From Baťovka to Korcháň – day 5
1.4.2024 Monday
Bobek – Korcháň
→ 31,67 km – total 178,31 km
After a solid night’s sleep we’re up at 5:45am, feeling reasonably fresh. My feet are worse though, I have to stretch them a bit before I can even stand. I change, we pack up, and go have breakfast in the shelter. It’s maybe 20 meters from where we slept, and the wind’s howling brutally here. We barely manage to cook breakfast and coffee. Jozef has instant noodles, I have porridge.
We’ve got the final 30 km ahead of us, which I already know very well. The walk is not comfortable for me, but we’re finishing this today. Sandy views of Lysá hora open up along the way.
The trail keeps following the border, through lovely little settlements, overlapping with the Via Czechia (Stezka Českem). We pass by the Doroťanka cabin/settlement. Every time I come through here I think — I would like to live here.
After 2.5 hours we reach Biely Kríž, a well-known spot in the Beskydy that’s already past its glory days. We want to grab some food and coffee. There are already 10 other people waiting, but it doesn’t open until 10, so we lay everything out on a table and finish off whatever food we’re still carrying.
We continue right away, not bothering with water since there are plenty of springs here. The whole way, today and yesterday too, we pass sooo many frog eggs — so we’ll definitely be back in a month to see the tadpoles.
We’ve only got 15 km left to our own Kamenná chata hut, but it’s turning into a real struggle. Not only are my feet hurting, but the trail’s more mud than solid ground at this point.
After about 10 km I really need a break. We sit down by the road, eat some chocolate and I massage my legs a bit. After a while we push on. We pass through Muřínkův vrch, where there’s a small chapel and a spring too, so we drink up. There’s one last climb ahead, a fairly steep one, up to Veľký polom. It’s a level-5 nature reserve, and last year’s windstorm left quite a mess, so we’re constantly detouring around and climbing over debris. It looks like something out of an apocalyptic movie here.
We quickly descend to the mountain hut. The woman there greets us calling us lunatics. We have a beer each, sour cabbage soup, and pork with dumplings and cabbage. In the meantime my mom calls, telling us not to eat, there’s plenty of food waiting at home — too late for that. Though honestly, we’re in such a big calorie deficit at this point that we’d eat whatever’s put in front of us regardless.
We’ve walked the last 6 km many times before, and we make good progress, running bits of it here and there. We were here two weeks ago and the clearing of the fallen trees has come along nicely, even though the last weekend brought down a few more.
The thought of potato salad (traditional food on Christmas and Easter) keeps pulling us forward. At three o’clock we finally arrive. We take a final photo in front of the house, and only then we can start getting civilized again.
Recap
And that’s the end of our journey. We’re really glad we went through with this crazy plan and got to see places we’d otherwise never have visited. Writing didn’t come easily alongside the walking this time, since after all those kilometers I just didn’t have the energy for it. But if I get a bit more organized, and get faster at talking myself into washing up in the cold, hopefully it’ll go more smoothly on future trips. Thanks to everyone who reads this, and to the non-readers who at least look at the photos. I hope this inspires some of you to get out into nature more, and that you’ll keep following along next time too. 🙂
PS. We really didn’t run into any bears.
