Apparently it is a very popular hike
Trip Start
Aug 06, 2011
1
5
16
Trip End
Sep 16, 2011
Stary Smokovec, Presov, Slovakia
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Anyway, back to Slovakia and the beautiful Tatra mountains. Of course our plan was to do a hike up into the mountains, and hike we did! Starting in the small resort town of Stary Smokovec, we picked a trail that wound up one of the valleys, and led high up into the mountains.
During the hike we gained almost exactly 1000 metres elevation, leading us to Teryho Chata (mountain hut) at 2015 metres above sea level. I won't pretend that the hike was easy...because it definitely was not. But the views were oh so worth it. (See attached pictures for proof).
A couple interesting things to note about the hike. Firstly, the trail did us no favours. It was as if someone had come along and roughly thrown a whole bunch of basket-ball sized rocks together, without fitting them together into a semi-flat jigsaw puzzle. That meant that with every step we took, not only did we have to gain elevation, but we also had to find a suitably flat rock on which to plant our foot. Oh how we dreamed of a flat, dirt trail.
The other interesting thing, that in fact amazed us, was the immesnse number of people on the hike. It seemed as if every single Slovakian was out on that trail! (And it was a weekday!) From toddlers to people three times my age, we were getting overtaken left right and centre. And in the 7 hours that we spent hiking, we did not get a single moment to ourselves to enjoy the scenery in peace and quiet. Kinda spoilt it all a bit really.
Oh, and you know how NPSW always grossly over-estimate the time required to walk a trail? (Carl and I usually knock off a third of the recommended time), well the Slovakian National Park service seem to approach the matter in an entirely different way (ie, opposite). For an ascent that they stated would take 3 and a half hours, it took us 4. Needless to say we needed to shorten our original route.
But all the effort was entirely worth it.
Today, after a well deserved night's sleep, we drove down to Budapest. It was a pretty, but fairly uneventful drive (just how we like it). We have just discovered that tomorrow is a public holiday in Budapest, so it will be very interesting to see if anything is actually open.
