Having had enough of poor hiking weather on the previous hikes, we got a much-needed change of scenery the following day. The weather was absolutely beautiful. A warm, clear, sunny day. It was great because we had a bigger hike planned and hoped to summit a couple of mountains.
This post is about a hike to Giewont Mountain, which reaches 1896m in height. The last part of the hike was more like a climb on the limestone walls rather than a hike. Other than that, the round trip was about 12km in total, so not too long, but the trail is very steep at times.
In the photo below, you can see the mountain that we were hiking towards. It looked damn massive and a bit frightening to know that we had to get up there somehow.
The gorgeous view on the other side of us while hiking. There were so many epic views around us.
It wasn't too long until we got above the treeline. Some of the sections on the trail were so steep that we had to make regular stops to catch our breath. In the photo below, you can see the trail we were hiking. You better not stumble because there is a long way down馃槄
This was a bigger fork in the road, leading to 4 different trails/directions.
From there, it was only about 500 m to the summit of our mountain, but here comes the steepest part of the climb.
For this section, I put away my camera, so I could climb but still managed to take a couple of shots with my phone. I'm trying to find those.
Me stretching my legs.
My girlfriend climbing the mountainside, using chains.
When we finally got up there. We were so amazed, some of us were scared, haha. I love heights, but my girlfriend was scared to stand upright due to a massive cliff face that fell about 500m straight down. I guess the scary feeling was made worse due to the lack of space there. There was not a lot of space to hang about, and the space was also occupied by some other people. This is what the view from Giewont summit looks like.
In the photo below, this is the sheer drop-off right next to where I was standing. It was crazy to imagine losing balance and falling down for so long.
From the top of Giewont, we had an amazing view over the town of Zakopane, since this mountain overlooks it. We were also able to see this mountain from the window of our accommodation.
Here you can see a massive cross and some people around it. This is the exact summit. This will also give you a taste of how much free space there was. The areas that get left out of the photo on the right and left, there is already a steep drop-off.
The section where we climbed down the hill.
This wasn't our only summit that day. We still had some time, and I wanted to see the other side of the Tatra mountain range. To hike the other summit, we only needed to gain another 300m or so in altitude. That summit was also on the border of Slovakia, so we were able to stand in Poland and Slovakia at the same time. But this is a story of another post, stay tuned!