Photo: Jarosław Szczepaniak, CC BY-SA 3.0 
Photo: marek7400, CC BY 3.0
Main Sudetes Trail
Główny Szlak Sudecki
A red-waymarked trail along the Polish Sudetes, from the spa town of Świeradów-Zdrój in the Izera Mountains to Prudnik near the Czech border.
At a glance
- Starts in
- Świeradów-Zdrój
- Ends in
- Prudnik
- Length
- 429 km
- On foot
- ≈ 17–21 days
- Countries
Poland
About the trail
The Main Sudetes Trail is the western counterpart of the Main Beskid Trail and bears the name of Mieczysław Orłowicz, one of the founders of Polish mountain tourism. It follows the long chain of the Sudetes along the Czech border, linking spa towns, old mining settlements and mountain ranges that were for centuries part of Silesia and Bohemia.
From the Izera Mountains the trail climbs into the Karkonosze, then works east through the Table Mountains with their sandstone labyrinths, the Owl Mountains and the Śnieżnik massif before dropping to the gentler Opawskie hills around Prudnik. The highest ground is in the Karkonosze, where the trail follows the open main ridge above the tree line along the Czech border.
PTTK, which maintains the trail, gives a total of 428.7 km split into 48 sections, and awards a badge for completing it. There is no official figure for days; huts and guesthouses are frequent, and the trail is easy to split into weekend sections reached by train.
No source gives the days on foot, so they are worked out from the length at 20–25 km a day.