| Summary | None |
| Owner | Adam Rosenfield |
| Creation Date | 2013-11-03 23:11:10 UTC-0500 |
| Description | Adam Rosenfield
October 22, 2013 ~9.0 miles hiking ~3000 feet elevation gain ~5.25 hours (including about 1.5 hours at the summit) I woke up early on a Tuesday morning from my hotel in Prague. I walked on over to the Můstek metro station to hop on the subway, only to discover that there was no human to purchase tickets from, and the machines only accepted coins, not bills or credit cards, and I didn't have the requisite 32 Czech crowns. So I wandered back above ground in search of some place to buy something with bills. The one time I wanted McDonalds in years, it wasn't open yet. I found a hot dog stand, bought a hot dog, got some change, and scampered back to the Metro. Only then did I discover that I didn't count my change carefully, and the hot dog stand had cheated me out of 10 crowns, leaving me again short. I sheepishly wandered back there (they were the only thing open), and instead of accusing them of cheating me, I pretended not to notice and just asked if they'd break my 100-crown note into two 50-crown coins, which they did. I finally bought my Metro ticket and rode the subway down to the end of Line B, the Černý Most bus station. Fortunately, I'd given myself plenty of extra time, so I had no trouble getting on the 6:40 am bus to Vrchlabí aut.nádr. (schedule 690701 14). Although it looks like it's possible to buy some bus tickets online, I didn't notice anyone using pre-purchased tickets; everyone just tells the bus driver where on the route they're going and then pay the driver the appropriate fare. After a 20 minute wait in Vrchlabí, I hopped on another bus there (schedule 690406 7), which got me to Pec pod Sněžkou right on time around 10:20 am. FYI, this site is extremely helpful in searching Czech bus and train schedules. I hopped off the bus and decided to pick up a few extra snacks for the hike at a nearby store; that turned out to be unnecessary. It was not clear at all where the trailhead was, but since I found this GPS track, I knew I can find it by just going towards the start of that track. That track I found starts up from the ski resort north of the town. Shortly after hiking past the bottom of the ski lift, I came to a 4-way junction, with the sign indicating that I came from the yellow trail (agreeing with the trail blazes) and that the green trail continued to the left and the right; it did not indicate what continued straight ahead, but given that the GPS track I was following turned left, I did so as well. After not too long, I found myself at the Růžohorky mountain cabin. The first 2.5 miles or so of the hike were a good uphill climb, but now the hike mellowed out. Not only was it much flatter for a while, but the trail was on a road for about the next 1.5 miles, to just past the ski lift's mid-station. A couple cars even drove by, to my displeasure. The trail finally steepened up again for the last 0.6 miles. You could probably ride a bike in all the way up to here if you followed the road all the way, although at the mid-station, there was a sign with a picture of a bike with some long text in Czech I couldn't understand, so maybe you're not supposed to bike beyond there. But either way, you could cut out a bunch of walking if you were so inclined. I found myself on the summit in no time. The highest point in the Czech Republic is quite the sight. There's a Czech restuarant, a Polish resturant (the summit is on the border of the Czech Republic and Poland), a chapel, and a weather observatory, and of course tons of people. It's not quite as bad as Mount Washington in the summer (there's no Cog, and the road doesn't quite go all the way to the top), but it's still a zoo up there. They even have free Wi-Fi in the Polish restaurant -- but the bathrooms still cost money to use (why anyone would do that when they can just go in the woods is beyond me). Since I now had plenty of time to catch my bus, I took my sweet time on the summit. I bought some pizza and ice cream, I signed the summit register, I snapped a bunch of photos, I posed for the web cam, and I performed my summit rituals. My summit ritual is to solve a Rubik's Cube, which I brought with me of course, so I scrambled and solved it on the summit. It's kind of flat on the top, and there are a bunch of buildings, so I couldn't find any specific summit marker, so I just picked a spot on the ground that looked at least as high as everything else around. The hike back down as about as (un)eventful as the hike up. When I hit the junction near the bottom, I decided to continue along the green trail instead of going back down to the base of the ski lift, since some of the signs I'd seen indicated that the green trail went back to Pec pod Sněžkou. That plan worked out perfectly, and I eventually popped out of the woods on some tiny little back road with a couple of buildings on it, and I walked back over to the bus station. I had over an hour to kill before the last bus back to Prague left at 5:10 pm (schedule 690260 5). The bus left right on time, and it got back to Černý Most right on time as well. I hopped on the Metro again and made it back to my hotel without a hitch. My GPS track can be found here. |