We spent the winter holidays in Zakopane skiing. However, it was nice to have a day off. So we came up with the idea of going to Zakopane, to ride with the kids up to Gubałówka hill.
Gubałówka is an oblong hill with a height of 1126 m a.s.l. on the north-west side of Zakopane. You can ride to the top using a railway built in 1938. It covers a height difference of 300m over a 1.3km stretch. This saves us from climbing, which is quite convenient with three small children. The railway is an attraction in itself — kids can enjoy the view from the train and the view of the Tatra Mountains. They don’t know how much beauty there is – they’ll appreciate that when they grow up a bit. For now, any attempt to take a trail uphill ended in a tantrum.
In the middle of the route, an exchange of two carriages takes place – one goes from the top, the second from the bottom. We saw a similar solution during the previous year’s visit to Hrebienok in Slovakia.
At the top of the mountain, there’s an outdoor viewpoint and several restaurants – one big marketplace. It’s a bit off-putting, because it looks as if people come there just to buy things. Similarly, at the bottom, before getting to the funicular, under the bridge there was a huge market. We did not like it, but since there was apparently official acquiescence, we had to accept it.
Gubałówka is very similar to Hrebienok hill mentioned above. Although here there aren’t as many attractions as in Slovakia. At the bottom station there was only one shop; at the top, just a hostel – with no massive trade stalls. A cool attraction there was the option of sledding downhill from the top on a special toboggan trail. We’ve had a lot of fun there. We loved it so much that we returned to slide twice. On Gubałówka, unfortunately, it is not possible to return to the lower station by either skis or sleds, due to issues regarding land ownership. No comment.
At the top, you can use several private ski lifts and a snow park, but surprisingly it was closed. The temperature on that day was -10 ° C. The girls really wanted ‘tails’ on their ski helmets, so we bought them.
We tried ‘apples,’ better known as ‘butt slides’. For some reason, the kids liked this name a lot. There was an opportunity to do that on a tiny hill at the top station of the cable train.
It was very fun, watch: