Value for money
With its excellent choice of resorts in the area including those in the Czech Republic we offer a skiing holiday for all grades of skiers and snow boarders. The prices fro ski rental and passes also make it the most excellent value for money in Europe. For those thinking of starting to Ski equipment and lessons are about one quarter the price of comparible services in the Alps. This makes it a superb place for beginners to find their feet before taking a break in a more challenging environment.
Skiing in the region
Long slopes of different land configuration, the snow covering the ground for over 100 days during a year, as well as numerous ski lifts and ski trails make the Karkonosze Range a very attractive area for winter sports enthusiasts. The main winter sports centers in the Karkonosze Range are Karpacz and Szklarska Poreba.
Karpacz (ca. 5,000 inhabitants) is a picturesquely situated town at the foot of Mt. Sniezka. About 17 km. from Jelenia Gora it is a tourist and winter sports center and a perfect spa in the Sudety mountains. Here are numerous restful pensions belonging to various institutions and organizations, hotels, private pensions of various standards, restaurants and cafes.
Worth seeing are the Sports and Tourism Museum of the Karkonosze region, an alpine garden, a unique, wooden church of the 13th century moved from Norway to Poland in the 19th century. Fine surroundings and the alpine landscape of the Karkonosze National Park encourage excursions to large post-glacial lakes, called the Great and Small Lakes, to Mt. Sniezka and Sowia Valley.
From December until March excellent weather conditions are favorable for skiing and sledding. The "white sports" enthusiast have at their disposal, a chair-lift (2,300 meters long) running to the Mala Kopa Mt. from which they can take a ski route. They can also utilize two other ski trails, "Liczyrzepa" and "Wilcza," leading to the starting point, or a ski trail, "Zlotowka," which leads down from the shelter "Strzecha Akademicka" to the starting point of the lift. In addition, one can use the whipple ski lifts, ski jumps, sledging routes and bobsleigh slide.
At the foot of Mt. Szrenica (1,382 m), facing the E14 international highway with the Polish-Czechoslovak frontier crossing is Szklarska Poreba (ca. 8,000 inhabitants,) a town situated in the eastern Karkonosze Range. It is the largest rest and tourist center of the area, well-known for winter sports.
Szklarska Poreba is surrounded by attractive terrains of the Karkonosze National Park and the picturesque postglacial Sniezne Kotly, covered with snow until late summer, the waterfalls of Mt. Kamienczyk and Mt. Szklarska, excellent shapes of granite rocks such as Konskie Lby, Kukulcze Skaly, and other sights. Excellent winter skiing grounds become even better due to the existence of a two-stage chairlift extending a distance of 3 km. as far as Mt. Szrenica and other ski-trails with varying levels of difficulty, such as "Lolobrigida," "Puchatek," the ski jump "Sniezynka" and others.