Exciting challenge on the northern side of Slovak Paradise

Itinerary

• From the bus stop and parking lot, follow the P marking to the Podlesok row of restaurants.
• Turn left before the restaurants onto the K trail, which we follow through the Hernád breakthrough.
• At the junction of the Klášťorská roklina (Monastery Gorge), turn right onto the Z trail to enter the gorge.
• From the Kláštorisko plateau, descend back to the edge of Podlesok on the Z trail.
• From the corner of the children’s camp, follow the K trail to the restaurants.
• Turn right before the restaurants onto the P trail, which leads back to the starting point.

Detailed description of the route

Taste from the Hernád breakthrough

From the bus stop, we follow the P marking along the asphalt, passing parking lots, and arrive at Podlesok (Erdőalja), the northern gateway to the gorge world of the Slovak Paradise (Slovenský raj) with a High Tatras panorama. Here you find a campsite, accommodations, and restaurants; during the tourist season, smaller shops are also available. In summer, the holiday center is crowded with hikers because the most popular gorges start here. After the map boards, turn left onto the K trail, then on a branching asphalt road beside the forest, passing charming accommodations, we target the Hernád breakthrough (Prielom Hornádu). Above the pastures, the High Tatras spread out like a giant (if clouds allow visibility). However, leaving the pens of the Ranč Podlesok pension behind and entering the forest, we bid farewell to the panorama. After bypassing a children’s camp, the asphalt ends, the ground becomes a path on the left, and a short trail leads to a limestone ridge: below unfolds the Hernád gorge (Hrdlo Hornádu), the symbolic and real gateway of the river canyon. From here, you can see clearly the basin north of the Káposztafalvi karst, from where the river turned towards the mountains and cutting across partly earlier stream valleys at their edges, it carved out this gorge adorned with rock formations and mysterious forest.

We descend on a water-washed rocky path to a bridge, then cross the river for the first time. On the far side stands a wooden hut where during the tourist season you can purchase the national park entrance ticket; if you have a multi-day pass or already bought a small card in Podlesok, you can continue on the metal walkway built along the cliff walls beside the Hernád. On a small terrace stands a renovated former fishermen’s clubhouse – the last building before the Letanovský mlyn (Letanovský mill) holiday settlement. From several points, you can also view the foaming river here, lined by poplar and spruce mixed deciduous forest. The gorge area has been a National Nature Reserve since the 1960s (Národná Prírodná Rezervácia Prielom Hornádu), thus has the highest protection category; its forest hides real primeval forest patches in hard-to-access nooks that humans never logged. Since 1988, the entire mountain area has been nationally protected.

The path here holds one of the most exciting and simultaneously most difficult parts of the canyon. We climb or descend fairly steep sections. Progress is enabled in several places by steel cables and limestone-fixed steps, but you also encounter the older (recently replaced by metal devices due to poor weather resistance and slipperiness) wooden log ladder. This is perhaps the most photographed section of the entire Hernád breakthrough: walking on metal trays fixed to the cliff wall bent over the river, holding onto wires, 3-4 meters above the roaring, swirling water. The outward-curved, slightly overhanging wall forces somewhat acrobatic movements because you have to lean somewhat out over the depth. The old, yet unreplaced comb-pattern trepniks sometimes shift under your weight, but there is no reason to panic as the installations do not usually come loose. The Hernád gorge was first explored in winter 1906 by walking on ice, then in summer by raft by its first discoverers (Béla Hajts and companions), and the modern tourist path along the entire canyon was completed in 1974.

A steep, technical climb follows a new set of trays, then we descend back to the shore, where romantic limestone rocks scattered with trees appear. The inner side of the bend, opposite a spread pebble beach, forms a cliff that the river forced to retreat over tens of thousands of years: from undermined sections, smaller or larger blocks break loose, thus shaping the meandering valley of the Hernád. We walk over the first suspension bridge of the breakthrough, called “Pozsonyi Bridge” after the capital's bridge – though its Slovak name, Reťazový, simply means Chain Bridge, referring to its supporting structure. The path embraces a rock rib over log planks, steps, and metal stairs. It is named after the dripping or seeping karst water from the rock: Stupačky nad večným dažďom, or “Steps over the Eternal Rain.” We are on one of the breakthrough’s most beautiful rocky-gate sections, which became also known in July 2015 due to a tragic event: the mountain rescue helicopter reacting to an accident in the nearby Klášťorská roklina (Monastery Gorge) got caught on an overhead power line spanning the gorge during descent and crashed here, causing the death of its four passengers.

An exciting section follows, condensing all the wild romance of the Hernád breakthrough within a few meters: after a small metal walkway, a rocky path built into the overhanging wall secured with trays and wires follows the river, then steps built from broader trays climb the ridge shoulder. Then, hopping on metal trays gripping the wire, we reach the suspension bridge stretched at the junction of the Klášťorská roklina (Monastery Gorge).

A hearty little gorge hike

Crossing under the suspension bridge, we reach a junction shaded by imposing pines, turn right on the Z trail. This leads onto the Klášťorská roklina, formerly called the Monastery Gorge hiking path, known for being the densest waterfall concentration of all the national park’s gorges, and it also has the most waterfalls over its full length. Over 1.5 km, we climb a total of 224 m in elevation, aided greatly by the installed (medium-sized) ladders. Since the gorge is short (so it does not catch side branches), and its creek’s source is on the plateau edge, the riverbed is almost dry most of the year, and the waterfalls usually just trickle.

The route begins with a steep, rocky path lined with chains next to metal steps drilled into slippery limestone slabs in rainy weather. Then the valley narrows into a narrow rocky gorge – from below, the chilly, tumbling water breath announces the adventures ahead. We follow a path free of technical equipment all the way to the first major obstacle, a basin filled with a fallen trunk below a waterfall: here stands a bent iron ladder next to the 13 m high waterfall named after Anton Straka, a Slovak writer and author of the region’s first hiking guide (Strakov vodopád). After the inclined, easy-to-climb ladder, we climb upwards on a chain-equipped limestone surface along a creek lined with tufa bark. The gorge belonging to the Hernád breakthrough reserve is protected by ancient, impassable, natural forest, the northern exposure and steepness provide a dark and cool microclimate.

Briefly, we step stone by stone in the creek again; finally, metal steps and a chain help to cross a smaller rock stairway. The root system of a spreading pine catches attention as it hinders progress, but looking up allows us to admire the view of the gorge’s most beautiful and monumental waterfall. The Rainbow Waterfall (Dúhový vodopád) is indeed colorful, as behind the falling water there is a green moss carpet, a grayish limestone wall covered with a brown tufa veil, and the green surroundings create a truly colorful spot in this otherwise dark gorge. Next to the 8.5 m waterfall, two slanted, consecutively placed ladders lead upwards, where chains and trays help across slippery, worn ledges. Larger gorge walls, crossing streams, and rocky paths lead to the gorge’s narrowest point, where limestone-fixed trays, metal walkways, and finally a curved ladder “rescue” an apparently impossible hiking path (waterfall name: Kaskády Gustáva Nedobrého).

Grasping chains, we climb steeply mainly on the gorge side before the wild valley briefly widens. A few metal stairs (and a chain offered as handhold) invite us into the toughest crack so far, where usually there is not much water but you still need to step into the little amount of it to reach the ladder closing the narrow side gorge: the Small Waterfall (Malý vodopád). Climbing this, the Klášťorská roklina “softens.” We follow the brook in nice forest, sometimes alongside raw rock walls, and on a rocky ladder with chains and trays, we leave behind the last technical equipment. The now pleasant forest path leads past spring water trickling from wooden troughs and draws us out to the Kláštorisko (Refuge) plateau meadow. (Kláštorisko literally means Monastery Place but is also known as the Red Monastery, the former monastery building.)

Following friends above the Carpathian mountain range

After the narrow, closed gorge experience, the green clearing hits you impressively, even more so as from its wide square your gaze can stretch to the best of Slovakia, to the long chain of the Tatras, as the pine forest modestly recedes around the monastery ruins, drawing a nice frame and allowing the genuine Carpathian panorama. On the far side of the meadow operates a seasonally open tourist buffet (not far from a mountain rescue station) offering food and drinks, next to many tables and benches serving hikers overcoming large altitude differences from all directions. Kláštorisko is reachable only on foot – hence its scattered wooden houses and abandoned tourist accommodations with smashed windows (for now) crumble in solitude. Fortunately, they do not spoil the phenomenal view, so here you can enjoy the best Tatras panorama of the Slovak Paradise: the High Tatras and, in its western continuation, the Liptó Mountains majestically spread out before your eyes. Kláštorisko was an important spot of nature walking in the early 20th century on the karst: in 1893 the first recorded hike of Eperjes (Prešov) tourists led here, and in 1896 the first marked hiking trail was established. Moreover, the first proper mountain hut in the Slovak Paradise was built here in 1922 by the Carpathian Association (Karpathenverein), later named after its chairman, Béla Hajts, the mapper of the Hernád breakthrough. A winter-habitable shelter was later also set up on the clearing.

Starting to descend from the 800 m high plateau on the Z trail, it is worth walking among the well-excavated, large monastery ruin walls. In 1241, Count Jordán led the population of the surrounding villages to the then uninhabited plateau to escape the Tatar armies arriving at Szepesség. He calculated well, as the Tatars did not even attempt to take this naturally “fortified castle” surrounded by impassable gorge systems and rocky cliffs (and swampy terrain of the Hernád to the northwest). It gained its Latin name Lapis refugii (Refuge Stone), as it provided shelter for three years to Szepesség inhabitants. To show gratitude, they built a chapel here, later in the century the Carthusian monks received the territory as a donation. By 1307 they had built their monastery (some say equipped with central heating), which survived several attacks but held by Hussites and robber knights. Finally, it was abandoned in 1543, and after learning from robber leaders, imperial troops destroyed the complex at the Szepesség leaders’ request.

Since the 1980s, after passing through the beautifully excavated, extensive ruins, we have only to follow the Z trail descending pleasantly through the forest back to Podlesok. The wind-ripped pines are crossed by a wide access road turning later into an atmospheric path after the single fork. The hiking trail involves no difficulties, and on rocky sections, a few chains or rails provide handholds on surfaces that become slippery in rain. We cross a small terrain stairway equipped with metal trays and also two small stream valleys. Short climbs lead out of these, and at the end of the second, we arrive at the Podlesok children’s camp (this is the cheapest accommodation option of the Turistický raj). From here, the already known route leads back to the restaurants, parking lots, and bus stop on the K and then the P trail along asphalt.