Last week I had the idea to conquer the highest mountain in Czechia called Sněžka. It may sound menacing, but it’s not that high at mere 1,603 meters (~5260 feet) above the sea level. It is located in the north of Czechia and shares a border with Poland.
So I suggested this idea to my friends and searched for images of a few wonderful sunsets above the clouds from the top. Only one of them was intrigued and brave enough to take on this adventure with me because the weather was not looking too great in that area on the given day of planned arrival.
The morning before arriving in the near town where the hike starts, we had to take the bus ride that took over two and a half hours.
Upon arrival, we immediately headed into our adventure and realized that its going to take some time.
From the beginning, everything felt very cold and the roads were a bit icy, but it wasn’t snowing (yet).
As we started to ascend onto the mountain and into the tree-lined path going upwards, we noticed the weather getting colder. The snow began to thicken around the path and we had to cross a few frozen water streams which were really slippery.
We met a lot of people on the way up and everyone had either frozen eyebrows or hair. So we started to realize that the weather on top isn’t really nice. That didn’t stop us though, only made us more excited and left wondering about how it looks up there! By the way our tempo wasn’t slow at all and we were sweating the whole way up. Only had T-shirts and winter jackets and that was quite enough. We couldn’t really stop because when we did, the wind just made us feel that much colder.
At about 1,200 meters (~4000 feet) the wind hit us hard and it only got worse from there. The wind speeds were about 40 km/h or 25 mph and kept increasing. It made the wooden posts around the path look really cool at least. More people were already going down from the peak of the mountain as we were just arriving.
After the treacherous hike up, we finally made it to the peak and were a little bit disappointed because of all the mist there. Still, we really liked how everything looked - the observatory and a nearby wooden structures. Everyone there was hiding from the wind and refueling for the way down. The wind speeds at the top reached up to 120 km/h (75 mph) around the time we arrived.
We felt happy that we finally made it up and after some time we decided it’s time to go down. We chose a different path because we thought it’s not going to be as slippery, but it was. As we were going down, the mist started to clear and the view was getting increasingly exciting. We finally saw the side of the mountains and the whole valley.
The winding path was carved alongside the mountains and we encountered many more frozen streams.
After more than 6 kilometers (~3.8miles), we finally arrived at the town where our hike started. We were glad that we experienced such an awesome adventure and happily got in a warmed up bus that took us home.
I promised myself to visit this place again but possibly in Summer, just to make the trip a little more pleasant 
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If you got to the end of this post, thank you for reading!
Wish you all a lot more opportunities to travel and stay safe,
Lucas
