route as to whether it is likely to be open or closed during this period.
Avalanche warnings are posted when necessary at the start of walking routes. In Poland a grading system applies, ranging from Level 1 (slight) to Level 5 (severe). Obviously if there is danger of an avalanche you should avoid that area.
Weather forecasts in English are available online for the whole area, for example at accuweather.com or weather.com, or from your hotel reception. Or you may prefer to get a weather app for your smartphone. If you’re planning a long day in the mountains, it would be advisable to double-check at a national park office as local conditions can vary.
Please read ‘Mountain safety and emergency services’, page 54, regarding wind chill and altitude factors.
National parks
The whole of the High and White Tatras ranges, as well as most of the Western Tatras, are included in the Tatransky Národny Park (TANAP) in Slovakia, or the Tatrzański Park Narodowy (TPN) in Poland (both mean Tatras National Park). Established in 1949 (Slovakia) and 1954 (Poland), the two organisations on either side of the border work closely together to protect the natural environment and provide facilities for rest and enjoyment. Together they cover approximately 730sq km, of which 70% lies in Slovakia, 30% in Poland.
Most facilities you will use while walking in the Tatras are provided by the national park authorities: path building and maintenance, waymarking, nature trails, guides and wardening.
As in all national parks, there are strict prohibitions to protect the environment. These are really just common sense, and would be followed as a matter of normal practice by all readers of this guide, but for the record you are forbidden to: walk away from the waymarked routes, or take short cuts on bends; pick flowers, mushrooms or fruits of the forest; break off branches; set up tents anywhere except in designated campsites; light fires; swim or use boats anywhere except places specified for these activities; leave litter; damage or remove any notices or waymarks. Failure to observe these very sensible rules may result in a heavy fine. See the Mountain Code and Visitors’ Charter in Appendix E.
National park rangers in both Slovakia and Poland wear a green uniform and a badge, which in Slovakia bears the words ‘Strážca Tanapu’ (TANAP Ranger), and in Poland an edelweiss emblem. Mountain rescue personnel and guides wear red sweaters bearing the blue cross mountain rescue badge.
The administrative headquarters of the Slovak TANAP is in Tatranská Lomnica, in a modern building 500m east of the railway station. It also contains a research institute and an interesting museum, which displays various aspects of life in the park. The reception counter sells a range of maps and guides in English (including a guide leaflet to the museum), and there is an audio-visual display in the morning and afternoon. There is also a TANAP office in Tatranská Štrba. The headquarters of the mountain rescue service in the Slovak Tatras is in Starý Smokovec.
In Poland the headquarters of TPN and mountain rescue are at Kuźnice, on your left as you approach the cable-car station. They also run an information office and small museum, easily recognised by its impressive carved wooden colonnades, beside the roundabout at the foot of the approach road (Rondo Jana Pawła II).
Languages
English is becoming more widely spoken as a result of the increase in English-speaking visitors, and because children are learning it at school. Even so, it will help visitors to have an understanding of the Polish and Slovak languages, the pronunciation of place names and the meaning of some words.
Both are descended from Old Slavonic, which was almost universally spoken by Slav peoples until the Middle Ages, and there are still many similarities between the two languages. Slovak is also very similar to Czech, but there are some subtle and some substantial differences.
The pronunciation of Slav languages can be very difficult for English speakers. Some words appear impossible to pronounce, with far too few vowels, or even none at all, in relation to the number of consonants, especially in Polish, where the faint-hearted may give up halfway through the first syllable of some words. The single letters k, s, v and z in Slovak, and w and z in Polish, are words in their own right.
In both Slovak and Polish most letters are pronounced as in English – remember that g is always hard, as in ‘goat’. In Slovak, the stress nearly always goes on the first syllable. In Polish it usually goes on the penultimate syllable. However, in the local dialect spoken by the Góral (highlander) people, who inhabit parts of the Tatras on both sides of the border, the first syllable is stressed. The differences are described to the best of our ability in Appendix A, although some sounds are almost impossible to explain in writing.
A wide variety of diacritics (accents) appears over some letters, affecting the way they are pronounced – see Appendix A.
There are no definite or indefinite articles in either language. All nouns and place names have gender – masculine, feminine or neuter – and this together with grammatical cases affects the endings of many words in a way that is far too complicated to describe in detail here, but you should be prepared for the names of people and places to appear in a multitude of versions. Tatra can also be seen in Slovak as Tatry, Tatier, Tatrám, Tatrách and Tatrami; in Polish as Tatry, Tatr, Tatrami and Tatrach. Even your name may be rendered in several ways. In Slovak, Colin Saunders can also appear as Colina Saundersa, Colinovi Saundersovi or Colinom Saundersom, while Renáta Nárožná may appear as Renáty Narožnej, Renáte Nárožnej or Renátou Nárožnou. In Polish, also as Colina Saundersa, Colinowi Saundersowi or Colinem Saundersem; Renáty Nárožny, Renácie Nárožnie, Renátę Nárožnę or Renátą Nárožná.
In this book we use where possible the unaffected versions of names for simplicity, but on maps, signposts and so on, you may find the endings altered.
Appendix A contains a glossary of words that you are likely to encounter on the Tatras maps, or in the mountains and villages, as well as some useful words or phrases, for example to help you order a drink or a meal. For further help, you can buy inexpensive pocket dictionaries in bookshops in the Tatras resorts (see Shopping and Services information in Sections 3 and 4 for each country), and in specialist bookshops in English-speaking countries.
Place names
In this book we use Slovak or Polish place names as appropriate, and translate them where possible, either in the main text or in the gazetteers, to add interest and help with identification. Note that some places in the Tatras have slightly different names in Slovak and Polish – we use where possible the name that is relevant to the location.
When using Polish and Slovak maps, it is easy to get confused by a number of situations that have arisen over the years. The following is an attempt at clarification, although you may be none the wiser by the end.
On Slovak maps, for names applied to geographical features, you will see that it is customary to use lower case for the initial letter of the type of feature (such as tarn, valley, saddle), whether this comes first or second, such as Skalnaté pleso, Suchý žľab, Lomnicky štít, Kopské sedlo, Kôprová dolina, hrebeň Svištových veží, pleso Nad Skokom. This looks wrong to English speakers, so in this book we have given capital letters to all the words, to make clear that they are all part of the place name. In Slovak there is an exception to the rule when applied to the names of towns or villages, when both words have capital letters, for example Štrbské Pleso, Kežmarské Žľaby.
High up in Malá Studená Dolina (Green 5812A) (photo: R Turnbull)
On Polish maps, as in English, all words in the names
