Shortly after New Year’s Eve, we went south for the long ahead planned winter trek. The expedition was supposed to be a ski-tour one, but warming up to the weather spoiled that treat, and finally, we were forced to go on foot. We covered 40km in total on the main Sudety ridge, following the Polish – Czech friendship trail, visiting 3 Polish mountain refuges and 3 Czech “Boudas” on our way. Unfortunately heavy fog, for practically all of our escapade ruined the supposedly beautiful sights, and the wind coming close to 100km/h on the ridge, combined with the cold reaching -15 C made the trek somewhat harder. The route of our trail is availablea here.

I definitely discourage the section of the trail from Śląski Dom to Śnieżka peak, where despite bad weather, the volume of the crowd reached the one at Morskie Oko Lake in Tatras! I strongly recommend visiting Czech hotels (Boudy), which are quite common near the main ridge. Slightly different vibe than at our mountain refuges, the Boudas are more like little hotels than our hostels, with regular restaurants instead eateries lacking table service. What is for sure, is that we had proper “knedle” with goulash and famous Czech regional craft beer. But, in our mountain refuges in Szrenica and Odrodzenie we played ping pong, ha!