Good weather forecast, free weekend and trails still open meant only one thing, trip to High Tatras. On Friday afternoon me, my girlfriend Maria and two other friends Milan and Zuzana left for highest mountains in Slovakia. We spent Friday night in Štrba from where we went to Štrbské pleso on Saturday morning. There we parked our car and started walking towards Popradske pleso.
Trail to Popradske pleso was a bit uphill as well as downhill near the end, an easy trail for all age groups. After about an hour and 10 minutes we finished 5 km long trail in Popradske pleso in altitude of 1,494 meters above sea level. To rest a bit and to prepare to hike more, we ate lunch and drank some beers.
Strengthen by beers we headed to Hincovo pleso. This was much more difficult trail. Although the length was only 3,4km but the elevation was more than 500 meters. First 2/3 were a bit uphill but very beautiful and not that difficult. After passing by a nice waterfalls, trail started to get more difficult and there was much more steps to climb.
Always when we finished some part and we could see further we were ensuring ourselves that our desired lake must be just behind the small hill. Well it wasn’t, so we continued climbing up the stairs until finally after 1 hour and 45 minutes we reached Hincovo pleso.
At that time it was pretty cold and windy in altitude of 1,950m. My thermo t-shirt was all wet so I had to change my base layer in that cold weather which wasn’t anything to be looking forward to. After some pictures taken and couple of Vodka shots for reaching the final destination, we started to hike back to Popradske pleso. Returning back was easier but you still have to be careful because of some steep parts which are actually more difficult to hike down than up. On the way back the weather was calm and pretty warm and the views were astonishing.
We arrived to Cottage in Popradske pleso, where we had booked accommodation, just about an hour before darkness. We were tired but very happy to see the beauty of our Slovak mountains High Tatras. On Sunday we woke up to the beautiful sunny day without any clouds and left Popradske pleso to finish our 2 day hiking trip in total of 17 kilometres and lots of beautiful memories.
