Lesson for the Day

BUY THE MAP!!!!!!

So much for the great hiking I had planned for today. GRRrrr. I figured that buying a map was unnecessary... I only had one day to hike and I thought I could make do with the free one from the tourist office. After all, it had the trail marked on it and a description as well, including which coloured markers to follow. How could I go wrong?

I went the right way for about 30 minutes (even though I followed the green markers and it said to follow the red ones). I lost my way at a river... I did not see any other trail, but apparently there was one. I continued on for a bit, thinking that the trail had to cross the river soon... but it didn´t... and it soon became clear that the trail was going down.. and down... right back to the valley. I had wasted too much time to go back. Time was tight because I had to pick my backpack up from the luggage store in one of the sport shops. So I had a not so pretty walk along a river, down the valley which had been ravaged by hurricane force winds... most of the trees had been ripped out of the ground.

When I got down, I came out onto the highway and wasn´t sure where I was. I soon figured that out from a sign and estimated that I was about 2 km from Tatranská Lomnica where there was a cable car that went up to the top of Lomnický štít (peak) at 2632 m. I thought I would have just enough time to do it, so I went. I wasn´t going to come to the Tatry Mountains and not get a view! Unfortunately the clouds were very low and constantly moving today so the view would be okay for about 30 seconds and then it would be all cloudy. It was actually very cool to watch the clouds. But it was cold up there! About 12 degrees. It sure has been a lot colder in the mountains. I almost... almost.. miss the 35 degrees.