Climbing Rysy
A walkthrough on preparation and the climb itself
Introduction
Rysy is the highest mountain of Poland. It lies right on the border with Slovakia and has two main routes — from the Polish and Slovakian sides. We climbed in March, and because the Slovakian route is steeper, people generally do not climb it when there is snow.
Rysy was my first experience of climbing a mountain. Prior, I have done a lot of hiking and backpacking. I wouldn’t say it is a safe mountain to do a first climb on — there are some very steep sections and near the peak dangerous cliffs. You need good coordination and a feel for danger in the mountains. Next to that, I took a lot of time preparing for this climb and weighed out the risk/rewards very carefully. I decided to cancel our first trip in January because the avalanche risk was at 2, the temparatures were around -25C chill, and the wind about 50 km/h.
Reason for writing
I decided to write this post because when I was doing research for climbing the mountain, I couldn’t find much information that describes the whole experience and how to prepare, especially when searching for information in English. So, the goal of this post is to help a person that is in my situation :)
All the material that helped me prepare I put at the end of this post.
If you have any type of question, comment or something you just want to say — I am very curious to talk to you.
Preparation
Gear and packing
In the end, I overpacked my backpack. For me it was very important to summit the mountain, so I decided to pack some warmer clothes because I didn’t know what to expect. Even at about -8C, I wore two base layers for most of the hike and only put on a sweater halfway through the climb. On the peak because we stopped moving, I put on a fleece and hat.
Everything that I packed:
- Woolen hat knitted by grandma
- Woolen scarf (not used)
- Synthetic T-Shirt base layer
- Synthetic long sleeve base layer
- Mid-weight sweater
- Zipped fleece — Patagonia Better sweater
- Down hoodie — Marmot quasar hoodie (not used)
- Thick winter jacket (not used)
- Ski gloves
- Synthetic base layer bottoms
- Ski pants
- Ski socks
- Heavy weight climbing boots
- Crampons
- Ice pick
- Piece of rope and carabiner to attach to chains
- Headlamp
- Should’ve brought sunscreen, small towel
Food and water:
- 1 litre of water
- 0.5 litre of tea
- Nuts
- High calorie crackers
- Sandwiches
- A cliff bar and a snickers
My friend with whom we climbed together rented his ice-pick and crampons here: https://alpintech.pl/wypozyczalnia.html
Physical preparation
Prior to the climb I started running, and three weeks before we went did some HIIT. To give an indication, I ran 10km in 60 minutes. The difficult of doing the whole hike was a 7/10. During the climb there were section were I needed to stop every 3 meters for a breath, but I wasn’t fully exhausted when we finished the hike.
Weather
Weather is one of the crucial factors to take in mind when preparing for a climb, especially when climbing during winter.
During preparation for the climb I used two sources:
Here I had two limits:
- Chill temperature above -25C
- Wind slower than 50km/h
If any of these would be broken I would not go. Luckily, during our climb on March 18, 2022, the Min temperature was -8C with wind at about 15km/h and till 3pm clear sky. This felt as very warm. For most of the hike I only wore two base layers.
My limit was avalanche danger 2 with cold weather and medium wind. At the day of our climb, the avalanche danger was also at 2, but below 1800m a 1, together with warm weather. Next to this, I also reached out to people on Instagram who climbed recently to ask about the conditions. You can do this by searching by location — people were very positive about the conditions. I decided this was safe enough.
I used the newspaper of the mountain rescue to see if there are more emergencies happening due to dangerous conditions.
Route
The winter and summer routes differ, however, both are easy to follow, especially if there is a walk path through the snow. I watched a lot of youtube videos to get acquainted with the route
I navigated by phone. The internet connection didn’t work for most of the route. Phone connection was available.
This map I used to upload the route to maps.me.
Google earth also gives a better feel of the area:
This is the approximate winter route:
I would say there are four different sections to the climb. The first one is not very steep and quite simple — you are still full of energy.
At the start of the second stage we had our first rest and had them a couple of times. The steepness is still not so great.
I would say the third section is the most demanding part. It is very steep and you go very slowly. It seems not far but we spent a lot of time on this section.
The fourth section is were there is already some danger of falling off a cliff. For me, as a first time, it was pretty scary. You need to be very careful here. Ideally, you would use a harness to secure yourself to the chains that are along the path. However, I used a rope attached to my arm with a carabiner (not the best solution, but better than nothing).
Costs
I think the whole climb cost me around €200 — Poland is relatively cheap.
The two flights Eindhoven — Krakow were €50 return.
For the buses we paid about €20 in total.
The hotel was also about €25.
Getting there
If you go by plan, Krakow has the closest airport. There are a lot of busses going in all directions from Krakow. From Krakow, we took a flixbus to Zakopane for €5.
We stayed in Zakopane in this hotel:
It was the cheapest I found + it is very close to the central bus station.
We booked two nights — before and after the climb as we didn’t want to have a late bus back to Zakopane and wanted to keep a second day as an opportunity for a second chance.
Quick video of our room
I tried to book a place in the Morskie Oko Mountain Hut, but because it is very popular, the hut was fully booked for the next two months at that time (this I only learned when we stopped there for a break, because prior to that they just didn’t pick up the phone). This is the case for the whole winter, and might also be true for the summer. Because the hut is so isolated and on such a beautiful location, staying here would be amazing.
We took a bus from Zakopane to Palenica Białczańska. The plan was to start and finish at this car park in one day.
We used these websites to check the bus schedule:
https://www.busy-krk.pl/morskie-oko-zakopane/
https://transit.podhale.pl/index.php?page=route&route=156
They proved to be not correct. Although we arrived at the station at 7am, the first bus departed at about 7:40.
The price was 15zl one way per person.
The climb
I was very excited for the climb :) So much preparation and it finally happened. We had a quick breakfast in our hotel and went to the bus station. After some waiting for the bus to depart, we started the journey at 8:40.
Right from the car park you pay entrance (about 5zl) for the national park start the hike. It is not possible to drive here by car.
Not long after you see Rysy for the first time :)
Overall the hike to Morskie Oko is very beautiful.
It took us about 2 hours to walk from the carpark to Morskie Oko.
We had a short break and continued the hike over the lakes.
It starts to become steep pretty quickly.
We summited at around 14:00. It is a very beautiful landscape and worth some time sitting on the peak.
The next problem we had was that the last bus would depart back to Zakopane at 6pm. To get back in 4 hours was not possible, so we decided to try our luck and hitchhike back. On the way back we caught up with some other hikers whom we already crossed while going up. They were also driving to Zakopane and agreed to take us with them. After a warm chocolate in Morskie Oko, we hiked back to the car park under the stars (headlight was not needed in the end).
All in all, climbing Rysy was amazing. It was a great introduction into mountain climbing sphere.
Other information:
Very nice blog post
Tripadvisor post
A tip to find more information is to use google translate to translate your google/youtube search to polish. Example would be: “Climbing Rysy” to “Wspinaczka na Rysy”. This gives you much more information.
Rescue Phone Number : (+48) 601 100 300 Horska Sluzba — Tatra Mountain Rescue (Slovakia)
Rescue Phone Number : 18 300 TOPR — Avalanche Forecast
