Tatras from the Slovak Side

Orla perc from a distance

Chamois

Down climb off the ridge

A look down of whats below
A look up at where we'd come from

Finally less steep time to pose ;-)

We had read about a spectacular ridge walk, the hardest route in the Tatras, so of course, we had to give it shot. We set off mid afternoon having left the van at a campsite and headed up to the cable car. A lesson learnt here. When it is very windy call to check if the cable car is still running before hiking up a 2km hill only find it is closed for the day. Not deterred, we had to hike up the 600m to the hut at Murovanic and easily made it up for check in time. The views we had of the ridge made us really excited for what was to come the following day.

An early start saw us up to the beginning of the ridge for an early breakfast, as the sun began to rise. Although still very windy we decided to carry on. With the trail to ourselves for the first few hours we were making steady progress, crossing the occasional snow patch and using the chains provided when needed. A special moment was seeing a marmot and chamois out to join us for breakfast.

As we progressed onto the Orla Perc ridge things did get more difficult and considerably more exposed in places. Snow that was holding on this late into the season meant chains were nowhere to be found where they should have been and scrambles down turned into dramatic hand only abseiling from an old via ferrata cable. That got the juices going but by this time a few other groups who had come up a later access path had caught us up. Several passed on warnings about the difficulty of the route to come and having seen the pace at which they were moving and only a few bail off points we decided to take an early exit.

The next section was out of sight and turned into a one way trail so we made a sensible choice. However, the exit path was not a stroll down a nice wide trail. It was a 250m downclimb down a snow gully, not even the path but due to snow we had to make our own safe way down. Sometime later and a few hundred steps kicked into the gulley we got off the ridge and soaked the feet in a glacial lake while eating lunch. Watching in the distance we spotted 5 more people coming off the next exit path. Maybe one to head back to in the future. (once I, Lisa gets a better control over my fear of exposure and steep snow terrain) Without completing Orla Perc it was still an 11 ½ hour day by the time we hiked back down to the van. We decided we’d head to Slovakia to suss out some information on the tatras from their side.