Weather: 🌤️🌤️☀️🌤️⛅🌬️
Lunch: 🥪🥪🥪🥪 (4 out 5, nice pasta meal at Chopok restaurant)
Track: 🇸🇰🇸🇰🇸🇰🇸🇰🇸🇰🇸🇰 (6 out of 5, steep up to the ridgeline from the hut and then great views and relatively easy hiking to Chopok and a cool track to Stefanika. Perfect hiking day!)
Track intensity: 😯😯😯(3 out of 5 SO cool!)
Milestone: Mt Chopok, our first 2000+m mountain on trail!
Overnight stay: 🛌🛌🛌 (3 out of 5, relatively expensive dorm bed in a mountain hut. Good food though!)
Name of followed trail: SNP trail
Special mention: Rein, who decided that he would join us for a week a third time, this time from Chopok mountain, and Andrej, the taxi driver who made this possible. Thank you Andrej!
After a cold, windy night, we get up in time. We have another chat with the German scouts and admire their classical backpacks with outer frames. They call them monkey’s and I was allowed to try one…
We start our hike back up towards the ridge. From there we have a great 10 km hike to Chopok, our first 2000+m mountain on this trail. We’ve been to Chopok before, on a winter hike 10 years ago, but then we got there with the ski lift and the weather was terrible, with zero visibility. Now we have a clear day with lovely weather. A perfect hiking day.
We see Mt Chopok coming closer every peak we climb.
When we’re getting closer it gets busier. There is even a paved track of some sort. A crazy job to make this!
Around noon we reach it and find Rein there waiting for us. So good to see him! Our famous co-star joins us for a third time. And thus he gets a new introduction:
“Some say he was raised by a panther and wolf after he was found by a friendly bear. Others say he levitated to the summit of mount chopok. All we know he is called Rein.”
We enjoy lunch together and repack the supplies that Rein brought with him. After that we get to the top of Chopok, and add one of our stickers to the immense collection on the door of the restaurant (stickers seem to be a thing in Slovakia) before we continue our beautiful trail to Chata Stefanika.
We enjoy being with the tree of us now. We also hope to have an evening with our German scouts friends at the hut.
Unfortunately we’re not allowed to pitch tent here, but we can stay inside. We’re happy with this and get a Langos, a Hungarian fried bread with cheese and sauce on top. It’s so big that we can hardly finish it!
When the German scouts arrive, they price of the form is to high for them, so they continue to another place. We say farewell and wish them a great trip!
We enjoy a shower and a (somewhat hard) bed in the hut, and a beautiful sunset over the mountains.