In my last post I expanded on my Backcountry Magazine piece on travel to Slovakia. In this post I outline some hut to hut opportunities for the totally daring and insane. I then list some other helpful info for the uninitiated. What follows is the nitty gritty for those truly going. (And you will not regret it.)
A
backcountry hut-to-hut trip in the High Tatras is possible although there is
currently no easy way to put one together. We could find no tour operators
offering packaged tours on the Slovakian side of the range, although in Poland a British Adventure Travel tour operator, MountainTracks, runs a moderate hut-to-hut trip on the Polish side of the range.
A hut to hut
trip in the High Tatras would be tremendous and challenging. The saddles are
razor edged and the bowls steep and pocked with narrow chutes. There is little
by way of guidance in English, either on the web or on the ground. If you are
up for adventure, challenge and getting off the beaten path a trip is well
worth it. And did I mention it is inexpensive?.
I nagged
both Pavol and Igor about skiing from Poland into Slovakia. Pavol sent an email
with this to say: “During the summer it is possible crossing from Poland to Slovakia
on a hut-to-hut tour. In Poland the trip would start in the Rybiego Potoka Valley. The hut on the
Polish side is the Morskiego Oka. The
trip would cross the border near Rysy Peak, which sits at 2,503 m. On the
Slovak side the hut is Chata pod Rysmi,
or the ‘hut under Rysmi.’ From here the trek would take you through the
Mengusovská Valley to the hut near Popradské Pleso. This travel is forbidden
during the winter months due to severe weather and avalanche danger.”
On the Slovak side
of the High Tatra Range the starting point for a hut to hut backcountry ski
trek could be in Stary Smokovec. From Stary Smokovec the trip starts with a
funicular ride to the small ski resort of Hrebienok, located just above the
town. From Hrebienok the ski is up the Velká
Studená Dolina, or Big Cold Valley. After a half day of skinning you can settle into the Zbojnicka Chata. The lunch and tea here was hot, filling and good. You can then either
keep skiing into the Malá Studená Dolina,
or Little Cold Valley, or explore the huge cirques all around the hut and then
spend the night after another great meal (and maybe some drink).
The ski from Zbojnicka Chata through the Priečne Saddle is difficult. We had to
turn back due to weather and general conditions. If you make it through, in the Little Cold Valley you can
stay either in the Terryho Chata (2,015 m; founded in 1899; its capacity is 25 beds) or the
Zamkovského chata (1,475 m), which is just a bit lower.
The next day the tour would take you through the Baranie Sedlo through a very steep and narrow couloir into the Veľká zmrzlá dolina, or the ‘Big Frozen
Valley,’ and to the Chata pri Zelenom Plese, a large, warm
and inviting hut with terrific six-bed rooms and great food and tea. We stayed
in this hut.
The huts are
inexpensive. At the Chata pri Zelenom Plese, for example, after
stuffing ourselves on a big lunch and cake when we arrived, much drink, hearty
supper and healthy hearty breakfast, plus a warm, clean and quiet room (with
linens!) all in cost us €49 each.
On the last day
the ski would be from this hut to Sliezsky Dom, where, according to Igor, ‘you
can have celebration of a successful trip at a warm and inviting mountain
hotel, complete with a massage, a good meal and a very comfortable bed.’ I asked Igor if family owns the place. He does not get I am joking. He says earnestly, ‘it would be really
nice,’ but alas no. We did not
stay there but it does look beautiful.
Finally,
it’s worth noting most of the valleys in the High Tatra are closed and
protected in the winter and they do not mess around with people sneaking
in. With the right guide,
knowledgeable about the region and the rangers, though, sometimes permission is
granted and you would have entire mountain valleys to yourselves….
The length of the ridge in the Low Tatras is about 100
kilometers and to do an end-to-end trek takes normally four or
five days. According to Palo, to do the whole ridge, ‘typically a tour would
start in the small village of Tegárt. The end of the ridge is to the west in
the small mountain village of Donovaly.’ We did not
do this hut-to-hut ski but did have lunch in one of the huts, the Kamenná Chata and can attest the food is
good and inexpensive and the beer great.
If you start
in Telgárt the first peak is Kráľová hoľa
( 1946 m) and there is a large television transmitter with a small shelter for
a rest but no accommodation. Near
the next summit, Andrejcová útuľňa
(1520 m) there is a hut with no services. You will need a sleeping bag, food
and water. The capacity is 30 beds.
According to
Palo, ‘the next ridge is a wild section. You will find a small hut (only
fifteen beds) and no services near útuľňa
Ramža ( 1260 m).
‘From here
you hike through the saddle Čertovica.
On the Eastern part of ridge behind the saddle are two shelters with no
services.’ One of these is called Ramža and
the other one Andrejcova. If you stay
in these shelters you will need your own sleeping bag, food and water. There
are springs with drinkable water if you visit in the summer.
On the next
ridge you will reach the summits of Ďumbier,
Kamenná, Chopok, and Chabenec. Below
the summit of Ďumbier, the highest peak of the Low Tatras, is Chata M.R. Štefanikova pod Ďumbierom.
The hut sits at 1,740 m. The hut
has toilets, showers and 8-bed rooms.
Overnight including breakfast costs €14.
About two
hours to the Southeast of Ďumbier, just below Chopok, is the Kamenná Chata, with 22 beds, great food
and water available in the restaurant. The Kamenná
Chata is surrounded by the lifts of the Jasna resort, although it is just a
short ski to leave the resort. It is a good idea to book a bed in advance.
Near Malý Chabenec is Útulňa Ďurková
pod Chabencom, a year-round shelter with hot
meals but no drinking water in the winter and you will need a sleeping
bag. Mobile: (+421) 91 809 15 89 -- Price: 5€ (with your own sleeping bag)
The
next section of trail takes you across the peaks Ďurková, Skalka, Košarisko, Veľká Chochuľa,
Malá Chochuľa, Prašivá and finally the Hriadeľské
sedlo, or saddle.
At the Hiadeľske sedlo there is a small shelter with ‘5 beds
in the attic,’ although I cannot guarantee the translation is accurate, and a
source of drinking water (a few minutes south of the pass). From this
saddle is a ski across the peak Kečka
to the end of main ridge in Donovaly.
Petra Suhajdova, head of marketing at the Jasna Resort and a
terrific backcountry skier in her own right, recommends dividing the trip into
two parts, Western (Donovaly – Certovica) and Eastern (Certovica – Kralova
Hola)
The trail is well marked along the ridge but it is very important
to stay on the marked trails high. Petra also advises to book the huts (Kamenna
Chata and Dumbier) in advance.
Of course experienced skiers and mountaineers can take on this
tour without a guide but it may be difficult. English is not commonly spoken
and, at least for now, the tourism caters to a much more local crowd. Our guides in Slovakia, Pavol Kuna and
Igor Trgina, are available to build such a trip in the Low or High
Tatras. Pavol can be reached at palo.guide@gmail.com. Igor can be reached
at trginaigor@gmail.com. They work independently or together.
In addition to Palo and Igor, in the Low Tatras Petra recommends ‘the
guys at Active Planet.’ Unfortunately they have no information in English on website. Petra
says she knows them quite well, though, and reports ‘they organize ski touring,
biking, climbing trips and can make tailor made holiday including the whole
service. They have also ski touring rental in Banska Bystrica.’
You
will find on a trip to either the Low Tatras or High Tatras, unless you are
familiar with Central Europe and speak Polish, Czech, Slovakian or Russian, you
will be on your own and on a bit of a frontier. The lodging, food and beer will
be good and inexpensive, the touring challenging and beautiful, the people
wonderful, the experience everything you could want from travel and backcountry
skiing. But there will be no chocolates on your pillow at night and few menus
in English. Have fun.
Getting There
We flew into Vienna Airport,
however the High Tatras are more easily reached from Cracow, Poland than
Bratislava or Vienna, two other gateways, Cracow being about 150 kilometers, or
a two and a half hour drive from Stary Smokovec. Visiting the Low Tatras is more of a toss-up, about equa-distant
between Cracow and Bratislava. From Cracow transfer taxis and buses are
available but I would recommend hiring your own car so that you can explore for
yourself.
Lufthansa and Alitalia are the major western
legacy carriers serving Cracow. Two European low cost carriers, EasyJet and
RyanAir fry to Cracow, EasyJet from Paris, London or
Liverpool; RyanAir – ryanair.com – from many points in Europe and the UK.
The drive from Cracow through Zakopane to the Slovakian High
Tatra takes you right through Ždiar and just past the Pension
Strachen, a great little hotel. The crossing between Slovakia and Poland is at
Lysá Poĺana near Tatranská Javorina.
All major airlines serve Vienna,
Austria, where you could tie a ski trip to an opera tour, and RyanAir flies to
Bratislava. Vienna is about a five-hour drive and Bratislava is about a four
hour drive to the High Tatras.
When to go
March and April are inevitably
the best time for touring but make sure you keep your eye on the weather. The
latter part of February and March will see powder snow, frost and fog, so if it
is sidecountry lines you are after, be sure to know how to navigate when the
visibility suddenly diminishes. A good website for weather forecasts is
www.shmu.sk.
Stay There
There are numerous hotels and
B&B’s, “Penzions”, clustered around the base of the ski resorts and many
throughout the small towns that are dotted amongst the Tatras. We stayed at the
Wellness Hotel Grand in Jasna, a buttoned-up four-star hotel, extremely
comfortable and clean, with a super spa and large range of good food.
On
the high-end of lodging in the Low Tatras, the Tri Studnicky, a hotel at the gateway to the National Park. It
would be worth a splurge. We were fortunate to be treated
to a lunch by Chef Kovac. 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 Tatras. The lobby has lots of copper and stone and dark wood. Chef
Kovac was Chef of the Year in 2012 and it’s easy to know why.
In the High Tatras the best value
option would be to base yourself at a Penzion in one of the smaller towns. From
there you can explore the mountains and possibly spend a night or two in one of
the huts. In the High Tatras we stayed in Zdiar to the North of the mountains
in a rustic, beautiful small town. Stary Smokovec is a gateway village, served
by narrow gauge rail from Poprad, the regional center. It is an excellent location to access
the ski touring possibilities and to spot rich Russians wearing plenty of fur. As
you drive east from Stary Smokovec on the ‘537’ you will find a number of small
towns all at the base of massive mountains.
Poprad is a market town about 45
minutes from Stary Smokovec and would offer cheap accommodation. If you visit
Poprad it is worth seeing the village of Spisska Sobota and checking out the
Penzión Atrium if you do. http://www.penzion-atrium.sk/en
Our Penzion in Zdiar was a family
run business, full of Slovak character and even had it’s own ski lift and piste
(www.penzionstrachan.sk). Check out www.slovakia.travel for help with finding the
right accommodation for you.
(For learning about staying in
the mountain hut system and possible hut-to-hut tours read the short articles
about the High Tatra and Low Tatra hut-to-hut options.)
Ski There
If you’re savvy with ski touring
and have got all the gear it’s relatively easy to pick up a map and navigate
your way along the marked routes. Taking a guide with you however, means that
you can leave the navigating up to them and indulge in your surroundings a
little more - and if the weather turns, you have a professional by your
side. Pavol Kuna and Igor Trgina
were brilliant guides, find out more about them on www.mountain-guide.sk and www.mountainproguiding.com
respectively. The other thing to keep in mind is most valleys in the High Tatra
are closed – a good guide might be able to get permission into these hidden
gems.
Ski touring gear is available in
a select few rental shops, the Low Tatras was particularly limited although we
did find sufficient gear in Jasna. The best range by far that however was at
the Intersport in Stary Smokovec. In here we found Dynafit, Silvretta and
Fritschi setups and the new range of High Mountain Dynastar skis for rental.
Intersport can set you up with skis, skins, boots and avalanche safety gear for
just €38 per day. The shop
is Sportcentrum
Galfy sro (http://www.galfy.sk/intersport-galfy-kontakt)
Winter in
the High Tatras typically starts in the second half of November and lasts
typically until mid-May.
Snow falls in some sub-alpine areas of the High Tatras on
more than 190 days per year and it can be very, very windy. The snowpack is 2
to 5 meters.
For what it is worth, it snowed hard every day before we
reached Slovakia and started snowing again the day we left. Go figure.
By
way of example, according to the Slovak Meteorological Society, the climate in
Štrbské Pleso, one of the resorts of the High Tatras:
Average temp.:
3.7°C / 38.7°F
Maximum recorded temp.:
29.9°C / 85.8°F (August 28, 1992)
Minimum recorded temp.:
-26.8°C / -16.2°F (February 10, 1956)
Warmest month (average temp.):
July (12.3°C / 54.1°F)
Coldest month (average temp.):
Jan (-5.1°C / 22.8°F)
Temp. below 0°C / 32°F :
168 days (per year)
Temp. above 25°C / 77°F:
4 days (per year)
Days of snowfall (per year):
154 days
Click here for a good website for weather forecasts.
Eat and drink there
With hearty meals available for
less than €10 and a pint of beer for just €1.50, Slovakia’s mountain resorts crush
their Alpine equivalents in value for money when it comes to food and drink.
Meat, potatoes and dumplings dominate most menus and if you order a hot
chocolate don’t be surprised if that’s exactly what you get: a cup of molten
chocolate and spoon – not to be missed. Borovicka (Slovak gin) and Slivovica (a
52% liquor made from plums) are the national drinks that were resolutely thrust
into our hands on arrival at each of our destinations. The mountain huts are
usually stocked with Kofola, which is spicier version of Coca-Cola, which is
perhaps a more refreshing end to your day. We also found that the coffee in
every café we went into was particularly tasty.
Maps and guidebooks
The Tatra Plan hiking maps in
1:25,000 are perfect for exploring these mountains and are available online or in
many of the sports shops and hotels around the resorts. Locally you can pick up
an excellent mountaineering book, Ladislav Janiga’s Tatry Z Oblakov, with a revised edition in 2012. If you are a total wonk and want to
know more than you will ever need to about the region, try Anne Applebaum’s Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe
1944-1956 and Hugh Agnew’s The Czechs
and the Lands of the Bohemian Crown.
Weather not on your side? Five other truly Slovak experiences in
the Tatra Mountains
· If you are in need of a pamper day to rest
tired ski touring legs one of Slovakia’s hot spring spas might be the answer.
Many of the spas are geared towards old or infirm but some are also open to the
public. If your willing to indulge the tacky adverts and embrace your inner
child head to Tatralandia Aquaparc, where the asparagus-pea green thermal water
can’t be beat, or Gino Paradise Besenova for a day of hot springs, hot dogs and
water slides.
·
Just off the
D1 motorway that runs through the Vah river valley there is a relatively non-descript
petrol station concealing an unlikely culinary secret. Kozi Vrsok, Goat Hill,
is a modern restaurant with onsite cheese factory and farmyard. It’s worth it
for the novelty of touring a cheese factory while someone else fills up your petrol
tank, and the cheese is not bad either.
·
The Lomnicky
Stit cable car ride feels a bit like stepping into Willy Wonka’s glass
elevator; not for those the faint hearted, this 12-man suspended cable car
judders it’s way to the 2,634m peak that overlooks Tatranska Lomnica ski resort
of the High Tatras. The spectacular 360 degree views make up for the hairy ride
and you can even spend a night up there staying in the highest apartment in central Europe.
·
During our
time in Zdiar we innocently agreed to a horse and cart ride through the
village. After a rowdy ride dodging traffic on the main road we were taken to
the village museum - here we witnessed traditional dance, re-enacted a wedding
and then were whisked away aboard our wagon to a mysterious shed in the woods
where a fire was ready for roasting sausages on stick. The Slovaks seem to be
experts at cooking up these bewildering but entertaining experiences, make sure
you check them out.
·
Bratislava
is between three and four hours by car from the Tatras depending on where you
are staying. The city is a curious mix of old and new, with its quaint, cobbled
old town, historic buildings, churches and magnificent Devin castle overlooking
sprawling 1970s construction and futuristic apartment blocks. Getting lost in
the side streets and stumbling across a brilliant coffee shop is a must - we loved
Presporak Café. Finding a place to stay will be easy. The Devin is a grand old communist gem. A real splurge and
find? The five-star Arcardia, and when we were in town in mid-March
five-star, yes, but rooms were three-star prices.
David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2013 David Rocchio
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