If Count Harrach hadn't once swapped his forests with the Silesian Count Schaffgotsch, we might have gone there more often. For a long time, though, the Czech-Polish Friendship Trail along the main ridge of the Giant Mountains was a dividing line I couldn't cross. The border guards vanished into the dustbin of history long ago, but the border unintentionally stayed in my head. While I know the southern slopes of the Giant Mountains like the back of my hand, the northern slopes are my Midnight Kingdom – Hic sunt leones, the end of the world. For a long time I didn't let myself set foot there.
But these are good times for micro-adventures and nearby destinations where adventure might be lurking, so it finally occurred to me to explore the far side of the Giant Mountains a little. And to my great surprise, just beyond my back yard I found real, genuine Scandinavia. Green slopes of ancient Palaeozoic rock, covered in dense prickly forest and softened by cushions of moss, look strikingly like what I know from the far north. Weather-beaten dwarf trees and their stumpy branches are overgrown with lichen. Cold fresh air stings your nose. Chilly granite boulders and scattered scree fields make it feel especially inhospitable. As if Dante and Virgil had walked through here on their journey through Hell.
Fancy a look too? Choose carefully where you start – so your strength holds out.
Be ready to run uphill a lot. And downhill a lot. And then uphill and downhill again. There and back from Špindlerův Mlýn to Karpacz is 42 kilometres – exactly a marathon. You swing up onto the ridge, where the first snow is already lying. You weave through the dwarf pine and run across the Silver Ridge (Stříbrný hřbet). Below you, laid out like a map, are two glacial lakes – Mały and Wielki Staw. So far, it's familiar ground.
You run on towards the rocky Słonecznik massif, which is in sight, and find yourself in territory both known and unknown. From here an old hunting trail leads to the Pielgrzymy granite rocks. The petrified pilgrims stand in your way. But don't hang around too long, or you'll get cold. Otherwise you'll turn to stone too! Stunted spruce woods with bilberries, lingonberries and heather look remarkably like the northern tundra. You cross a springy, red-tinged peat bog on a wooden boardwalk. Be grateful for it, or your feet would be squelching through icy water. Tall grass waves you on your way, and from the north blows – who else – the cold north wind.
Tread softly. Don't startle the grouse – they're getting ready to sleep.
You run down the stone paving all the way to the little Wang church. Who'd expect a thousand-year-old wooden church right here, looking as if it had been cut out of a postcard from Christiania? The crazy idea of moving a piece of Norway to the foot of Sněžka was carried out in the days of the Emperor, in 1848. It was brought to Silesia by the Prussian King Frederick William. The church, with its pointed roof and dragon heads on the ends of the eaves, stood just over a hundred and fifty years ago in the Valdres mountains somewhere between Oslo and Bergen. And now, like a strange souvenir from distant foreign lands, it adorns the Giant Mountains. The steep northern slopes of Sněžka give the place a peculiar magic. You're practically just round the corner from home, and yet almost in Norway – I find it pretty convincing.
You haven't got any złoty, so they won't let you in, but that doesn't really matter. You've only done half the route. Besides, winter days are getting shorter and you have to get back before dark. Hurry up via Kocioł Łomniczki, up the stone steps to the top of Sněžka and back home along the ridge. And watch how you answer the tricky questions of lost wanderers: "Whose is Sněžka – Polish or Czech?"
If you ask me, I'd say it's probably Norwegian. But does it really matter?
