At The Crossroads

A sudden gust of wind blasted my face as the gondola doors slid open at Kasprowy Wierch – a bracing reminder that I was no longer leisurely nibbling my way through Kraków’s historic heart. I was now planted, quite unmistakably, deep in the beloved mountains of Poland.  

Crowds of city folk had decamped for their winter holiday to Zakopane, a sprawling town of 27,000 at the foot of the Tatra Mountains. After arriving by train, I sat down for a meal in one of the city’s oldest restaurants and hotels, Karczma Sabala. Built in the local wooden post-and-beam style, it blends traditional Goral woodwork (Goral means “highlander”) with touches of art deco. Outside, Zakopane’s pedestrian zone, the Krupówki, throbbed with tourists. Young, fresh-faced women, dressed in traditional Goral clothing—pleated skirt, indigo-coloured apron, white blouse with embroidered collar and cuffs—sat in quaint wooden stalls hawking over-priced oscypek, the delicious smoked sheep’s cheese unique to the region. Polish pop music oscillated shrilly from door of a nightclub. Nearby families with little children waited stoically to enter the Parrot Zoo, one of many curious offerings in this anything-goes, carnival of a town. Inside the restaurant, a crack Goral band of two fiddlers, an upright bass player, and an accordion virtuoso played mountain folk music layered richly in harmonized vocals.     

“Being Goral has become an occupation,” observed my dinner companion Jacek Zięba-Jasiński—guide, local fixer, and interpreter of all things Polish. I was learning to appreciate Slavic bluntness. 

Further proof of the national trait came as we planned our skiing explorations for the coming days. Plowing through heaping plates of jagnięcina, delicious lamb skewers with potato pancakes, my “ski guide” briskly informed me: “I don’t really like skiing”.

That explained a lot the next day. At the craggy 6,500-foot summit of Kasprowy Wierch, Poland’s highest ski resort, Zięba-Jasiński shuffled off to visit an old friend working at the nearby meteorological station. I clicked into my boards, sluggish from travel and the previous evening’s repast fit for a Polish wrestler, keen to experience Tatra National Park, a picture-perfect postage stamp of protected alpine and forest terrain tucked along the Slovakian border.

Most people riding the gondola—young parents with toddlers, grandparents, giggling students, and chic couples in fur-lined coats—had come to hike the icy ridge path to reach the high viewpoint. On one side Poland, the other Slovakia. Here, they stood in the cold, snapping selfies and family portraits before retreating to the crowded shelter of the summit station restaurant. 

Snow coverage was lean in the Tatras this winter. Being the only ski resort in the country that relies 100 percent on snow from the skies of Central Europe, the groomers of Kasprowry Wierch had sculpted what little they had to work with into a ski racer’s dream of firm corduroy. The local approach was immediately apparent: fast and furious, regardless of skill or technique. 

Most skiers were riding pinner slalom and GS skis, the right tools for the conditions. I deployed my fat all-mountain skis as ably as possible. Halfway down, an adult barked commands as kids carved through an auto-timed slalom course. A group of climbers, fiddling with ropes and ice axes, prepared to set off, presumably to climb a snow or ice gully on one of the many peaks ringing the alpine amphitheatre. High above, black specks of walkers could be spotted making their way along the ridge. A few brave skiers ventured off-piste, scratching down hard snow and weaving among boulders. Wind gusted. Clouds parted. The flat, diffuse light made it impossible to discern the bumpy details. Conditions were challenging, but the Poles were nonetheless getting on with it in stoic Slavic fashion. 

The 900-mile arc of the Carpathian Mountains begins in Romania and dissipates in a fringe of rugged topography that defines southeast border of Poland. In a country that is mostly a rolling lowland of lakes, rivers, forest and farms, the mountains hold a special place in the hearts of many Poles, including the late Karol Józef Wojtyła who, in 1978, would become Pope John Paul II until his death in 2005. Fans of the sporty Polish pontiff called him “The Daredevil of the Tatras,” in reference to the mountains where he first learned to ski. The accomplished skier continued to pursue his passion even after taking up residence in the Vatican, often whisking away to ski incognito in the Italian Alps. 

On a morning before heading to Polana Szymoszkowa, one of around a dozen small resorts near Zakopane, my guide made a short detour. The Zakopane cemetery occupies a triangular plot of land and is enclosed by an ancient stone wall. Next to it stands a tiny wooden Catholic church—a quiet vestige of the centuries when Zakopane was a quiet mountain village of sheepherders. The gravestones, rather than grey and sombre, are creative and personal reflections of the souls they commemorate, which appear to include a lot of mountain folk. There’s nothing gloomy about it.

“There’s a few well-known mountain climbers buried here,” Zięba-Jasiński said, pointing to headstones festooned with rusting pitons and various other climbing implements.

I was to learn more about Zięba-Jasiński as the days unfolded. His curriculum vitae was as unconventional and confusing as Polish history. He studied theatre and performed on stage in Kraków, then returned to his hometown Zakapone to pursue his thespian career. Along the way, moonlighting as a voice actor, his natural baritone landed him a gig doing a Darth Vader voice-over for a Polish version of a Star Wars-themed video game. Then the mountains called, and he certified as a Tatra Mountain hiking guide. It wasn’t that he didn’t like skiing, but rather preferred not to wait in lines and ride lifts. 

I sympathized after arriving at Polana Szymoszkowa later that morning. A melange of skiers and snowboarders fought for survival on a ribbon of manmade snow. ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” pumped from lift-tower speakers. The entire scene was a stubborn testament to Poland’s love of sliding on snow. I dove into this chaotic river of humanity for a half dozen laps, then rejoined Zięba-Jasiński on an outdoor patio. The tables were crowded, and pints of pilsners sloshed around mountainous plates of kielbasa sausage. 

That evening, while waiting for my train, I browsed local history and nature books at Baza Tatry, a gift shop next to the main station. Hanna Kozlowska, the lone staff, was getting ready to close. She told me that she left Zakopane for a few years to teach snowboarding in Canada and elsewhere. Eventually she came back to the mountains of her youth. Her busy schedule now mirrored resort life anywhere, cobbling together a variety of jobs – giftshop worker, snowboard instructor, rental accommodation manager, hiking guide – all so she can stay and play in the mountains.

“Zakopane has grown a lot, and in some ways that aren’t great. But it’s still a small community at its heart. For me having Tatra National Park is what really makes it special,” she said. 

Outside, a five-piece Goral folk band walked briskly down the sidewalk, off to another night of entertaining Zakopane diners. I boarded a passenger express eastbound for Wroclow, gateway to the Sudeten Mountains bordering the Czech Republic. The train rocked and rolled gently through pastoral foothills turning golden at sunset. I pondered the Polish love of the mountains, of Nordic jumping and alpine skiing, of a culture that somehow spawned a vanguard of Himalayan alpinists and ski mountaineers—including Krzysztof Wielicki, the first to climb Mount Everest, Kangchenjunga and Lhoste in winter, and Andrzej Bargiel, who in 2018 made the pioneering ski descent of K2, the world’s most dangerous mountain. 

Mountains anywhere can serve as sanctuary, even escape. In Poland, however, in some ways this is an illusory notion. The country’s borders and fortunes have shifted over the ages, as a vassal of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, under the savagery of Nazi occupation, and later the iron fist of the Soviet Union.

Tomek Januszka, my ski guide for three days in the Sudetes, was a child in 1989 when the fall of the Berlin Wall unleashed a tidal wave of economic and social change on Poland and its Eastern Bloc neighbours. They were wild times. His father, who had been working at a state-run carpet factory in what was then Czechoslovakia, opened a carpet import business when private enterprise suddenly kicked off. It thrived. Or rather, it boomed. Zlotys rained from the sky. Then the government called asking for business income taxes, another new concept, that had gone unpaid for years.

“He lost it all,” Januszka said with a shrug. But for a kid skiing regularly with his schoolmates, life, especially winter life, remained blissful.

High above Karpacz, a bustling mountain holiday town, we rode an antiquated four-seater chairlift to the top. After putting skins on our touring skis, we began a gentle ascent towards Skalny Stół, a prominent summit shared between the Czech Republic and Poland. A lithe ski-mountaineering athlete clad head-to-toe in Lycra and sporting a fluorescent pink fanny pack breezed past on a mission. A welcome wind had swept away the morning’s murky clouds. The sky was a deep blue and intense when Januszka stopped next to a stout, severe-looking two-floor stone building, Silesian House, once a lonely border patrol hut. 

“That’s the story of our country,” he said, pointing at a knee-high concrete border post painted white and protruding from the snow.

The small marker would be easy to overlook, but Poland’s tumultuous history is writ large by the partially scratched-out engraving of “Deutschland” (Germany) and “CS” (Czechoslovakia.) Today, it reads “Polska.”

Bygones are bygones nowadays — for the most part. We struck out on a route marked with red poles. The path deked among stunted fir trees and gargoyle-like limestone boulders, eventually opening onto a treeless alpine tundra. The borderlands were busy with Czech and Polish weekend skiers out for tours and turns. Like us, most were hopping between the various mountain chalets strung along the spine of the Sudetes. 

“We are a community here. We don’t separate between Poland and Czech Republic. We all live the mountains,” Januszka said, after offering a cheerful dobrý den to a group of passing skiers.

Besides mountains, Czechs and Poles also share a mutual love of a pint of crisp pilsner, enjoyed liberally, with breakfast, lunch, or dinner. We slid across an arbitrary line into the Czech Republic and aimed for Luční bouda, meaning “meadow shelter.” It’s a modest name for a monolithic structure sitting conspicuously amid an expanse of winter white. 

There’s been a building of some sort here for more than four centuries, situated as it is at the crossroads of cultures and countries. The building fell back into Czech hands after the Nazis were given the boot in 1945. Today it’s a hotel, restaurant, and home to Paroháč—the highest brewery in the country. Sunlight filtered through large windows as tables slowly filled with the early lunch crowd. We chatted with the young brew master as he polished brass taps and poured beers. Being early in the day, we opted for a light lager, just enough to propel us to our next hut. 

A quick ascent brought us to the edge of the alpine plateau. We ripped skins and launched down a narrow piste, arcing slalom turns and dodging mountain travelers on foot. The run wrapped steeply around a forested shoulder then dropped into a basin next to a frozen lake ringed with steep cliffs. On the sunny side of the lake, people jostled for space at the outdoor tables of Schronisko Samotnia, a popular destination for a Polish specialty of bigos, or “hunter’s stew.” It’s a sumptuous and fortifying multi-meat dish, stewed with sauerkraut and vegetables. Januzska ordered two plates. We settled in for a mid-afternoon feast.

A half-hour later the sun slipped behind the mountains and the outdoor tables quickly emptied. Januszka and I downed espressos, then climbed out of the valley and back into the Karpacz Ski Arena, arriving next to a T-bar that looked as though it hadn’t turned in decades. Old powder lightly dusted a steely crust. These are the nostalgic slopes of Januszka’s youth when the snow seemed deeper and the winters longer.

Satiated from stew, we urged our legs back to life and the rigors of Polish skiing. There’s a sweet Czech expression, pohoda – literally “relax” or “ease.” Poles have adopted the term from their Slavic neighbours. Language knows no borders. 

“It’s about being happy with where you are—with family, friends, and time for relaxing,” he told me, as we jumped into a current of smiling skiers on the manmade snow-covered lower slopes of Karpacz.

In the mountainous borderlands of southern Poland, the perfect words to live and ski by.     

Photography by Kari Medig