Frightening cable cars in the High Tatras Mountains, Slovakia

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(the article below accompanies this video)

When traveling sometimes you have one of those days that seems absolutely packed with activity both sublime and terrifying – today in the High Tatras mountains of northern Slovakia was like that for Masayo and I. We made it to the top of a huge snowy mountain peak to see the unbelievable views but then got trapped in a cable car that dangled precariously over a huge drop-off. Our schedule was destroyed, as was my blood sugar, and we felt lucky to make it to the town of Humenné where we’d booked a hotel room by late evening.

I wouldn’t trade the day in though; the good parts certainly made it a highlight even while the bad parts were very unnerving. I sure wish my blood sugar had been better though.

Everything began with a simple breakfast at 7:00 am in the kitchen of Penzión Oáza in the town of Levoča: cinnamon rolls and yogurt we bought yesterday, plus instant coffee. My BG unfortunately was 202 upon waking up. Guess I overdid the eating after my low 44 last night.

Then it was goodbye to the lovely guesthouse and the lovely town, and a walk down to the bus stop, the day full of promise. Seeing the vast blue and white High Tatras mountains has been a goal of mine ever since we concocted the basic idea for this months-long European winter trip. Not for skiing or snowboarding, just because I love mountain air and views.

Uncharacteristically, I wasn’t even too worried about the pricey cable cars.

It almost seemed like our day’s plans were ruined from the outset actually; we thought we’d missed our bus from Levoča to Tatranská Lomnica which would wreck everything. But we finally spotted the bus across the platform, five minutes late.

If you’re as fascinated by Slovakian station names as I am then you’ll love the rest of this article. Please appreciate the extra time it takes for me to type them in 😛

It was a foggy day as we went along winding little roads towards Tatranská Lomnica (pronounced roughly as “ta transka loam neat sa”). The weather forecast that morning had actually been for “FOG”. If the mist persisted there would be little point in going up into the mountains at all; it’s expensive and there would be no views. But you can’t give up until the end so we kept our hope alive.

The bus made a stop in the way in the town of Poprad (“pope rod”) and from the windows we finally started to see the majestic High Tatras mountains with our own eyes. Things may be foggy at street level but it looked like sun was hitting the taller peaks. As we pulled out of Poprad the sky even cleared up and soon we were looking at a heart-stoppingly exciting scene like something from a postcard: unbroken deep blue sky with craggy white snowy pinnacles reaching towards the stratosphere.

The travel gods seemed to be smiling on us.

In Tatranská Lomnica

The town of Tatranská Lomnica is in the foothills just at the base of the steeper mountains, and has a touristy and lodge-y vibe. One imagines that skiers and other snow-addicted visitors fill the restaurants and pricey little boutique hotels scattered under the trees.

Snow covered the ground as we walked from the bus station to the town tourist office nearby. It was staffed by a lady who was super friendly and almost boisterous in her enthusiasm. She also spoke decent English and explained the cable car system to us. She also let us keep our big bags in storage there.

There are basically three parts to getting to the very top: one cable car from Tatranská Lomnica to a hillside station called Štart (“shtart”) and another to Skalnaté Pleso (“skall na teh pleh so”); that’s the first ticket. Then if the weather seems acceptable you can buy a second ticket for the third section, all the way up to Lomnický Štít (“loam nits key shtit”) on the little rounded and ice-cold peak far above.

Got all that? We sort of did, kinda, but didn’t really care about the specifics. Just take us up, up, up! We hiked through the snowy town to the cable car station where tickets were €18 each and were leaving soon.

To Štart

The cable cars to Štart held four people but since there were so few tourists, they were letting couples ride alone in their own cars. Masayo and I did this, gawking at the views out over the flatter parts of Slovakia below and sensing a greater preponderance of white and blue all around us. On this leg I checked my BG and was a little annoyed that I was 236.

But not too annoyed – what a ride already! I decided not to take any insulin yet and wait for our next meal.

We changed in Štart to much larger and (according to the lady back at tourist info) newer cable cars; these held 12 people each but again they were letting couples take an entire car for themselves. The skies were still solid blue and sunny, the air was frozen, and more and more beautiful panoramas were revealing themselves all around our car.

In Skalnaté Pleso

Once we finally pulled into Skalnaté Pleso a few minutes later we immediately decided to buy tickets onward to the peak at Lomnický Štít. It’s the second-highest in the High Tatras at 2,634 meters and it didn’t come cheap: €26 each (about $32). But there was no way we’d say no and we paid without hesitation.

After the luxury of the 12-person cars this was a much tighter fit. This little single-line cable car had about 14 of us tourists stuffed inside plus one employee. The ride took ten minutes to wobble slowly up to the top.

And then we were on top of Slovakia.

The very top: Lomnický Štít

On the smallish peak of Lomnický Štít is a building plus an observatory. The building contains a little coffee shop (including lots of liquor bottles) and an open-air walkway outside offering heart-stopping walks above the sheer snowy valleys below. The sun shone very brightly and every surface of the metal walkway was covered in ice crystals. The wind cut through as if to offset any warmth offered by the sun.

Our cable car back down was scheduled in about 50 minutes’ time so Masayo and I had plenty of time to run around on the walkway, posing and taking photos and trying to capture the feeling of freedom and wildness you get looking out on an apparently endless scene of pure, young, rugged nature.

Then it was time for mundane human matters: coffee and apple pie and two soft seats inside the warm building. And, finally, a Humalog shot for me. It was a special snack, so high up in the sky in a place with such an electric buzz of excitement in the air.

The terror-filled descent

The high point of the mountain was literally and figuratively the high point of the day: like the steep slopes under us, the trip back down to civilization seemed to test our patience and my emotional fortitude. High up here is not a place you want to be stuck… or slowly going insane.

The cable car from Lomnický Štít back down to Skalnaté Pleso was packed again, and when we all got on the door closed and the gears turned, pulling us out of the station and dangling from the overhead cable.

But after about ten feet, we shuddered to a stop. And we just hung there, quiet and immobile except for the swaying winds around us and the shaking as various of us shifted our weight and coughed and murmured.

Five minutes passed. Ten. Fifteen. It didn’t look like we’d be moving at all. There wasn’t much wiggle room at all for any of us, and apparently no outside air. Just this sealed little rounded cube, people all around me shoulder to shoulder, about a foot away from my face. Masayo and I looked at one another. Nobody seemed to know what was happening.

After about half an hour I started to gain a deeper understanding of the anguish experienced by claustrophobics. The more I thought about the situation, the more I became jittery and genuinely unsettled. I thought I might flip out – thrashing and clawing for some opening from where I could jump. I imagined people trying to hold me down as I bruised their arms and legs and yelled. (It was probably fifty feet or more to the snowy slope under us; jumping would not be a good idea.)

Everyone else was speaking Slovakian and didn’t seem as worried as I did. Then again maybe I appeared outwardly calm and my growing torment was invisible. Perhaps others were panicking privately just like me. One guy right in front of me seemed to be the employee in charge, and every now and then he’d get a call on his cell phone. I couldn’t understand what he was saying but the gist of it seemed to be “You aren’t going to be moving yet”. (At one point I asked aloud if anyone spoke English; nobody replied.)

R.E.M. to the rescue

Before going totally crazy I realized I had to distract my mind from the situation. I turned to music: silently in my own brain I began playing the album Lifes Rich Pageant by R.E.M. on a mental jukebox. It’s an album I know backwards and forwards. I started going through each note of each song, in order, in an effort to take my mind off the fact that I was trapped in a tiny cable car high up in the Slovakian mountains.

The songs kept coming as we continued to dangle in space. “Begin The Begin”, “These Days”, “Fall On Me”, “Cuyahoga”… and then a development. During the fourth song, having been immobile for an hour, the car began to move.

But very slowly, tentatively, as if the technical glitch wasn’t entirely fixed. Would we stop again a few feet away? I kept playing the album in my head just in case.

We crept along slowly but steadily. My deranged private concert continued. “Hyena”, “Underneath The Bunker”, “The Flowers Of Guatemala”, “I Believe”, “What If We Give It Away?”, “Just A Touch”, “Swan Swan H”, and all the way to the album’s final track, “Superman”, which ended just as we staggered into Skalnaté Pleso.

The descent after we started moving took thirty minutes, though the route is short enough to see both stations at all times.

Back to safety and sanity

We had to go to a window to give our passes back and have our €2 deposits returned to us; at this window was a new sign saying that the cable car was out of service due to technical problems. No kidding.

Annoyed though I was, my thoughts turned to the group that had been behind us: as we got on the cable car at the top to come down a group had stepped off to begin their own 50 minutes on the peak. How would they get down? Helicopter rescue?

The hourly schedule had been abandoned and cable cars were rotating around constantly to take people back down to Štart and then to the town of Tatranská Lomnica. On the way I checked my BG – 308. Either that apple pie was much higher in carbs than I thought or the stress of that nightmarish cable car enlivened my dumb liver. I took a Humalog shot in the car to cover the glucose.

Many thanks to R.E.M. for getting me through the ordeal without screaming and smashing the windows in the little cube of death we’d found ourselves in.

Once in Tatranská Lomnica and out of harm’s way we took a look at the rest of the day: we’d missed our planned train out of the mountains and into flatter western Slovakia and the hotel I’d booked in the town of Humenné. We’d have to improvise something else.

After getting somehow lost in the tiny town we found the tourist office again and got our bags. The lady reported that there was a problem with the cable car; we nodded grimly. You don’t have to tell us.

I then noticed that I’d lost my hat somewhere, the warm one that Masayo had knitted for me. I think I left it on the bus from Levoča this morning. Sorry to see it go. Travel gods demand a sacrifice sometimes.

Back to the lowlands of Slovakia and Humenné

In fact the way to get out of the mountains turned out to be really awesome too: a cute little electric train to Starý Smokovec (“starry smoke oh vets”) station, then another to Poprad-Tatry station, where we first arrived a few days ago on the way from Bratislava.

We passed through touristy little villages with gradually lessening amounts of snow and once in the much more functional and dull station at Poprad we found a pizza restaurant. My BG here was 64, so I ate two slices and some honey cake before taking my Humalog.

The traveling wasn’t finished by a long shot yet: there is no train from Poprad to Humenné so we had to go past it to a place in southern Slovakia called Košice and then back/sidetrack. On the last leg I checked my BG once again: 90. The pizza and honey cake seemed to agree with me.

Humenné, our new home

We arrived at Humenné long after dark and walked under a full moon along an ugly highway to Hotel Alibaba, where I’d found a room on booking.com. We had no problem finding it: unlike a hidden, quaint little guesthouse, Hotel Alibaba is a big modern hotel with a great sign visible from far away.

It’s not like our usual place but the price had been significantly discounted on booking.com and it included a large buffet breakfast. We’ll be staying here for two nights.

We checked in and ate the food we’d bought back at the station in Košice, figuring we wouldn’t be in the mood to go hunt for anything in Humenné: cinnamon cereal with milk. Plus I had a beer from the minibar.

Evidently this extremely unhealthy dinner is just what my body wanted: afterwards I was 171 which seemed good to me for a before-bed reading.

After the excitement (good and bad) of the day, and the views (good and bad) that Slovakia had given us, it seemed somehow fitting that my diabetes had reacted with good and bad readings. All’s well that ends well: it’s always nice when you can cross something like romping around the snow-covered High Tatras mountains off your list.

And now we get to explore western Slovakia from our base in Humenné!

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