, a relatively new country with a long past, meandered far away from the skiing. So read on for the 'writer's cut' of the story. (And click here for another post full of details on hut to hut adventures, average snow fall, where to go, and other details for the truly dedicated.) Enjoy.
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| High Tatras in Strednica |
A Noirish Past
Alan Furst sent me to the High Tatras.
Furst writes noirish thrillers set in the opening days of the Second World War. The last one I read, Dark Star, about a foreign correspondent for Pravda becoming a reluctant Soviet spymaster during Stalin’s purges, is full of intrigue, war, double dealing, love, sex, heavy drinking and, in the frontpiece to the book, a map. In a small corner of that map is a tiny reference to the Carpathian Mountains.
The Carpathians form a long, tall arch across central and Eastern Europe, running from the borderlands between Slovakia and Poland, cutting across southern Ukraine, diving south into Romania and terminating against the Transylvanian Alps. The small reference in Furst’s novel is to the most dramatic massif of the range. The High Tatra Mountains were one of the portals the Germans used to get into Poland in 1939 (and Stalin flooded back through that portal in a bloody and intense battle for Dukla Pass late in the war). The mountains are calm now, populated mostly by Chamois, climbers and adventurous backcountry skiers. I had to go.
Furst writes noirish thrillers set in the opening days of the Second World War. The last one I read, Dark Star, about a foreign correspondent for Pravda becoming a reluctant Soviet spymaster during Stalin’s purges, is full of intrigue, war, double dealing, love, sex, heavy drinking and, in the frontpiece to the book, a map. In a small corner of that map is a tiny reference to the Carpathian Mountains.
The Carpathians form a long, tall arch across central and Eastern Europe, running from the borderlands between Slovakia and Poland, cutting across southern Ukraine, diving south into Romania and terminating against the Transylvanian Alps. The small reference in Furst’s novel is to the most dramatic massif of the range. The High Tatra Mountains were one of the portals the Germans used to get into Poland in 1939 (and Stalin flooded back through that portal in a bloody and intense battle for Dukla Pass late in the war). The mountains are calm now, populated mostly by Chamois, climbers and adventurous backcountry skiers. I had to go.
The Vysoké Tatry
The High Tatras Range, or Vysoké
Tatry, is only some twenty-six kilometers long but takes up about 785
square kilometers of Southern Poland and Northern Slovakia, the razor-edged
peaks rising out of steep, north- south glacial valleys. Two thirds of the
range is in Slovakia. The mountains are the tallest peaks in Central Europe. In
Slovakia the peaks easily cap 2,000 meters.
I knew nothing about these mountains before I saw that map in the
Furst novel. I stared at it and felt the full weight of my ignorance. It made me curious. That map made me want to go.
Backcountry helped me put together a small team of three, a photographer from Colorado, Cody Downard, formerly the Photo Editor of Backcountry ; a skier and writer from Scotland, Amy Marwick, an incredible athlete with deep knowledge of skiing, complex card games and the owner of a smile as big as all of Britain; and me. An adventure and friendships are born.
Backcountry helped me put together a small team of three, a photographer from Colorado, Cody Downard, formerly the Photo Editor of Backcountry ; a skier and writer from Scotland, Amy Marwick, an incredible athlete with deep knowledge of skiing, complex card games and the owner of a smile as big as all of Britain; and me. An adventure and friendships are born.
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| Amy and Cody on the hill, all smiles. |
The Land of Kafka
Picture this: We land in the rain and fog at Flughafen Wien for the short drive to Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, and are met
by Beatrice, the fastest talking tour guide in Central Europe. She gathers us
up like we are her ducklings and introduces us to Victor, our driver. He will be with us throughout the
trip. We three pile into the VW minivan and ride silently in
the rain through a forest of gigantic Austrian windmills, churning green energy into Europe. Twenty-first century
Europe. The windmills stop before the Slovak border. We are leaving the modern
a little bit behind.
We are silent but Beatrice is not. She spouts history like a Browning Automatic. Beatrice is
filling us with knowledge of renovated Stalin Era apartment blocks, Petrzalka, as we drive by them. For
decades a drab and oppressive symbol of the Soviets; now a mass of brightly
colored towers housing over one hundred forty thousand people, businesses,
shops. New Urbanism in old Europe.
From the beginning of time: Slovakia's Long History
People
have lived in Slovakia not for centuries or millennia but for eons. People have lived in this corner
of the world for at least 1.6 million years. And all types of people, too; Sapiens lived alongside Homo neandertalensis and Homo erectus. Eventually, as was always the way, Homo sapiens won out.
One cave, the Domnica, was inhabited during Neolithic times continuously for more than 800 years.
The same tribe.
Now that’s a civilization.
The rub is, when prehistory ends and history begins, the story here is
one of tragedy and subjugation. Civilizations have passed through, ruled over,
fought in and around Slovakia since well before the Common Era, when the first Celts settled the region. The Romans came. Slavic people poured in from the
East. The Hungarians built an empire through Slovakia to the edge of their
world – the High Tatras. The Turks pushed the Hungarians from the South and for
centuries Bratislava was the seat of the Hungarian Kingdom.
Napoleon and his Army passed through. The Hapsburgs ruled. The
Austro-Hungarian Empire rose and fell. Czechoslovakia was born out of World War
I. Just before WWII, Chamberlin gave Hitler the country and it split in two,
the Czech’s opposed the Reich, the Slovaks collaborated (and helped to
invade Poland through the Tatras in 1938). And World War II left deep scars in
this part of the world.
During the Second World War nearly four percent of the population
of Czechoslovakia died. Nearly all of the Jews, 70,000 or so, were killed. Stalin marched into Slovakia. And ‘Uncle Joe’ proved not to be the ideal
overlord.
Communist Czechoslovakia followed a brutal post-war occupation. Some good came of it but the era was not utopia. The 1968
revolution – the ‘Prague Spring’ – was crushed by the Soviets. The revolution
came again, in 1989, and this time it stuck.
Czechoslovakia separated in the ‘velvet revolution.’ The Czech
Republic and Slovakia were born. With independence came Slovakia’s entry into
the EU, adoption of the Euro, freedom, change. Whew.
As a good friend who spent a fair amount of time in Slovakia put
it, “I met a woman in Slovakia who’d lived in nine countries. And she had never
moved.” Now the country is a small, democratic republic with something like the population of
Minnesota and is about the size of Vermont and New Hampshire put together. Little big land.
Bratislava in in the rain
Our trip starts in the capital city, in the rain. The city
feels too quiet, dark, gray. We are disoriented, just getting to know each
other and walking around empty streets in the old city. It feels bleak.
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| First Lunch and we don't know what it is |
We
are shepherded to a lunch in a gilded restaurant in the heart of an empty downtown. It is called Restauracia Reduta. It is a beautiful
room. We do not order but are simply brought a soup of beans and sausage. It is
a bit sour but delicious. After the delicious soup we are served the main
course, oštiepok, or fried cheese. We eat a lot of oštiepok while in Slovakia.
Amy tries to communicate she cannot tolerate gluten (which will prove to be a bit of a struggle on the trip). Beatrice has given
her the phrase in Slovak. The staff at Reduta seems to understand. Desert comes and is a cake. Amy gets a
whole apple on a plate. We giggle at the apple. We begin to
bond over the odd lunch.
Back outside we walk around a big empty square near the Opera
House and watch the trolley cars trundle by. It is jarring, to be in this small
city so far from anything we know. We pile back into the minivan and are whisked
off.
Our next experience of Slovakia is urban vastness and then rural flatness under the gray sky.
The litter along the highway is careless, old-school. Amy and I mostly sleep in
the minivan. Cody, riding shotgun so he can take photos, grips the dash white
knuckled as Victor puts the Volkswagen through its paces. There is no snow and
we don’t know where we are going. We've been up all night and just ate plates full of cooked cheese. We hope we are on our way to skiing. The
adventure has begun.
First Stop Low Tatras: A High Ridge Roller Coaster Ride
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| roller coaster ride |
But we cannot see the mountains. The fog and rain stay with us all the way to this national park and as we pull up to the Hotel Grand, a freshly renovated hotel at the base of the resort, it is drizzling and warm. But it is also crowded with holiday-makers during some major Slovakian holiday (explaining maybe why Bratislava was so quiet). We are very, very unsure of where we are heading.
The hotel lives up to its name. It is obviously popular as it is
crowded with kids and families. Most of the guests are Czech or Polish. The
rooms are clean and tidy and stylish.
To be honest it is not what I expect. I expect black and white, old, dreary maybe. I do not expect brand new lifts, brand new lodge and tons of tourists. Old prejudices die hard.
To be honest it is not what I expect. I expect black and white, old, dreary maybe. I do not expect brand new lifts, brand new lodge and tons of tourists. Old prejudices die hard.
Later this first night we meet our guide, Pavol Kuna, goes by Palo. All smiles, we can tell immediately we are in good hands. He is both a
certified international mountain guide – certified both by the International
Federation of Mountain Guides and the Slovak Národná asociácia horskychvodcov Slovenskej republiky (the Slovak
Association of Professional Mountain Guides). In addition to being a fully certified mountain guide, his full time job is as a mountain rescue
supervisor with the Horská záchranná sluzba, or High Tatra Mountain Rescue Service. No slacker, Palo.
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| I work for Palo |
As we sit in the hotel lobby this first night Palo hands out our
sharps and pulls out the maps. We sit for an hour drinking coffee and talking
about where we might go, all dependent on the weather. He has grand plans for
us, but. Palo shakes his head, smiles and shrugs. The weather is bad.
The next day because of the weather we cannot ski in the
backcountry so we ski at the resort in the rain. The snow is deep and
saturated. I do not worry
about twisting a knee and possibly blowing out my ACL; I worry about the snow
grabbing my leg the way one grabs a lobster’s claw and wrenching it from my body.
It is the worst snow I think I have ever skied. We stop early, bummed.
I notice three things as we drag our jet lagged, sad bodies to the
renovated Hotel Grand. First, despite the weather the slopes are full and
people are having fun. Second, the level of skier ranges from people skiing in blue
jeans to top form racers. Some people are smoking as they
ski. Everyone is having an absolute blast. Third, the range is huge and the bowls massive -- if only the snow were better. Our host, Petra, bemoans the conditions - we missed great snow by days.
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| Revelers at Jasna |
That first day we were jet lagged, the
fog was heavy, the rain steady and the forecast was for more of the same. But despite it all we were glad we came.
Tourism Culture at the Hotel Grand
It is our third day in country. I am up early despite the
jet lag and sit in the lobby of our Hotel
Grand nursing a coffee. I am spacing out, staring into the middle distance,
waiting for the team to meet for breakfast.
Suddenly an outside door opens. A line of middle aged women pour through
the door. Maids, I think, as these women walk in, some clustered in small
groups, others walking alone, a few taking final puffs on cigarettes and
tossing them into the wet snow before coming inside. Some exchange greetings
with the restaurant staff, they all ignore me. They must be just off an employee
bus. They drift in weary already for the day ahead. It is the same in resorts
everywhere, very little money but lots of jobs. Staff scurry around taking care
of guests, not loving what they do and not being able necessarily to afford
what is all around them. Welcome to our western ways.
Finally Amy and Cody join me and we sit, glum, looking out at the wet. Palo walks
over, smiling. He says the weather’s not so bad; once we start climbing he
thinks we will move above the weather and there is no avalanche danger. I say
go. Cody and Amy are game.
Time to Pop Some Tags ....
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| Pavol doles out sweet tea |
We
ride a gondola from just outside the hotel. It will take us half way up the
mountain. There is an older couple in the cabin and they ignore the four of us.
We are there with our big backpacks, ice axes, backcountry gear sprouting all
over us. They are out for a simple ski in the rain. The
man’s look read ‘assholes.’ They give us not even a
smile.
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| Above it all on Derese |
It’s just
too weird, and it’s warm, and we are still jet lagged, so I rebel. I strip off
all my high-end synthetic insulating layers and put on my old cotton Mount
Mansfield Ski Patrol t-shirt under my shell – a rebellion against the weather
and situation. I pack everything away and put my skins on my skis. I am
standing at an outdoor table at Bernardino’s. ‘Thrift Shop’ is pounding away. It
is raining and gray, warm. Totally fogged in. Zero visibility. ‘I’m gonna pop some tags ….’
‘What the
hell,’ I think, and we are off.
We are not
in the sidecountry yet, let alone the backcountry. We skin a ways up an old,
abandoned T-bar lift line; ski resort bone-yard. A ways up the hill Palo turns
south and starts up a very steep slope, away from the resort, cutting a traverse
for us. We are about to climb the ridge above Brhiliská, at about 1,300 meters, to the top of Derese, 2,003 meters and from there
across the ridge into a saddle, Sedio
Polany, and up to the peaks of Polana
and Zákluky. The plan is to ski down from the top of Zákluky, which sits at
about 1,900 meters.
The snow as
we climb to Derese is deep and not
the glop of yesterday; this snow is almost corn. The slope is steep and the
skin difficult. At a knoll we take a short break and Palo doles out some sweet
tea. He points out freeride zones, which disappear into the fog on both sides
from where we stand.
After the
tea we start a much steeper ridge climb. And just now the ceiling lifts and we
see the whole range. First glimpse of mountains. We see massive bowls to the
south, each capped by strong cornice lines. The freeride zones only scratch the
surface. The mountains are massive, broad, steep and go on forever.
One cornice
has given way and a massive slide scar carves into the valley. Palo thinks it
is about a week old. ‘Stay off the edges,’ he says.
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| boot pack to the sun |
We climb
this ridge and at the top we come to a wide, wind-scoured plateau. This is Derese. The sun is out now. It is bright but the light is soft,
distant. The wind blowing along the top of the range reminds me of a sea breeze
for some reason.
We eat some
fruit on the ridge and Palo offers more sweet tea. We take the skins off and
begin a ridge ski, a rollercoaster ride.
Eventually
we put our skins back on and resume our climb. Amy and I stare across the
valley to the west. There is another massive spine of mountains.
According to
Palo all of the valleys we see (to the left and the right) are called
the Pod Derešmi. The valley we are above is Zadná Poľana. The terrain invites and we point and wonder about the chutes and
couloirs across from us. Pavol says the valley we are looking at ‘is
without name. The flowing mountain stream is Kobyla.’ Pavol
says the mountains we are looking at are closed. The valley and ridge
protected.
I am
following Palo as we skin the last bit to the top of Zákluky. Palo stops on his ascent, waiting for me to catch up. I
don’t know why we are stopping but then I see. A demure mountain goat, a Chamois, stands stock still, staring at
us, not 50 feet away, his winter coat blowing slightly in the wind. Gandalf,
maybe.
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| Gandalf |
Palo picks a
small saddle for us to base our descent. We are finally skiing, making big
turns into the deep but crusty snow. Our Scot follows Palo, carving huge turns.
She is a beautiful, strong skier, all arch and strength and calm. It’s terrific
to watch. We ski the bowl until it becomes a drainage and then we ski the
drainage through a pine forest —a logging operation — and it is a fun run out,
racing around the trees and rocks and leaping small streams.
We pop out
through a proper logging operation and eventually end up walking on a potholed road
back to the resort and our hotel, toasted but happy.
Happy Ending in the Low Tatras
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| Happy Ending |
And now
maybe it is time for a beer. We
head to the resort and the bar is called, I kid you not, ‘Happy End.’
‘Maybe they
don’t get the slang,’ I say. Cody throws me a look. Uh, yeah, I guess they
probably get it.
We are on
the guest list for a party thrown by a Russian vodka company. Our names are
checked off a list and we walk into ‘Happy End.’ Two pretty Russians serve us
vodka drinks. They are wearing tutus. We drift around, sampling appetizers and
listening to the techno. Amy and I walk into a little side room – fire roaring
in the oversized fireplace; comfortable leather chairs; serious, extremely
large men talking quietly; shrimp and fine cheeses and grapes and drink, lots
of drink. We’re not supposed to be in here. One more shrimp.
We find a
table to share with some Russians. An older man – sixty or seventy – is sitting
with a much younger woman – twenty-five maybe. He is wearing a bright red
hockey jersey covered with patterns of human skulls. She is wearing a very,
very small dress. The old man and I exchange pleasantries. I ask him about the
shirt. She translates. It is the shirt from a motocross team, I think is what
she says.
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| Moving Through The Old Mountains |
Amy, Cody
and I watch the party but only stay a little while. We fit in like cowboys at a
ballet.
Here
we are, in the mountains of Central Europe, drinking vodka with a room full of
Russians. It’s like an Alan Furst novel, except there is no war, double dealing,
love or sex. Things are looking up. We walk back to the Grand and tomorrow we are finally heading to the High Tatras.
Not An Old School Water Park
Before heading to the High Tatra we ask if we can stop at a traditional European Hot Spring. We are taken to ‘Tatralandia,’ a massive water park. We’ve been seeing the billboards for forty-eight hours or more. This is not your mother’s thermal spring.
The Brand
Manager at the water park, Michal Beno, meets us and shows us around. He is showing off a €35 million
renovation. The new guesthouses on the edge of the development, 150 of them,
are full all summer. There are one hundred forty thousand square meters of
recreation space. That’s a shit load in feet. There are twenty-eight water
slides, twenty pools (nine open year round) and three kinds of water: thermal,
clear and sea.
The thermal
water comes from 2,000 meters below the surface and comes out of the ground at
sixty-four degrees Celsius (the park cools it down to 30 degrees Celsius (86
degrees Fahrenheit) before dunking people into it). The seawater is a 3½ %
solution, which Michal says is the same as the Mediterranean. The park moves
600,000 guests through its doors each year. On a busy summer weekend 10,000
people are in the park. We give it a go.
The thermal
baths are asparagus-pea green. We swim in the cloudy water, working to keep our
heads above the surface. We hit the water slides and fly down massive flumes.
We test out the salt-water baths. I hit the steam rooms.
There are
many, many people here, small kids, teens, families, old folks pounding their
backs with salt-water jets. The co-ed massive locker room is clean and chaotic
and full of folds of flesh. There are small changing rooms but modesty is not
in evidence. Man, do I wish I had my flip-flops.
Tri Studdnicky Lunch
Back in our
street clothes we are excited to try Chef Kovac’s lunch at Tri Studdnicky, a hotel at the gateway to the National Park. The
hotel is in the form of an old wood lodge, with a massive peaked roof. It is
surrounded by pines and set against the foothills of the Low Tatra. The lobby
has lots of copper and stone and dark wood.
I order a traditional
sour mushroom soup and a traditional home made gnocchi. Amy orders duck. Cody a
trout. The food comes, the conversation dies away and we tuck into an
outstanding gourmet meal. Not a bad way to leave the Low Tatra, this perfect
meal.
We move on
to Poprad, a market town and the Slovakian gateway to the High Tatra. The
downtown does not disappoint. A bit down on its heels, the town center is
chockablock with mountaineering and backcountry ski shops with knowledgeable
staff and top gear (but don’t expect deals on gear – food and lodging are
reasonable but gear and other tangibles are EU expensive). Blissfully, the town
is not boutiqued (yet) and there are good, cheap hotels everywhere. Poprad is a
good spot to start a backcountry High Tatra tour.
Making it to the High Tatras
Our last
stop before the mountains is the village of Spisska Sobota. The small neighborhood dates from the 1200s. Most of the buildings
are from the 1500s. A quiet, peaceful village with some good inns on the square
and coffee shops, it it well worth a stroll if not a stay.
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| Amy strolls Sobota |
The next
town on our drive is Stary Smokovec, about
forty-five minutes from Poprad and just at the base of High Tatras (which are shrouded in fog the day we arrive). A hill station served
by a small gauge railroad and framed by a string of old-world buildings, the
town makes an inviting entrance to our adventure. There is a well-equipped
sports shop, an Intersport, complete with Dynafit and Dynastar AT gear to rent
or buy, at least two good cafés and the headquarters of the High Tatra Mountain
Rescue Service.
We
meet Palo for a coffee near the Mountain Rescue Headquarters. He introduces us
to Igor
Trgina,
who will be our guide in these mountains. The two men work together at Mountain
Rescue and guide together.
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| Meet Igor |
Igor is all energy; he is wiry and moves like
a marmot. We drink coffee and plot routes. He complains about the weather. We
three are anxious to get back out on the snow. Between Palo and Igor they have
come up with a half a dozen ideas. We try to follow and study the map.
Palo’s phone
rings. A climber has fallen somewhere in the mountains, slicing open his calf
with a crampon. Palo is on duty and needs to lead the rescue. We pour out of
the coffee shop and watch the men load their gear to deploy.
One
older man hovers near the rescue workers. He looks a bit like Spencer Tracy. Or
maybe he just has Tracy’s bearing. I walk up and introduce myself. He speaks
nearly perfect English, a bit light on conjunctions. His name is Gejza Haak and
he worked with Mountain Rescue from 1969 – 2005. He now volunteers, massy bushy
eyebrows and thick hands, serious expression and not much to do, he turns to
talk to me.
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| Gejza Haak reminiscing |
“I was
America once,” he says, and I’m thinking New York or San Francisco or maybe Vegas
or Florida.
“Alaska. 1980.
McKinley. And Canada. Mt. Logan.” Mr. Haak is an accomplished mountaineer. He and his team drove across Canada in a van in 1980, exploring all of the country and tackling two of the toughest mountains on the continent. What a trip that'd of been. And we were raised to think people on the far side of the Iron Curtain did everything in black and white and quiet despair. I guess not.
Night falls.
We stand and watch the rescuers depart. We finally head back inside and grab
our gear to find our hotel, in Strednica, near Zdiar, very close to the border
with Poland, about a half an hour from Stary Smokovec, along a curving mountain
road.
The night
smells of coal smoke and fog. We check into the Penzión Strachan. At check in the buxom desk clerk, dressed in some
form of tradition dress derivative of lederhosen, hands us each a tall, thin
shot glass full of a clear liquid. We drink it. It is Slivovica, made of plums and tasting very much like grappa. Or maybe
sterno. Welcome to the Vysoké Tatry.
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| Penzión Strachan |
Of Ski Groups and Vampires
I am up with
first light and head outside. We are in a fairy tale, not a Disney-fied tale
but a true old world, Grimm tale. The fog still cuts right down to the ground
and the air burns of coal smoke. The village is tumble down bohemian homes and
barns, all worn siding and oddly angled steep pitched roofs and faded shingles.
It is silent. I expect at least a wolf if not a vampire slinking away from the
light.
It is a
contrast, too. We might find it a Grimm Fairy Tale but the hotel is full of
school groups from Bratislava, tourists from the Czech Republic, Russia,
Poland. We have high-speed Internet and rain showers. Around the town we
see expensive holiday homes mixed in with the old farm homes. I remain
convinced though vampires coexist with Polish holidaymakers.
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| Old School |
I walk over
to the surface lifts next to the hotel. You can pay by the run, a block of
runs, the hour or the day. It is common still to see small surface lifts
serving a hotel, a village. As we drive around there are rope tows and poma
lifts or T-bars smattered around the fields. The places are busy too, backyard
skiing on the way to the backcountry. Back home this form of ski industry bit
the dust in the 1970’s. It is nice to see it here. I wonder how long it will
last.
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| Backyard Ski Tows |
Regardless
of how skiers get up the hills, skiing is a serious pastime in the High Tatras.
The dining room of the Hotel Strachan
is crowded with trophies. All three daughters of this family-owned lodge are
competitive ski racers. And they win. The owner’s dream is for one of his
daughters to go to UC and kick butt.
Big Cold and Little Cold Valley Adventures
We are not
here to race but for a backcountry adventure. We meet Igor in Stary Smokovec
and he describes today’s trip as up a ‘little valley’ to a hut for some tea and
then a skin over a saddle to another valley and a big ski out. I am
disappointed. The day doesn’t sound big enough.
The ski
starts with the ride in the ever-present fog and rain up a funicular to the
base of a closed ski area. With no sign of the weather lifting we begin our
skin up this massive alpine valley, in a forest of Norway Spruce, up a well-worn
mountain path in the fog. And, as on our climb of Derese, we climb out of the
fog and see we are hemmed in on both sides by jagged mountains over 2,000
meters tall in a narrow river valley but there is nothing ‘little’ about it. Once
above the fog line the snow is dry and deep and the sky clear.
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| Big Cold Valley |
The chata itself is beautiful inside, very
clean and warm, with a big fireplace. As we climbed toward the hut the wind picked
up and it started to snow. The weather is coming from the North. As we sit
sipping sweet tea it is now snowing quite hard. Igor is worried we do not have
time to go over the saddle and down the next valley. He agrees we can try. It
is over an hour away.
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| Hmmm. Don't fall? |
We skin
toward the cirques and traverse south along the ridge below Javorovy stit (2,418 meters), Ostry stit (2,250 meters) and Siroká veza (2,462 meters). Igor tells
us the slope is about 43 degrees. In an hour we reach the approach to the
‘saddle’ we have been aiming for, Priečne sedlu (2,352
meters). We boot pack up the slope to the saddle. The slope here according to
Igor is forty-five degrees, and reach the top.
A Sharp Saddle
I am from
Vermont, so when I think of saddles I think of gentle resting places between
rounded hills, a true saddle, something a person can sit on and relax. That is
not what sedlo translates to in
Slovakia. We have boot packed up a steep slope to a narrow col; it is a knife’s
edge along a ridge at over 2,300 meters, with a slope approaching forty-eight degrees
down the far side.
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| Igor walks the razor's edge |
Although
Igor is clearly right it is too bad. The next valley, the Little Cold Valley,
houses two huts, Amkivstéco chata, at
1,450 meters, and Téryho chata, at
2,015 meters. From these huts it would be possible to ski up to the Barraine sedlo into the Veľká zmrzlá dolina, or
the ‘Big Frozen Valley,’ (it is not lost on us the valleys were not
named by the marketing people) with another hut, Chata Zelené pleso, and big bowls to ski. We’ll try to get to these
valleys another day.
So we focus
on what we will do, not what is closed to us. With skis back on, we make sharp jump turns down
the narrow chute toward the steep cirque called Shooter’s Field. The snow is
firm, like the porcelain inside a toilet bowl. Not a place to fall. The valley
is so big there is no lack of lines to choose. We spread out. I peel off way
right and look back toward Cody – the man carries fifty pounds of camera gear
and still rolls down a steep bowl with massive power turns. Amy is far to the left, near Igor, who’s
hanging back. Amy charges in her GS stance. She sets her edges and motors like a
fast train. Igor is all beauty and grace, following the band on his own private
sweep. He turns quietly, gracefully, like a happy drunk doing a slow dance. It
is a tremendous ride to the base of the cirque and we shower each other with big
smiles. Now we know what is to come and only want to get back out. But first some tourism.
Stbské Pleso and Gliding to Lomnicky stit
We meet with the
head of the High Tatras marketing organization, Lenka Mtasovská. She wants us
to see the ski resort of Strbské Pleso.
There is a tram at the resort, hanging from a wire rope 1,900 meters long. The
tram opened in 1942 and the single tram car, running along that rope from base
and summit stations, with no towers in between, is pretty impressive. The tram runs to the top of Lomnicky stit, a spire of granite
capping out at 2,634 meters.
We meet
Lenka at the base of a gondola and take the long uphill ride to the base of the
tram. The tram base station is reminiscent of New York City subway stations,
clean and made of tiles and concrete. The station is empty. It is a twenty-minute
wait until the next car. Eventually an old man in a trim uniform ushers us into
the station. We are no longer alone. It is we three, two brothers off on a
jaunt and a couple with a small child.
 |
| Top of the Tatry Mountains |
 |
| Amy no like Slivovicka |
I wander around the outside of the top station. I talk with the two brothers, bus drivers from Poprad, one speaks very good English, the other none. An older man then walked up to us. He was ‘over seventy-two,’ as he put it.
Elegantly dressed, he wore a fine wool peaked cap and a classic old-school winter jacket, not a ski jacket but a proper wool coat. He had a gorgeous climbing stick in one strong hand. He wore modern glasses but was otherwise conservative in dress and bearing and approach; very formal. ‘I speak a bit of English,’ he said, and we talked for a while. He wanted to know what I was doing in Slovakia and I told him. He said he was a very good skier but the doctor said no more. I asked why, thinking it would be his heart or a weak knee or some other common elder ailment. ‘I have a cracked T-1 and T-2,’ meaning vertebrae, and as he said this he pushed his thumb into my spine to let me feel where. ‘I have metal plates. It is to help me from where I fell.’ He shook his head.
‘So I
walk. Yesterday I walked up the
line. It took me an hour and a
half but I did it well.’ I did not
know what line he meant but an hour and a half walk up the mountains here is a
real walk. He is from the city of
Brno in the Czech Republic. He is
a mechanical engineer and has his
own firm ‘but I don’t do much any more. It is best for others to do most of the work now. I talk when people ask me to.’ He smiled as he said it. And so he drove from Brno and walked in the Carpathians, came up the cable car alone, just to
do it, to see the view, to make use of his time.
 |
| Ski Area Lunch |
Crossing Into Poland
Back in the
car we kidnap Victor to take us to Poland. We fly past the hotel and wind our
way toward the border. It is a bit nerve racking as we do not know exactly
where we are or how long it will take to reach the frontier or what we’d find
there. In my mind I am thinking of Alan Furst, pre-war intrigue and borders
guarded by sullen soldiers with large, bushy German Shepherds.
It turns out
we only have to drive straight, turn right and in ten minutes we are in Poland.
The only way we know we have crossed the border is a small blue sign on the
side of the well-paved road, marked with the EU circle of stars. It is the little things that show the world has
changed.
 |
| So long good gentlemen |
Selling Ostiepok To Hard Weather Skiers
Standing in
front of the base lodge are two women hovering over grills fired by coal and
surrounded by tables piled with food. They are not together and it seems tense.
Competition.
I stop at
one stand and try to figure out what is being sold. The woman manning the grill
speaks no more English than I speak Polish. After a bit I think she says she would
sell me two small dumpling like things for €2 (I told her I only had Euros,
which she understood; Poland is in the EU but kept its currency).
She takes
two of the dumpling like things and cooks them on the coal fire. I watch them
sizzle and roast and have no idea what they are. She hands them to me wrapped
in thin, stiff, colorful paper. She takes my money but I’d misunderstood. It is
only €1 for the two things. We smile at each other a bit. She says, in
English, “I Palmer,” or at least that’s what I hear, but maybe she said “I
farmer.”
And what I
thought were dumplings I learned were another form of ostiepok, sheep’s milk cheese she’d grilled and smothered in jam. Delicious. Cody and Amy had come over by then and we are standing together
in the drizzle next to a Polish ski tow, trying to talk, taking pictures and
eating coal-grilled cheese smothered in jam. We are all smiling. Amy heads over
to the other woman’s grill to buy some of her cheese. We say our good-byes and
thank you's and Mrs. Farmer says ‘so long, good Gentlemen.’
 |
| New Europe |
Roma
The
next day will be a long ski. We will start at the White Water trail head and skin through
blow down and logging trucks, into forests of Norway Spruce, following a river
valley. Now knowing the drill, we will ski through and then above the rain and
the fog. In fact today the temperature is changing; it is getting colder.
But
before we do any of this we get lost with Victor and the Volkswagen van. When
Igor asked Victor if he knew where we would rendezvous, Victor answered what drivers
say the world over regardless of what they really believe: “Yes.”
 |
| Victor lives the driver's code |
So we leave the inn at the crack of nine and wound our way well
down out of the mountains. We drift toward the flat plains between the Tatras
and Poprad. We drive through
a ramshackle village and Cody and I yell ‘stop!’ We ask Victor to turn around.
Cody is out shooting pictures of this derelict and raw place as we watch young
men walk into the forests carrying axes.
A
few of the men come over the mini-van. I’ve jumped out to toss some garbage
into an overflowing dumpster. As Cody snaps away two young men approach and, in
French, ask for chocolate. One of the boys wears a Burton cap. More men are
jogging toward the van and that’s enough for Victor. He yells to Cody and me to
climb back in and he is driving before the sliding door is shut. Amy’s not
moved from her seat. Victor says 'Slovakian Mexicans,' which is wildly racist and culturally aware. It's the most he's said on the trip.
 |
| Into the storm |
Up The Valley Toward Kezmarsky stít
On the trail soon it is snowing and the wind picks up. The flakes are extremely small. ‘Back home flakes this small mean a big storm,’ I say. No one responds.We stop and the three of us drink some water, Igor passes on the water, which we’ve come to expect. (Neither Igor nor Palo hydrate. On one skin I held off on drinking to match their pace until my pee looked like lime Tang.)
 |
| No hydration Igor |
We
skin above tree line, still following the stream. We are high now, above the
fog, and can see the mountains, but now they fade into the whiteness of the
falling snow as opposed to fog. Eventually, after hours of skinning, we hear
climbers to our left, on the hard, steep faces ringing the valley toward the
peak called Kezmarsky stít (2,558
meters).
After several hours of skinning we see the hut, Chata Zelené pleso, through the driving
snow. It is large and solid, neat and trim. Inside in the warm dining hall,
tables are full of skiers and climbers. We drink another secret recipe for
sweet tea and eat our boxed lunches from the Strachen, talking about the mountains. I think as we sit and drink our tea, eat our lunches, out of the wind and snow, about two men Igor told us about, walking the ridge, over 50 kilometers, with no support.
‘They
are very close now, but this storm, I do not think they can make it. No water,
no food, everything wet. They will not make it.’ I have nothing to say to that.
He points to people and tells me about them. This one is an
instructor, teaching avalanche rescue. That woman is a mom and the little one –
three? Four? – skied in on his own. Her family comes here all the time and the
kids are being raised on the mountains. That man over there has been coming to
this hut for fifty years. And so it goes.
 |
| Mountain Guide, Potato Peeler |
Once
settled, we pull our gear together and head back out to ski some low-angle
slopes of a big coulior. It is about a forty-five minute skin from the Chata. After a week fighting the rain
and fog, now it is snowing so hard there is avalanche danger. We will be skiing
the slopes below Kolovy stit (2,4018
meters).
We tramp across the small lake outside the Chata and then traverse up the slope. Igor teaches us how to
measure slope using ski poles and geometry.
The slope is thirty-eight degrees. From the vista of the traverse the hut
seems small and it is not. We hear a slide off to our left; we can’t see a
thing, it is snowing so hard.
Igor points out a steep, narrow chute at the head of the valley. I
can’t see above it but Igor says it is Baranie
rohy (2,526 meters). Next to this summit is Baranie sedlo (2,389 meters). Igor says this col and coilour is a
good route in from the Little Cold
Valley. It is how we would have skied over if we’d not been touring the tramway
and going for a wagon ride. Oh well. We are guests in this country.
We
reach a wide plateau on our skin. It is snowing like mad now and accumulating.
We ski back down toward Cody, who’s positioned himself to snap photos. We keep
peeling left. It is steeper than we thought it would be. The snow is light;
good skiing.
We ski pitch after pitch and then are done. It is getting dark and
dumping. Another slide lets go somewhere across the valley. Back at the door of
the hut Cody and Amy spy a sled. Glint in their eyes and off they go. Igor and
I opt for tea and warmth.
I watch climbers come in from the storm. They are loaded with gear
and ice, which clings to beards and faces and snot. They are wearing brightly
colored suits and helmets. They look like utility linemen from some unmade
Terry Gilliam film, except they are smiling.
The
windows in the large dining room are steamed with the humid warmth from so many
people. The talk and laughter is loud and relentless all around us. We are
served massive pieces of meat with roasted potatoes and thick, grainy bread. We
drink blackberry wine. Soon we are drinking slivovica and borovicka, which is I guess Slovakian
gin, and slapping each others backs.
Igor is
wearing plaid bedroom slippers. Cody teases him about them. Igor holds his foot
up so we can see. ‘I used to climb in these,’ he says with a laugh. When
Czechoslovakia was a communist country no one could get good climbing shoes.
Igor bought the slippers and scuffed up the soles, put some glue on the toes,
and climbed. It is what everyone did. He won’t throw them away, his communist
climbing shoes.
The storm is
raging outside but in here it is womb warm. We are full, content, a bit drunk.
I don’t know if I am here because I love skiing or I ski because I love being
in places like this, surrounded by people in love with being outside,
challenging themselves to walk in places not designed for humans to walk,
learning new places and ways to be in the mountains. Either way it is nice to
be warm, full, content. We go to bed.
The Farewell Blizzard
 |
| Ride It Out |
The
two boys spend a lot of time in the High Tatras. The mountains are relatively close
to Prague and the huts and food and beer inexpensive. The rock and ice
challenging and difficult, the chatas warm
and dry and late at night offer great drink and music. The economics student
listens while flipping through an article about belays and rescue knots.
Breakfast is
as terrific as was dinner. After stuffing ourselves, when we are packed and
ready to leave, we settle the bill. Lunch and cake when we arrived, much drink,
hearty supper and healthy hearty breakfast, warm clean and quiet room, all in
cost us €49 each.
Yesterday’s
snow is today’s out of control blizzard. Igor makes the call. The winds high (two
hundred forty kilometers an hour at the summits) are dangerous; we also hear
avalanches going off above us as we pull out our skis. ‘We can’t go up,’ he
says. Even to ski out, which should take only a little while, will be
difficult. The snow is deep and the trees are falling. Avalanches high and tree
falls low. This’ll be fun.
 |
| And on the last day, it snowed. |
This
trek out gives a sense of what the snow here could be. Avalanche risk high but
snow pack dry and deep. With a guide – especially one as careful as Palo or
Igor – the terrain will not disappoint.
 |
| Good Bye Tatry |
Entrepreneurship and Cheese
On
the way back to Bratislava I ask our Tourism handler if we could visit a ‘slow
food’ market or town, maybe a restaurant.
We also are interested in cheese, I
say. She has found a nice place, she says, near a village, where we can have
authentic local food and visit a cheese plant. It is the restaurant and cheese
factory Kozi Vrsok, near the city of
Ruzmoberok. We drive toward it and I picture small farm village, bucolic farms
and the cheese plant, a quant cheese factory set against a hill.
The Reality
is different. Kozi Vrsok is a truck
stop along the highway to Bratislava. It is a shell station and convenience
store (with good showers). And it has a good restaurant. We walk in feeling a
bit disappointed, and are greeted by a young woman. She says she will be our
translator. It will be her first translating job.
We are escorted into the dining room. It’s a round room of steel
and glass with a massive copper fireplace in the center of the room. A spiraling
walkway around the outside of the room rises to a roof terrace. Outside is a
petting zoo. And a cheese factory.
 |
| Kozi Vrsok Dining |
Back in the
restaurant a waitress comes over. She has a big personality and smile and is
giggling with excitement. She hugs me close. And then hugs Amy. And then Cody. She
steers us to a table with loud laughter and big gestures. Other guests, trying
to have a meal before getting back on the road, notice. She takes us to a table
with a nice tablecloth, a red sash across it, flowers as a centerpiece. She
lights a gold painted candle and brings us traditional soup.
I have an
epiphany, which should have come to me days earlier, when rapid-fire Beatrice
met us at the airport. A team from a US based magazine, even a niche magazine
like Backcountry, saying they want to
see Slovakia, means a lot to the people here.
They are
proud to be a country, proud to be free, proud to be growing and joining the
wider world. It dawns on me that my glib statement about a place being under
the thumb for a thousand years and finally free is not a throw away line, it is
the reality for everyone in this country, whether they make something of it or
not. And we are having a really nice visit to the Cheese Factory and Truck
Stop.
 |
| Bratislava |
And I
realize the skiers and climbers crowded in the chatas, Victor the driver, the mountain guides, Petra at Jasno and
Lenka representing the entire region, are building something completely new and
fresh in a land able to be itself for the first time. The first time ever, in
the long river of history. How cool is that?
We sit at
our gaily-decorated table and go up to the buffet. We eat the soup and the
sausages and mostly the cheese. I order more dumplings. They are to die for. We
take a photograph with the entire staff and pile back into the minivan. Back on
the highway in a flash, white-knuckle driving. The capital of a new country
beckons.
Lush Hotels and Dark Coffee
 |
| Monument is not enough |
Beatrice
meets us in the morning for our proper tour of the old town of Bratislava. What
seemed gray and empty and worn upon arrival feels fresh and busy on our way out.
It is partly the sunshine, partly having settled into the culture a bit, partly
having the lens offered by a proper guide.
 |
| Beatrice and a memorial |
There is as
well a plaque commemorating a young man killed by troops in 1968. Prague
Spring. A first burst of hope for freedom and putting a bullet in a young man’s
heart. Layers of history are underfoot everywhere. The palace where the
Austerlitz Treaty was signed, a pale-blue Art
Nuevo church, the fort where Hungary ruled an empire.
Presporák Farewell
 |
| Café Presporák |
Palo texts me during dinner. It is snowing hard in Stary Smokovec and the forecast for the next week is snow, snow, snow. Damn.
 |
| Presporák |
David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2013 David Rocchio. All photos (c) David Rocchio except 'Gandalf,' 'Moving Through The Old Mountains,' 'Gezja Haak,' Penzión Strachen,' 'Big Cold Valley,' 'Into the Storm,' 'No Hydration Igor,' 'Mountain Guide, Potato Peeler,' 'Kozi Vrsok Dining' and 'Bratislava (c) Cody Downard.
Some typo occured - not 'Amkivstéco chata' but 'Zamkovského chata'
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