From Korcháň to Babia hora – day 4

Tuesday, 22.4.2025

Sedlo Hliny – Oravská Polhora

→ 33,5 km ↑ 1811 m ↓ 1945 m – total 131,5 km

Last night we’d talked about whether we’d try to make today’s last bus from Oravská Polhora to Kysuce. We had the ambition, but I forgot to set the alarm, so we get up at 6:40am and we’d have to run to make it. For breakfast we have porridge again and coffee. I even wash the dishes in the little stream. Standing up for the first time is genuinely painful, hopefully it’ll walk off. From our sleeping spot we head into the forest, where we see a blue marker. Clearly nobody walks it, since we lose it right away, so we cut across the forest to rejoin the red trail. We start with a steep climb, as usual.

Today really won’t be easy. It’s the fourth day and right from the morning I’m in crisis. Jozef’s doing fine, but he’s supportive. We pass a lot of bear droppings, but none fresh, all older.

We run into three Poles doing the Główny Szlak Beskidzki, we’d already seen them yesterday too. We take a break at the same spot, by a shelter with a spring. There’s a fairly nice view there, but the shelter’s not in the best shape.

The spring’s like a little pool, with a bit of water flowing from it. I fill a cup and pour it into the water bladder to filter, the Poles just fill their bottles directly. Then they joke about whether they’ll catch E. coli from that water. I convince Jozef to make pasta for lunch. I’m hungry after yesterday’s light dinner, and we’ve still got a lot of climbing ahead. So he cooks pasta with tuna and tea too. It really hits the spot and I walk better after it. Shortly after, we reach the northernmost point of Slovakia. If I hadn’t pointed it out, Jozef wouldn’t even have noticed.

From there it’s still 8 km to Babia hora with 850 meters of elevation, but also 260 meters down. We keep descending, so I jog down a bit to speed things up. That means only one thing, the climb later will be steeper. We finally reach that climb, it’s fairly steep and then goes back down again, so that still wasn’t it.

Now we’re really going up, climbing in silence, slowly but steadily. The higher we go, the sparser the vegetation. Not a soul in sight. Every so often Jozef switches on his phone to handle some work call. Meanwhile I keep grinding uphill.

Before Malá Babia hora thunder rumbles. Just to be safe we check the weather, it’s far off, holding over the Tatras, so we continue. At the summit we take a photo together with Babia hora wrapped in clouds in the background. We shoot it on self-timer, the tripod’s mounted on the trail marker post.

Along a well-maintained path we run down to the pass, where there’s even a paved path from the hut on the Polish side. We meet one woman. Must have been a crowd here yesterday. The paved path continues uphill too.

Every so often we pass a snowfield. A strong wind’s blowing up top and we layer up. We’re slowly entering fog.

We’d both assumed Babia hora was some kind of flat hill, but it’s not. We’re finally up. We meet a Pole with three kids there. He asks us about the route ahead, they’re doing a loop from Slaná voda. I show him on the map which way to go. One boy’s barefoot, so I point it out. The father says he walked in his shoes halfway up the hill, but doesn’t like wearing them, so he keeps them in his pack.

I’m glad we’re finally up, and from here it’s just over 10 km and 1000 meters down. We move at a gentle jog. The path’s paved with stones in places and a complete mess in others, the kind where you can really twist an ankle.

We’ve got a view over all of Orava region and we can see a storm forming and rumbling ahead of us, glad we’re heading down already.

We pass a shelter where I’d originally wanted to sleep. A pretty nice spot, you sleep in the loft, there’s a spring, and it’s not too far from the summit, so great if you want to catch sunrise. After 3 km and 500 meters of elevation we take a break at the lookout tower. My feet hurt and I’m starting to stumble.

At least we finish off the tortillas with Kolatch, and that’ll keep my energy up till the end. One more kilometer of steep descent and then an endless road into Oravská Polhora awaits us.

It’s fairly gentle now, and I need to put in more effort just to move forward. We pass another lookout tower, standing on flat ground with no view from it at all, we don’t get why they build towers like that. We cross the 2.5 km long Hviezdoslavova alley, which is straight, endless, and we can’t see the end of it.

I try to shuffle my little legs as fast as I can. Jozef thinks I’m stumbling, since one of his steps equals two of mine, but going any faster would mean running. We finally reach the paved road with a giant bench, so I climb up on it to break up the walk a bit. Jozef goes to fill a bottle with Slaná voda mineral water at the spring, and I continue on toward Polhora.

I walk along checking my phone for when our bus goes. It’s in an hour, but the long way round through Kraľovany and Žilina, meaning we’d be in Raková before midnight. Just to be safe I also check Blablacar. Surprisingly there’s a ride from Klin, two villages over, to Krásno nad Kysucou. I text Martin asking if he’d be willing to come pick us up in Oravská Polhora. He replies, sure. We agree he’ll pick us up in the village in 20 minutes. Jozef catches up to me. Some guys sitting around had filled his bottle with the mineral water and he was about to drink it straight away, but they stopped him, saying it’s probably not good for drinking. One of them takes it home for his grandfather to soak his feet in it. So Jozef just takes a decilitre to taste, it’s really salty. Above Námestovo that storm looks scary, hopefully it doesn’t catch us.

We made it, I’ve had quite enough! We change into cleaner clothes, so Martin doesn’t pass out from the smell in the car, and 5 minutes later we’re already driving. I’m glad this ride worked out and we’ll be in Kysuce earlier than before midnight. As we approach that darkness, rain starts, and within a few minutes it’s an absolute downpour. There are a few centimeters of water on the road and hail starts joining in too. It’s quite the storm, the surrounding hills are white from all that hail. Within 5 minutes we’re out of it and the sun’s shining. Martin drives fairly fast, which makes me feel a bit sick, but at 7:30pm we get out in Krásno. Our bus is in an hour, so we go to Pohoda Burger. From outside it doesn’t look too inviting, but inside it’s actually a pretty pleasant place. We each have a beer and order a burger. To our surprise, fries are included in the price, so it’s fairly cheap. For 3 beers and two burgers with fries we pay €30, and I can’t even finish mine. The bus stop’s right in front of the place, so we head out 3 minutes before departure. It’s 15 minutes to Čadca, and there we wait 10 minutes to change to the Raková bus. At 9pm we’re in Raková and go to hitchhike toward Korcháň. Jozef’s skeptical, but I’ve hitchhiked here many times before and someone always stops for me, since there’s always someone around who knows me and stops. We wait behind the tracks under a lamp, so we’re visible. We wait 10 minutes and no car. First a van passes, and right behind it a car, which stops for us. My first question is whether they’re going to Korcháň, and only after a few seconds do I realize it’s Tono, my classmate from elementary school. Even though he lives in Raková, he drives us to Korcháň. We hadn’t seen each other in a proper long time, and it was a really lovely encounter. Funnily enough, while walking today I was actually thinking about what a school reunion would be like, wondering what everyone’s up to now. At 9:30pm we’re home, exhausted, but happy that we pulled off this madness. We’ll wait about three years now to forget what it was like, and I’d guess we’ll set out again someday, even though right now we’re saying never again