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Published: March 10th 2010
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Yes, the snow HAD melted...
...this isn't what it seems. It's all slush and icy stuff. So... lets enjoy winter before it goes and try something new, I thought, and borrowed a pair of waterproof trousers from one of my extreme sports-loving flatmates and hopped on the rychlík to Otrokovice while Jitka arranged to borrow some jackets from her parents and book some equipment from a ski rental place. After the previous weekend seeing hordes of people cross-country skiing on Praděd, we decided that this weekend we would go have some fun in the snow before it went. For me this would also be a completely new experience, having never touched a pair of skis before in my life.
As I arrived in Zlín, the sun was out and the temperature finally seemed to be peeking above freezing. The next morning, when we planned to take the skis and go, we looked out of the window and it was all melting into slush before our eyes. Thus we cancelled our skiing plans, as teaching someone to cross-country ski on slush isn't too easy, apparently. So instead we headed for the church Hostýn in on the western edge of the Moravian-Silesian Beskids, for a bit of a trek, hoping to end up back in the Zlín metropolitan
area after walking around 15 kilometers.
This church is the site of an annual pilgrimage for any devout catholics remaining in the Czech Republic (of whom there aren't a great deal), at the exact time of year we went to visit it. However we were a few days early, and this coupled with the horrendous winds which tormented us meant the site was quite empty. The only people around were some seriously hardcore cross country skiers trying to get one last trip in before the snow melts, and one poor guy behind a stall from which we felt we would be cruel people not to buy anything.
As we scaled down the hill, the wind subsided, but the paths thinned out and the snow deepened. Hiking in winter can be seriously perilous if you're not wearing the right boots, and mine are fine for hiking in summer but not in feet of snow, which have to be treated like quicksand, because as soon as you sink too deep into it it's game over. We were fine until about 1km before our first stopping point, a village whose name now eludes me, where we saw an old man with
a scraggly gun dog abandon the path and walk directly across a snowy field. Had we followed him, we would have been fine, but the "path" (which was barely visible anymore) turned into about 10 inches of snow and our feet sunk too deep.
We spent the last 20 minutes slushing around with snow in our shoes and I additionally tried to imagine I was on the Brno death march, to make myself feel a slight bit warmer and give the actual situation some exaggerated perspective. When we finally arrived at the village pub, we threw our shoes next to the fire and sat drinking for two hours before the 4-times-per-day bus service to nearby Hlinsko pod Hostýnem from where we found our way back to Zlín. We fell straight to sleep as soon as we got in. As we woke up, the sun was setting and even more snow had melted.
Cross country skiing next January then!
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