Połonina Wetlińska is undoubtedly one of the symbols and showcases of the Bieszczady Mountains, the easternmost mountains in Poland. Strictly speaking, it is a mountain massif stretching for nearly 8 kilometers in length. Its highest peak is Roh (1,255 m a.s.l.), and its further continuation is Smerek (1,222 m a.s.l.). It is one of the most beautiful Bieszczady mountain pastures (połoninas), captivating with vast spaces, charming panoramas, and vibrant nature. The place is also known for the once-cult tourist shelter (and today a rest shelter) – Chatka Puchatka, located on the eastern edge of Wetlińska. The facility can be accessed in three ways: via the yellow trail from the Wyżna Pass (the easiest variant), the red trail from Brzegi, and the black trail from upper Wetlina (the most difficult variant). However, if you want to enter the mountain pasture from the west, you should take the yellow trail from the center of Wetlina.
In this post, I will describe an extended variant of the trip to Połonina Wetlińska. Starting from Wetlina, we will climb the nearby Dział, walk a few kilometers along the green trail, descend from Dział to the Wyżna Pass, and set off from there to Połonina Wetlińska. We will visit the Chatka Puchatka shelter, walk along the red ridge trail, and conquer the Smerek peak. From the Orłowicz Pass, we will return to the center of Wetlina via the yellow trail. I will precede the post with a short cycling introduction, because it just so happens that we reached Wetlina on two wheels :D. I cordially invite you to read!
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- From Kraków to Wetlina on two wheels
- Trekking through Dział via the green trail
- Wyżna Pass (872 m a.s.l.)
- Chatka Puchatka and Hasiakowa Skała (1,231 m a.s.l.)
- A walk through Połonina Wetlińska
- How was Połonina Wetlińska formed?
- The trail to Smerek (1,222 m a.s.l.) from the Orłowicz Pass
- Return to Wetlina
- Tour map
- Bibliography
From Kraków to Wetlina on two wheels
For many, many years, the Bieszczady Mountains were a kind of stain on my mountain honor. I had hiked dozens of ranges, conquered hundreds of peaks, and yet… I hadn’t seen the “Biesy” (Bieszczady). Either it was too far, or there was a lack of time… and so it was postponed indefinitely! The situation changed only in June 2025, when, taking advantage of a long weekend, Jaromir and I decided to cycle to the Bieszczady Mountains (and casually hit a few major trails along the way).
Taking advantage of the long June days, we leave Kraków on Wednesday after work, covering the first 70 kilometers of the distance. The first section is quite simple – relatively flat and with a good tailwind. Even before dusk, we reach the village of Sufczyn in the Brzesko county. Why there exactly? Well, because in Sufczyn there is quite a good and comfortable accommodation – in a small hotel by the national road.
The second day takes a heavy toll – almost 150 kilometers in the saddle through the hilly terrains of the Ciężkowice Foothills and the Low Beskids (Beskid Niski). The last city (and at the same time a larger town) on our route is Gorlice. Later, we ride mostly through poorly urbanized areas, among green hills and single, rural shrines. Covering the section takes us 8 hours, which consists of 6 hours of pure riding and 2 hours of breaks for carb reloading. The elevation gain reaches up to 1,860 meters, so when we finally reach our destination – the Leśna Willa PTTK in Komańcza – my legs are burning mercilessly. However, the satisfaction is great. The trip was both sightseeing-interesting and constituted a very strong fitness challenge (especially for me – a person who currently no longer trains cycling on a daily basis).
We land back in the saddle on the third day, a few minutes past 8 AM. Today we have a 50-kilometer section to cover – from Komańcza to Wetlina. All the time we will be riding along the provincial road No. 897 – through Nowy Łupków, Cisna, and Smerek. The section requires overcoming 670 meters of elevation difference, and the most difficult accent is the 150-meter climb to the Przysłup pass (749 m a.s.l.) with the nice “Szczerbanówka” observation tower. While the described stage is very visually attractive from the beginning, after passing Cisna it becomes downright stunning. A few kilometers before Wetlina, among vast green meadows, a charming panorama of Smerek opens up. What can I say, it is divine… It is in such moments that one appreciates life, health, and loved ones the most…
Around 11 AM we arrive at our accommodation for today – the Youth Hostel (Szkolne Schronisko Młodzieżowe) in Wetlina. We do a quick repacking, find a safe place for our bikes and… hit the road! It’s time to start the second, trekking part of our Bieszczady trip!
Trekking through Dział via the green trail
We leave the Youth Hostel (630 m a.s.l.) a few minutes before 12 PM. For the first 2.5 kilometers, we walk among the buildings of Wetlina – on the sidewalk along the provincial road No. 897. Then we turn right – onto the green trail. At the ticket office, we buy tickets to the Bieszczady National Park (in 2025: reduced 5 PLN, regular 10 PLN) and begin the actual hike. It is idyllic from the very beginning – we walk through a very dense and intensely green forest. The approach is not particularly demanding – over a distance of two kilometers, we gain 300 meters of elevation difference. The situation is made easier by the fact that in the steepest places, the trail has been arranged in the form of… comfortable, wooden stairs. This is somewhat surprising, as the route is rather not one of the most popular in the Bieszczady Mountains.
Half an hour from leaving the ticket office, we reach my first Bieszczady ridge – Dział. Hiking in this place is an extremely pleasant experience. It is idyllic, green, and quite deserted (despite the long June weekend being in full swing). A narrow path now leads us – alternately – through a series of vast, densely overgrown bilberry clearings and through areas of higher vegetation (and, interestingly, deciduous vegetation, because there is no upper montane zone in the Bieszczady Mountains). The ridge offers nice views of the nearby peaks. Most often it is a view to the south – to the completely forested border range. Here and there, a panorama to the north is also revealed – to Połonina Wetlińska and the inconspicuous buildings of Wetlina. In the further part of Dział, a view to the east opens up – to the nearby Rawki.
After about an hour of hiking along Dział, right after descending from the not very prominent peak of Dił Szelesisty (1,137 m a.s.l.), we reach a crossroads. The green trail continues along the ridge and leads to Rawki. We, however, turn left – onto the yellow trail, leading down to the Wyżna Pass.
The descent involves a 250-meter drop in elevation over two kilometers, so let’s agree – it is not among the steepest. The trail follows a wide forest artery and allows reaching the pass in less than half an hour. In the final parts of the sections, there are considerable clearings and good views of the nearby Połonina Caryńska.
Wyżna Pass (872 m a.s.l.)
Unlike Dział, the Wyżna Pass (872 m a.s.l.) is undoubtedly one of the most crowded places in the Bieszczady Mountains. The provincial road No. 897, already familiar to us, runs through here, and in addition, a large (and of course paid) parking lot is located here.
The yellow trail from the Wyżna Pass is the shortest and fastest way to get to Połonina Wetlińska. From the parking lot level, you can perfectly see both the majestic ridge and the Chatka Puchatka located on it. As we cross the road, Jaromir reminds me that no later than tomorrow, we will be forced to ride our bikes up this quite high pass. I react to this only with a gloomy grunt :D.
The yellow trail from the Wyżna Pass is the so-called “Końska Droga” (Horse Road) – a wide dirt road, used to supply the Chatka Puchatka shelter. The section requires overcoming 360 meters of elevation difference over a distance of 2.5 kilometers, making it quite steep. Up to an altitude of approx. 1,100 m a.s.l., the route leads through a dense beech forest. Later, the high vegetation disappears, and the trail leads through a charming, green mountain pasture. Did you notice? Another example of the fact that there is no spruce upper montane zone in the Bieszczady Mountains, which is typical for the Tatras and western Beskids.
During our trip, a countless crowd of people traverses the trail. Because the crowd slightly overwhelms us, we instinctively quicken our pace. We reach the mountain pasture in 25 minutes after leaving the pass, and the Chatka Puchatka shelter – in less than 35. As it turned out later, quite accidentally we placed second and fourth in the trekking ranking of this section on Strava. Wow, so crowds can sometimes be quite motivating after all :D.
Chatka Puchatka and Hasiakowa Skała (1,231 m a.s.l.)
Chatka Puchatka is located on the eastern edge of Połonina Wetlińska, at an altitude of 1,228 m a.s.l. The facility was built by the military in the 1950s for observation purposes. In 1957, the building was taken over by PTTK and arranged as a tourist shelter. Not so long ago, Chatka Puchatka was famous for its Spartan conditions – lack of running water, lack of electricity, supply by a donkey. I admittedly haven’t experienced this, but I heard that “it created an atmosphere” and gave a feeling of being somewhere very far away, beyond familiar civilization.
In 2015, a long-standing legal dispute over the ownership of the facility between PTTK and the Bieszczady National Park ended. Since the latter was granted the right, the building was renamed from “PTTK shelter” to “BdPN tourist shelter”. Another breakthrough date in the history of the facility was 2022. A general renovation of the building was carried out then, completely changing its original character. Currently, the tourist shelter serves as a resting place, the headquarters of the national park guards, and the GOPR (Mountain Volunteer Search and Rescue) duty station. Since 2023, the facility no longer provides accommodation services, and in the buffet you can only order coffee and tea… Nice, these modern shelters, right? You won’t eat, nor will you get a good night’s sleep…
Just above the shelter is the peak of Hasiakowa Skała (1,231 m a.s.l.) with an observation deck. The panorama is indeed beautiful, but the terrifying amount of people prompts us to quickly move on to the next stage of our trip. Interestingly, the further part of the Połonina Wetlińska ridge is already much less crowded. It’s as if the majority of tourists walked exclusively to Chatka Puchatka, without hitting what is most beautiful in all this.
A walk through Połonina Wetlińska
From Chatka Puchatka we take the red trail, a fragment of the Main Beskid Trail (Główny Szlak Beskidzki). The two highest culminations of Połonina Wetlińska are Roh (1,255 m a.s.l.) and Osadzki Wierch (1,253 m a.s.l.). Both peaks are separated by the shallow Srebrzysta pass (1,215 m a.s.l.). The red trail is routed in such a way that from the south it traverses the small ridge of Roh, then passes through the aforementioned pass and leads to the top of Osadzki Wierch with a small rock outcrop.
Traversing Połonina Wetlińska has something majestic, almost magical about it. So I walk among the green meadows, savor the landscape, absorb the surroundings with my whole being. It doesn’t surprise me at all that this place has become the inspiration for so many engravings, poems, or beautiful photographs. Additionally – perhaps it’s a matter of the already late afternoon, but there are really few people. The section from the Chatka Puchatka shelter to Osadzki Wierch is 2.2 kilometers long and requires overcoming 50 meters of elevation difference. So it could be done in a jiffy, but we’ve already run around a lot today. So we walk slowly, sit in the grass, don’t rush.
Osadzki Wierch offers a perfect panorama in all directions. You can perfectly see Połonina Caryńska, the Tarnica and Halicz massif, Mała and Wielka Rawka, the border range, and countless other Bieszczady peaks: on the Polish, Slovak, and Ukrainian sides of the border.
Jaromir, although he had been here several times before, is delighted along with me, and from time to time shakes his head in disbelief, repeating something like “it’s amazing that there is so much of nothing here“. And the boy is right, because the panorama from Połonina Wetlińska is almost exclusively a view of dense forests. There are practically no human settlements here – the population density in the Cisna municipality is barely 6 people per km² with a simultaneous forestation rate of 87%. However, you must know that it hasn’t always been this way. Before World War II, the population here was four times higher, and agricultural land constituted an important part of spatial development. The inhabitants of these lands were the Boykos, who after 1944 were considered Ukrainians and deported beyond the eastern border. Currently, only ruins of villages and old cemeteries remain after the old tenants. During this trip, we focus rather on trekkings to the most popular places and on the cycling aspect. I hope, however, that someday I will go on an expedition here again – this time exploring less known massifs and looking for the ruins of former villages.
How was Połonina Wetlińska formed?
Walking along the ridge of Połonina Wetlińska, I am absorbed by one more issue. Well, how did this all come about? Why does a dense forest grow at this altitude in other parts of the Beskids, and here a subalpine zone has developed? A seemingly trivial question, but contrary to appearances, it is not so easy to find an answer to it. Researchers are rather concerned with the issue of human impact on the expansion of the volume of mountain pastures, and less with the natural factors that led to their original formation. However, it should be assumed that the low subalpine zone was created due to a specific climate, different from the one prevailing in the western part of the Beskids. Following Rewasz, I state that dry and warm winds, very unfriendly to the development of the cold-loving, high-mountain spruce, rush into the Bieszczady Mountains from the Hungarian Puszta. So it seems that the solution to the riddle of the low alpine meadows is simple – there are no spruces here, and beeches won’t climb that high. So the terrain remained treeless ;).
And how was it with this expansion? Well, according to current scientific knowledge, the Bieszczady mountain pastures originally started at an altitude of approx. 1,200 m a.s.l. The line was lowered as a result of centuries-old, regular grazing, the beginnings of which date back to the 15th century. This thesis is confirmed, for example, by the widespread occurrence of bilberry on the mountain pastures – a typical forest plant. Even better proof is that currently, when the pastoral culture has disappeared, the forest… is starting to reclaim its old territories. Połonina Wetlińska is becoming overgrown, and naturalists from the Bieszczady National Park are trying to remedy this as much as they can.
Forgive the lengthy digression, but I like such topics :D. I think it is worth hiking consciously, knowing the local natural and cultural curiosities. But let’s return to the trail now, there are still quite a few kilometers to walk!
The trail to Smerek (1,222 m a.s.l.) from the Orłowicz Pass
After descending from Osadzki Wierch, we walk for a little over a kilometer through the vast mountain pasture. The surroundings are still fairy-tale-like: wherever you look, there is a mosaic woven from various shades of green and the blue of the sky. As we lose altitude, the views change slightly – behind our backs an interesting perspective on Połonina Wetlińska opens up, in front of us – on Smerek. We enter the sparse forest for just over a dozen minutes, to check in at the well-known Mieczysław Orłowicz Pass (1,099 m a.s.l.) after about 3 kilometers from Osadzki Wierch.
Mieczysław Orłowicz was one of the pioneers of the Polish tourist movement and the author of the first post-war guide to the Bieszczady Mountains (1954). From the pass named in his honor, the yellow trail departs in both directions. To the north to Suche Rzeki and further on, to the village of Zatwarnica; to the south – to the center of Wetlina.
The approach from the Orłowicz Pass to Smerek (1,222 m a.s.l.) is short and pleasant – 1.2 kilometers of distance with only 100 meters of elevation difference. A gentle, wide path leads through a vast mountain pasture, the northwestern continuation of Połonina Wetlińska. At the highest point accessible to tourists, serving as a viewing platform (approx. 1,200 m a.s.l.), there is a metal cross, erected here in honor of a wanderer struck by lightning. The main culmination of Smerek lies off the trail, protected due to a unique rock crevasse.
Smerek is a fantastic viewpoint for the entire area. However, what is close is particularly beautifully visible – Połonina Wetlińska and the vast border range. We have the opportunity to explore the peak quite late, because it is well past 5 PM. There are no crowds anymore – it is calm, idyllic, pleasant…
Return to Wetlina
From Smerek we descend back to the Mieczysław Orłowicz Pass. Here we turn south – onto the yellow trail, leading to Wetlina. Over the next 4 kilometers, we lose 470 meters of elevation. In the upper parts, the descent is quite steep, but the lower we get, the gentler the slope becomes.
We descend to Wetlina a little after 6 PM. We eat a well-deserved, high-calorie dinner and return to our accommodation place – the Youth Hostel. To say that today’s trekking in the Bieszczady Mountains was beautiful is actually to say nothing. Both Dział and Połonina Wetlińska made a stunning first impression on me. I can’t wait for tomorrow’s trip to Halicz and the famous Tarnica. Before that happens, however, we will actually have to ride our bikes up this unfortunate Wyżna Pass…
Date of the trip: June 20, 2025
Trip statistics: 25 km; 1,110 meters of elevation gain
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Tour map
Bibliography
- Bieszczady. Przewodnik dla prawdziwego turysty, wydawnictwo Rewasz, Pruszków 2024
- Kucharczyk S., Augustyn M., Górna granica lasu na terenie wsi Ustrzyki Górne i Wołosate w końcu XVIII wieku [w:] Roczniki Bieszczadzkie 2012 (20) str. 15-27.
