Slovakia: Gerlachovský štít (11/28)

With an early start we’d made it back down in time to visit the local mountain guide office. Slovakia is unique, within the set of mountains we’re trying to climb, as it requires you to hire a guide to summit it’s highest peak — Gerlachovský štít.

We eventually located the office, and the lady at reception started ringing round to try and find us a guide. We also chatted to her about the provisions in the regulations that allow you to climb without a guide (if you’re members of a UIAA affiliated club, and climbing one of the harder routes), she commented that we ‘didn’t look like real climbers’, and continued to try and find a guide for us. 

We were hoping to arrange one for the next day as the weather was deteriorating throughout the week. She couldn’t find one for the next day, but managed to organise one for the day after. This was probably for the best, as it gave us a day’s rest between mountains.

We spent the day in the ski lift car park; which was much better than it sounds. Quiet and with clear mountain views and the occasional deer roaming around. We caught up on writing our blog posts and editing some photos.

The next morning we were up early to have a quick breakfast before driving to meet our guide at 5:30am. Amongst other groups of people, milling around, we found our guide, and jumped in the back of his land rover for a lift to the start of the route. 

By packing our own helmets and harnesses our guide determined that we were real enough climbers to take the harder scrambling route to the summit. We both readily agreed, and it was a great decision, we only saw one other group on our ascent.

Leaving the path we crossed a boulder field, before scrambling up to the base of a Gulley. Here we donned our helmets and harnesses, and our guide led off. A short section of tricky moves, helped with a few fixed aids, gave way to less technical, but steep ground to the ridge at the col. From here we scrambled across an exposed ridge to the summit.

At the top we met a number of other groups who’d come up the other way, stopped to have our photo taken at the top, and had some lunch — even though it was only 10am. Then we descended of the other side of the ridge, down a well trodden gully to reach a small plateau with a perched lake at the far end. We followed the path back, traversing round before descending back down to the hut where we started.

We celebrated with a non-alcoholic Raddler while waiting for the other groups to arrive back, before catching a lift back down to the van.

The next morning we headed toward Hungary, but not before stopping at Dobšinská Ice Cave. An impressive cave, which was quickly turned into a tourist attraction after its discovery in the 1880s. It was also used as an ice rink when the USSR had power shortages and couldn’t afford to create ice rinks in more convenient locations! Unfortunately there were no English tours so we had to make do by eavesdropping on someone else translating for their friends.

So with two peaks done in quick succession we headed back to Hungary.