From Korcháň to Babia hora – day 3
Monday, 21.4.2025
Sedlo Príslop – Sedlo Hliny
→ 39,5 km ↑ 1869 m ↓ 2016 m – total 98 km
I slept like a rock the whole night. We wake up at 6:15am with no alarm. We’ve got a long day ahead of us today, so we get straight up. I walk barefoot on the grass for a bit. Jozef makes breakfast, oat porridge for me and a savory Katka porridge with garlic flavor for himself. Surprisingly it tastes really good and has a great ingredients too, just lentils, spices and salt, and a lot of protein. Then we have coffee. We pack up everything and set off at half 7:30am. We start with that top-tier 30% climb up Svítková. It’s only half a kilometer, but it takes us 20 minutes.
It went better than I’d expected. We continue on to Talapkov Beskyd. Today we’ve got an ambitious plan, we tweaked the route a bit so we can manage it in 4 days. Every so often views open up over Malá Fatra.
Jozef remembers it’s English Monday today, so we switch to English. On Panský kopec I pull down my panties, since they’re chafing and it’s getting pretty uncomfortable. I continue without them, walking’s much better right away. We stop briefly at Podúšust and fuel up before the climb up Úšust. Hnilická Kýčera’s been beaten. This climb is absolutely terrible. We stop every few minutes. Halfway up Jozef checks the map and finds out there was actually a way around it, but since we hadn’t noticed the turn-off, it was probably in bad shape anyway. The closer we get to the top, the steeper it gets, eventually reaching 50%.
We’re finally up, the other side’s a bit gentler for about a kilometer and then drops steeply down to Delená voda. The little spring’s not great, no water’s flowing and it’s all waterlogged there, but we’ve still got enough water. It’s called Delená voda (Divided Water) because the water flows off from there in both directions, meaning part of it ends up in the Baltic Sea and part in the Black Sea. There’s a table with benches, so we take a break and eat tortillas. First a savory one with tuna, sugo and garlic, then a sweet one with a cinnamon-almond tube from Kolatch. We continue on through the forest.
We’d thought it would get gentler after Úšust, but it’s still constant up and down, and steeply too. Nature calls, good thing I always carry a trowel. Jozef reads the news meanwhile while I go handle it in the forest. When I get back he tells me the Pope died. That makes me sad. I remember sitting in the common room at our dorm in high school watching his election. On the last kilometer before Novoťanské sedlo Hlinka my feet already really hurt and I need a moment to rest. The pass has a parking lot full of Polish cars. On the Slovak side there’s a new shelter built, with seating areas and sleeping platforms, a bike charging station and an outlet. There are toilets next to it, which Jozef goes to use while I take off my shoes and stretch my legs a bit. I don’t know how I’ll manage today’s planned destination. Three kilometers away is the hut below Kraví vrch, so this stretch is busy, we only meet Poles.
The hut sits in a meadow and there are a lot of people there. No wonder, it’s genuinely beautiful here. The prices match the high demand. We get two žurek soups and three Brackie beers. Luckily you can pay in euros too, so we pay €28. We take the soup outside. I’d most like to just lie down here and take a nap. We drag ourselves along, not really wanting to continue.
It’s already 3pm and we’ve still got 18 km ahead, we’ll need to really pick up the pace. I manage to speed up a bit and we even run downhill. All day we keep passing frog spawn, which always makes me happy to see.
We gradually climb higher and every so often hit mud and marshes, which we can’t manage to cross with dry feet.
At the turn-off to the hut where we’d originally planned to sleep, we decide to keep going another 10 km. We’ve got a climb ahead up Pilsko hill, but not quite as steep. We come across the last remnants of snow too.
We fuel up with a protein bar and keep climbing. We’re finally up. There’s a lovely view from here over Babia hora and the Polish side of the Tatras.
A bit below the summit we top up a little water. The wooden well’s broken, but you can fill up from the spring flowing higher up. Its water trickles down the trail. And we’d wanted to move fast. We’ve got 5 km and 750 meters of elevation left to the pass. Going down works out pretty well for me, so I hop around through the water. Jozef’s in crisis, his legs hurt so much that, in his own words, he’d “rather cut them off with an angle grinder.”
Even so, on the last kilometer we actually overtake some hikers. We look around for a suitable tent spot, but it’s all waterlogged here. We reach the pass and look for the toilets marked on the map. We’d wanted to top up water there, but it’s fenced off and under renovation. So we head for the restaurant instead, but there’s a private party going on there. I was already getting ready to go ask for water with my sweetest face, but a few hundred meters lower there’s a shop with water marked nearby. So we go try there instead. We find a wooden trough with running water. I’m genuinely glad, since the sun’s already set and we don’t have much time. We fill up water and I rinse the mud off my calves a bit. We head toward the forest along a farm track, so we’re not right out in the open. We find a bit of flat ground and pitch the tent. Since we forgot to dry it during the day, I wipe it down inside with a towel. There’s a little stream right next to it, where we go wash our feet, since they’re pretty smelly after three days of walking. After today’s distance, cold water can only do them good. We probably overdid it a bit, everything hurts and we just lie there. Jozef goes to cook an instant meal, “chicken paprikash.” We’d said we’d try it, but it’s not very good. I was worried cars would wake me at night, but I’m so tired I fall asleep instantly
