Me

Hiking in High Tatras, Poland

Last weekend I went hiking in the beautiful mountains of High Tatras, which are part of the Carpathian mountains in the border region of Poland and Slovakia.

We arrived in Zakopane, which was quite a tourist city where we didn’t want to spend too much time. There are going busses from Kraków to Zakopane frequently that cost around 20 PLN (appr. 5€) and take two hours.

We started in Kuznice (about 900m above sea level) where several hiking routes and a cable car to Kasprowy Wierch are starting, but this one is really expensive! Our first goal was the shelter “Hala Gasienicowa/Murowaniec” (1500m, picture below) where we intended to stay the first night. This shelter was quite big and overcrowded, but we still got a bed, they had nice (and cheap) meal and the night costs around 10€. In the afternoon we went to the first peak “Kasprowy Wierch” (1987m) without our bags which wasn’t that far from the lodge.

The next morning we started early to reach our next destination in the valley of five lakes. The shelter is situated next to one of the lakes at 1600m, but before we have to get over Zawrat pass (2159m) which was the hardest part of the trip. We didn’t expect that much snow, so getting up this pass was quite difficult.

But our work was rewarded by seeing beautiful lakes and one of the best sceneries I have ever seen :)

The next shelter “Piec Stawow” was situated in the valley and the view out of the window while going to sleep was incredible. The night in a 7-bed dormatory cost 35 PLN (about 7,50€).

The next day we went from this shelter to Morskie Oko, which is probably the most popular lake in the High Tatras. On our way we touched a really deep valley and got some other very nice views.

I can definately recommend a visit in the High Tatras. I was even told that the slovakian side of the Tatras are more beautiful, so this maybe won’t be the last visit there, also because it’s so cheap and they have very good meals there :)

after these three days we returned to Kraków by bus, I might do another post about this awesome city later.

I’m back from Poland. More pictures of Tatra mountains and Krakóv to come!

some pictures of my field trip to Harz mountains in Germany