This is the first of a series of posts about our 2026 vacation in the Tatras (Tatry), see Hiking vacation in the Tatra Mountains for an overview.

On arrival day, we got to our holiday home at around 17:30, with pleasant weather and still about three hours of evening sun left. So, since we had spent most of the day sitting in trains, we took the opportunity for a quick first hike: to the top of Nosal (literally “nose” / “Nase”, situated at 1,300m of evelation) and back. It was just 1.5km to the peak of Nosal, so we expected that we would be back after about an hour, depending on how many photo breaks we took. This assumption would turn out to be pretty optimistic: those 1.5km feature a 750m segment with 250m of ascent, which is definitely not something that we could just shrug off at our typical walking speed of 5 to 6 km/h.

We left at around 18:30 and headed to the nearest TPN entrance, which was no longer staffed due to the late hour. From this point on, we already got a taste of what the Tatras had to offer: the entire trail was pretty steep and it also featured a small (and easy) climbing segment early on, which we had not experienced in Krkonoše (Giant Mountains). It also already offered some nice views down onto eastern Zakopane, Rów Podtatrzański (Sub-Tatra trench / Untertatragraben) in which it is located, Pogórze Spisko-Gubałowskie (Zips-Gubałówka-Vorgebirge / Spisko-Gubałowskie highlands) on the northern side of Zakopane, and towards one of the local tourist attractions: Wielki Giewont (1,894 m) (Großer Giewont / Great Giewont).

The trail remained steep and uneven, and we also took plenty of photo breaks before reaching the peak at around 19:30. From there, we had a good outlook over the Western Tatras, and all the trails and ridge lines that we would be traversing over the next week. In the photos below, the clouds are touching the ridge line – luckily, on the days where we hiked across it, we had either clear skies or a much higher cloud cover. We could also see Kuźnice, which would be our entrance into and/or exit from the national park on several days – and the cable car, which we would end up taking on our most ambitious hike during the vacation, going all the way from Morskie Oko to Kasprowy Wierch while passing Świnica and getting a glimpse of Orla Perć along the way. But that's something for a future blog post.

We left the national park at around 20:30, which was a tad later than planned: we had not had dinner yet, and most restaurants in Zakopane (and especially the few in our vicinity) close at 21:00 or 22:00. Luckily, Karczma Przy Mlynie was both close to our home and open until 22:00, so we could enjoy some Pierogi and beer to round off the day. Plus, the sunset offered some nice photo opportunities.

More photos are available at lib.finalrewind.org/Nosal 2026.