Karkonosze mountains during winter - information, pictures, hiking

Karkonosze (cz. Krkonoše, eng. Giant Mountains) is a mountain chain situated in southern-west Poland and north Czech republic. It covers 650 square kilometres and their highest peak (Śnieżka) is 1603 meters high (above sea level). As such height doesn't seem much demanding for a regular hiker and the area is big enough to offer a big variety of hiking tracks and paths those mountains are one of the favourite recreational locations of both Polish and Czech citizens. What is interesting mountains cross those two countries in such a way that the highest mountain peak has a border located on top of it with buildings (like shelter or even a post office) on both sides right next to another. Obviously both countries are European Union members so you can cross that border freely anywhere in those mountains.

In this entry I would like to present pictures from few of my winter journeys to those mountains. As I'm not a professional climber (and most of you probably aren't as well) I enjoy that they are easy enough to hike without bigger difficulties even in winter. You need to stay prepared for weather changes and be in general good shape, though. Winter in Karkonosze can be best enjoyed in December, January and February. You can expect a lot of snow almost always in that season on higher elevations. That gives excellent opportunities to take pictures of trees covered in it, frozen water streams, snow glued to the side of information signs and such. It's a constant field of training your camera operating skills as lightning conditions can change rapidly (especially cloud level or fog may change them). Setting white balance to always hit perfect white on snow won't give you good results even though it may seem obvious. In some cases snow gets a little blueish glow or darker yellowish halo according to location where you are in (reflecting light from trees or directly from clear sky or light scattered in the fog). Those snow colour differences can be seen with a naked eye while hiking and aren't camera imperfections. It's difficult to capture them properly, though. Proper brightness and contrast settings can also be difficult to pick sometimes as not all locations are suitable for HDR photos (for example scenes with trees with moving branches on the wind or falling snow can render "ghosts" or make your HDR pictures blurry).

Normally if you're staying in a city located up to 200 kilometres from Karkonosze you can plan a single day trip with a car if you start in the early morning. You'll need a winter tires and park somewhere near the track starts on either Polish or Czech side. The paths are colour-coded and marked with walking distance on both maps and signs. In Poland you'll see a walking distance in hours/minutes of constant walking and in Czech republic you'll meet signs with distances in kilometres. Plan your trip route before and always take a paper map in case your mobile/navigation system runs out of battery or gets damaged. Also take some sandwiches and possibly something sweet to eat in case you get too tired and would like to wake up a little. You can also consider taking a vacuum flask with a hot tea as water carried in standard bottle will quickly become icy cold. The other important thing is a torch. Each traveller you're with should have one with batteries checked. It will get dark around 3-4 P.M. There is no artificial light anywhere on the paths or in the forest at all. You won't be able to return without a light.

The other useful things may be: mobile phone (you may have difficulties finding signal in some places but it's there in general), water-proof jacket, additional hat, gloves and sweater in case it gets colder or much more wet than you expected. Personally I always take additionally a small knife in case I would need to cut something, a lighter for some other critical situations (never used it so far) and sunglasses or googles in case of heavy wind on mountain tops (protecting eyes from snow and cold wind). Crampons are usually a nice to have thing only if you'll be hiking to Sniezka top. The path leading there can be icy and slippery. Just normal high trekking shoes for other paths should be fine (I use leather shoes due to water resistance and foot breathing comfort but it doesn't has to be leather really). Check the temperature forecast a day before. It will be probably from +5 to -15 Celsius depending on the conditions and altitude.

Once you reach some altitude the number of trees reduces rapidly. Most of the mountain tops are covered in lower plants only. Those will be covered in snow completely during most of the winter.