Cross-country Skiing in Zakopane

The fir trees swayed in the icy wind, shrugging plumes of powdered snow from their flake-dusted boughs and casting a lanky shadow against the flecks of morning light that found their way through the forest.

The movement of the woods was virtually the only sound, save a few tweeting sparrows, visible now and then as they flitted against the white hillsides and alighted on the spiny branches here and there.

I was totally alone. Not lost, but alone. Somewhere deep in the High Tatra Mountains that rise like a great Slavic bulwark of rock and stone against the Slovak border in southern Poland.

I’d left the town of Zakopane (the self-proclaimed Winter Capital of the country) behind in the early hours; heading away from the charming gorale (mountain) cabins and their trademark timber gables and eaves, all spiked at the bottom with dagger-like icicles and cushioned with layers of fresh snow on top.

There had been a blizzard overnight; the first of the season here. The whole Zakopane valley was drenched in white. Everywhere from the arched backbone of mighty Giewont peak to the south, to the faintly-visible ski slopes of Kasprowy Wierch in the distance, was a pale, snow-white. Only a small circumference of wet mud remained against the base of each fir tree; the only spots left untouched by the nocturnal flurries.

I headed eastwards, towards where the Polish taverns and steep-roofed chalets of little Kościelisko village sprouted from the undulating fields. Here, the winding mountain tracks gave way to the wilds in earnest.

Pathways led into the forest. I pressed forward and delved within, my skis sliding and crunching the untrodden snow; my breath misting against the pine-scented air, cold, crisp and illuminated with the golden-yellow glow of the 7am light.

I joined one of the marked cross-country ski paths that runs along the edge of the region’s prized Tatra National Park. Now and then, the colossal outlines of the chiselled peaks lurched into sight, dominating the small gaps between the green spires of the spruce groves.

One moment there was the monstrous mount of Kresanica, dropping away in a vertical wall of rock and ice-caked stone, winds whipping over its triangular summit — Poland on one side, Slovakia on the other. Then it was gone, the forest taking control of the skyline once again.

he woodland floor. I passed clusters of pinecones that glistened below flecks of sparkling snowflakes here and there. I traversed colossal tree trunks, draped in vines and dying ivy.

I crossed a small mountain stream, barely visible now between the fragmented sections of the season’s first ice, babbling and trickling; just a sad shadow of its springtime self.

The minutes went by slowly. My narrow touring skis were forever pulsing against the soft snow. Me, cutting through the arctic air, eager to see what treats the forest was hiding behind its next bend, or what snow-crusted delights sat in the next copse.

Suddenly the trees fell away, and the forest track widened to a vast expanse of brilliant white. The sun was now aloft in its mid-morning position; the rays bouncing off the occasional mote of snow as it twisted and turned in the air.

In the distance rose the low foothills of the Tatras, cutting-off Zakopane from the rolling plains of central Poland and Krakow to the north. I could make out the early-bird skiers riding down the pistes of the Polana Szymoszkowa resort. I could see the clutches of mountain taverns belching charcoal plumes of smoke from their chimneys at the base of the runs.

I noticed some ski tracks in front of me. Someone had been here earlier; alone and in the same spot, skimming across the untouched surface of this early snowfall before anyone else had thought to come. I decided to carve my own way across the snow; to make my own mark in the first winter covering of Poland’s Winter Capital.