Weather: 🌤️☀️☀️🌤️☀️
Picnic: 🥪🥪🥪 (3 out 5, wraps in a bench in the shade)
Track: 🇸🇰🇸🇰🇸🇰🇸🇰 (4 out of 5, best views of the hike so far, really tough but pretty mountain track through the forest and easy going last kilometers)
Track intensity: 😯😯😯😯😯😯(6 out of 5 done when we were in Donovaly, luckily the last 4 km were easy hiking 😅)
Overnight stay: 🛌 (1 out of 5, simple hut with nice soup, but with dry spring and no tents allowed, so we slept on a full hot attic)
Name of followed trail: SNP trail
We left around 9.00 and had the best 7 km of the trail so far. The views up here are amazing! From there we walked into the forest where we followed a ridgeline quite steep up and down. The steepness of the track the whole day long is quite exhausting, but it’s doable because it’s pretty.
At some point Mark says: “it’s only 100m of elevation up from here”. Then we first got down, up again, more down and then finally steep up until we reach the top of Zvolen…😅😅😅
From there we had a steep track down to Donovaly, where we can resupply and rehydrate, because we are almost out of water, eventhough we brought plenty this morning. We are so happy to find a spring, eventhough it’s only a kilometer from the village, we fill up for the last kilometers and drink plenty here!
In the town we recognize some places from when we were here 10 years ago in wintertime. We go into the supermarket and meet Mia and David again, 2 German hikers that are hiking 6 days on the SNP trail. Nice to meet other multi day hikers on trail again!
We get a bit creative doing our resupply, because the store is small and doesn’t have all we’re looking for. We make do with what we can find, and continue for the last 4 kilometers to the hut where we want to pitch our tent.
When we get there we find out that this isn’t allowed, so we have to sleep on the attic instead. We get sauerkraut soup as a meal here, and find out there isn’t any drinking water, because the spring is dry. The hut has water, but that isn’t for drinking, only when boiled. Water is becoming a serious issue, but we’ll try and fix that tomorrow. For now, we go to bed with 8 people on the attic and hope to get some sleep…