Slovakia-

Thanks to the  helpful people at the bar we found WiFi at I was able borrow a phone and call the airline to change my flight to Russia to depart form Prague instead of Munich. This gave me an extra day and a half because I wouldn't need to take a bus back to Munich and stay overnight before catching my flight.

On Saturday afternoon after climbing in Poland we drove to the Slovakian side of the Tatras. We were planning to hike up into the mountains that evening and then stay over in the hotel that is just down the valley from where we would be climbing on Sunday. Unfortunately there weren't any rooms available so we hiked up Sunday morning for the day. The hike took just over two hours on the way up.

The trail starts in town.

Getting near the tree line.

There is a small cliff with a number of dry tooling routes. Unfortunately it had been very warm and all of the ice had fallen of the top of the cliff, but we could still climb the lower drytooling portions of the routes.  The rock was granite, and the style of climbing was a bit scrappy with some loose rock and hard to find and use holds.

Almost to the cliff. The hotel we were hoping to stay at is in the upper right.

The climbing was kinda slow because of the scrappy nature and coupled with the fact that we got a late start we only had time to climb two routes. The second route turned out to be a lot of fun.

Photo: Libor Hroza

Photo: Libor Hroza

Photo: Libor Hroza

Photo: Libor Hroza

Photo: Libor Hroza

Photo: Libor Hroza

Photo: Libor Hroza

Photo: Libor Hroza

On Monday we had planned to go back up to the same area and climb a big ice flow just for fun. But over night we got a decent amount of wet snow which would have been an even greater amount higher up leading to concerns of avalanche hazard so we decided to start driving back to Prague and check out a different ice area along the way.

One of the old castles along the drive back to Prague.

The cliff is about 35m tall. Water lines have been run to the top of the cliff to make the ice. Its a popular after work place and they have lights set up so people can climb after dark. Its all easy climbing but it was nice to stretch out and fun to climb some ice.