#medium hike

As I will be responsible for training and leading people who are about 30 years younger than me, I thought it might be a good idea to actually be able to do what I’ll be training them to do. You know, set an example, sort of thing.

With this in mind, I have been looking at maps and picking routes which could be used for teaching all the skills necessary for a successful expedition. Everywhere more than 200 metres above sea level is covered in snow at the moment, so it’s a good time to start. I won’t be up here training kids before March, which gives me another month to find suitable routes and get fit enough!

DofE Czech Republic – The Beskydy Environment

As far as I can tell, the Beskydy Mountains fits the definition of ‘normal, rural open countryside or forest’. I’m not sure they are remote enough from habitation to qualify as Wild Country, so when the time comes for that I guess I’ll head over to the Jeseniky Mountains instead.

The route I picked for this weekend’s little adventure was around a local hill called Skalka (see map and profile below). It works out as 14.3 km with 659 metres height gain, so perfect for a medium length hike over varied terrain. The Czech hiking trail system, as I’ve remarked before, is the best I’ve ever seen. Getting lost here is not impossible but it is really difficult! As you can see in the photos at the bottom of the post, even when the visibility is less than 50 metres you can’t lose the path because there are trees on either side of it.

DofE Czech Republic – Photos And Notes On The Walk

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

All in all a great morning out. It was a bit hard at the beginning due to the steep hill and the weight of my trusty pack (22 kg) but nothing too painful! I only had the kit required for a D. of E. expedition with me – spare clothes, sleeping bag, small tent, cooker, first aid kit, food and waterproofs but most of my gear is old and therefore heavier than modern lightweight stuff.

Because I only stayed on marked hiking trails, I didn’t really need the compass. The trails are colour coded and the colours are regularly painted on trees or rocks and orientating the map is easy. There are also regular signposts which are marked on the maps, making it really easy to find your way around, even in cloud or fog.

All my kit seems to be working properly with the notable exception of the snow grips I had on my boots. They turned out to be dangerous because they are difficult to put on, nearly impossible to adjust and have clearly been designed to slip around so the spikes are on top of the boots. They are destined for the bin and I’ll let you know what I replace them with!

Winter geocaching on Smrk (Spruce Mountain) in the Beskydy Mountains of the Czech Republic means, quite frankly, that either you spend a lot of time shovelling metres of snow around likely-looking trees to the bemusement of other hikers, or you just give up, promise yourself that you’ll come back in the spring and enjoy a nice little hike up the second-highest peak in the Beskydys.

Winter Geocaching in the Czech Republic – a word of warning…

The Beskydy Mountains are, by and large, a pretty user-friendly range of mountains. You are never truly far from help and the trails are well-marked, even by the standards of a country which boasts some of the best-marked trails in the world. With few exceptions, these trails are regularly maintained and easy to walk on, avoiding steep slopes covered in loose rocks and accessible to anyone of moderate fitness. Most of the exceptions I’ve come across are, in fact, on Smrk.

Smrk gives the impression of a mountain that doesn’t much care if anyone climbs it or not. There are no sweeping vistas across to the Tatras in Slovakia, the trails are tricky and steep, there’s no restaurant at the top…. which is why you will meet friendly people who are there because they don’t like typical tourist trails. It’s also why you’ll find the memorials to John Lennon and Jan Palach near the summit.

Jan Palach was a young man who set fire to himself in Wenceslas Square, Prague, in 1969 in protest at the lack of resistance by Czech people to the Soviet-led crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968. Like the John Lennon memorial is there because it’s in a really inaccessible spot. The last time I was up Smrk, it consisted of a water-damaged photo in a broken glass frame. Since then,someone has had his picture engraved in stone with a legend which is  a bit hard to translate. It talks about a ‘people’s monument’ but not in the Communist sense, where everything official was ‘the people’s’. In this case, it truly means ‘the common, everyday people’:

‘The people’s monument of John Lennon was built in 1982 on the place where secret meetings of people with anti-communist opinions took place in the 1980s.’

It may sound a bit silly and romantic these days, but the people I know who used to attend such meetings all tell me that if you wanted to be able to  speak your mind and be reasonably sure that someone who had been blackmailed by the secret police wasn’t spying on you, then an awkward and inhospitable peak like Smrk was the place to do it.

So maybe Smrk doesn’t care if you climb it or not. But if you’re the sort of person who climbs mountains like Smrk rather than sit at home watching TV on the weekend, you’re going to meet a whole bunch of people just like you. Just maybe leave the geocaching until the spring thaw!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Click on the links to jump to each section.

Basic Information

Elevation Profile

Photo Galley

Notes on the walk

The Trail Of The Mountain Gods – Basic Information

An 11 km hill walk through picturesque countryside.

622 m height gain.

Great views across the Beskydy Mountains.

Historical local architecture and folklore.

Access by car or bus.

Restaurants and hotels available.

The Trail Of The Mountain Gods – Elevation Profile

The Trail Of The Mountain Gods – Photo Gallery

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The Trail Of The Mountain Gods – Notes

This trail has a nice mix of relatively quiet walking, unique architecture and folklore attached to it. The beginning is steep, which is typical of the Beskydy Mountains but once you are on the ridge, the path is wide and easy with some fantastic landscape panoramas over the Beskydy Mountains and the Moravian Gate.

If you start from the car park/bus stop in the village of Trojanovice, you almost immediately have a choice between hiking up and taking the chair lift… I leave it up to you! I assume you’re reading this because you like hiking but there are some excellent restaurants and pubs at the top of Pustevny, so the chair lift is always an option for getting back down.

The trail is at its best from late spring until the winter snows. Even when the snow has mostly melted from the mountains, be careful on the trails. A lot of people hike them during the winter and this compacts the snow into ice, which lasts into late spring at times. Due to the thick forest, it is often difficult to walk beside the trail where the snow has melted.

When the weather is nice, the forests protect you from the sun during the climb up and down. Pustevny is relatively rare in the Beskydys because the top and the ridge is not forested, so you get nice views.

The ridge consistes of 2 hills – Pustevny and Radhost. The Pustevny end has the chair lift from one side and a road and car park from the other, so it gets quite crowded in nice weather. The Radhost end is only accessible on foot, so is much quieter. Whichever end you visit, there is some excellent food available although obviously if it’s crowded at Pustevny, the queues will be longer. You can typically always get soup and goulash, as well as coffee and of course beer (this is the Czech Republic, remember!)

There are 2 local specialities which I absolutely recommend if you feel hungry. One is Frgal, which is a kind of soft disc-shaped cake covered in fruit compot and dusted with fine sugar – ideal for taking with you. The other is bryndzové halušky, which is one of Slovakia’s most famous dishes. It consists of something like gnocchi, sprinkled with smoked bacon and a delicious soft sheep’s cheese called bryndza. It is excellent winter food but if you eat it in the summer, you should plan on having some extra time to digest it before you continue your walk. Of course, you can buy these foods in the valley close to the mountain as well but somehow they taste nicer in the mountains where they originated.

At the Pustevny end of the ridge, you can see some wonderful folk architecture in the form of wooden buildings. these were designed and built around the end of the 19th Century and are practically unique. They blend the local Wallachian style of wooden construction with colours and motifs which are more typical in city buildings of the period. Sadly, one of them burned down a few years ago and the reconstruction isn’t finished yet.

At the other end of the ridge is the beautiful wooden church of Saints Cyril and Methodius. They brought Christianity to the Slavic peoples in the 9th Century and developed a writing system for their languages, which is why the Russian alphabet is know as ‘Cyrillic’ in English. This is a working church but if you find it open, there is no service happening and you are respectful of the code of behaviour in a Catholic church, you will probably be allowed in.

Between Pustevny and Radhost is the statue of Radegast. He is something of a local character even though he has few worshipers. He is the pagan god of hospitality, the harvest and barley as well as being the namesake of a local brewery and their emblem. Legend has it that when Cyril and Methodius arrived and destroyed his idol, they faced no divine retribution and so won over the local pagans to Christianity. These days it is all much more civilised and each of them maintains part of the territory in a peaceful and gentlemanly manner.

If you are interested in visiting Pustevny and would like more information, you can download a guidebook here. It includes a map, detailed notes on the walk and points of interested as well as a GPX file which you can use in your GPS device.