snowball (NS. Sněžka, not M. Schneekoppe) is a mountain peak in Giant Mountains on the Polish-Czech border.
Śnieżka rises to 1603.5 m above sea level. and is the highest peak of the Karkonosze and the whole Sudetes (also the highest mountain Of the Czech Republic). Its cone is covered with rock debris and is located over 200 m above Równia under Śnieżka and Czarna Kopa. Śnieżka has a harsh, high-mountain climate, with the temperature dropping below 0 ° C for a large part of the year.
Over the years, at the top of Śnieżka, several facilities were built for the service of tourist traffic, religious worship, as well as meteorological observations. Leopold von Schaffgotsch built the chapel of St. Lawrence, which he offered to the Cistercians. On August 10, St. Lawrence, the patron saint of guides. Masses are held in the chapel, sometimes in Polish, Czech and German. A characteristic object of the summit is the building of the Meteorological Observatory and the shelter.
There is a Polish shelter on Śnieżka, previously there was a German shelter here (Schneekoppe Baude, Preussische Baude, Deutsche Baude). The first object, which no longer exists, was built in 1850, the next one in 1858, the last one in 1862, which was demolished in the 1960s. Other objects on Śnieżka include:
- building of the former meteorological observatory (existing in the years 1900-1989),
- building of the High Mountain Observatory of the Institute of Meteorology and Water Management with a restaurant (characteristic "discs") from 1974.
The buildings on the side of the Czech border are:
- the building of the Czech hostel on Śnieżka (existing in the years 1868-2005, but closed to tourists already in the 1980s),
- the upper station of the cable car (with cabins for 4 people), put into operation on February 22, 2014, in place of the chairlift existing until 2012 from the town of Pec pod Sněžkou and with an unchanged capacity of 250 people per hour
- Czech post office kiosk; after the construction of a new building, it was demolished and moved to the campsite in Sedlec-Prčice (there it also serves as a post office and a shop)
- the new building of the Czech post office in the place of the demolished chalet, was opened in summer 2008, the highest postal point in the Czech Republic (it started operating in the Czech chalet in 1899, it was closed after the annexation of the Sudetenland by the Third Reich, reopened in 1995 thanks to the initiative of Jaroslava Skrbková, former postal workers from Wielka Upa).
In addition, on the south-western slope of the summit, there is a building of the former water pump station with a Pelton turbine, which operated in 1912-1956 to supply the shelters on Śnieżka with water. In 2001, an obelisk was unveiled on the Czech side of the summit, commemorating victims of a plane crash Junkers Ju 52 evacuating wounded soldiers from the besieged Wrocław, which crashed here in February 1945.
Śnieżka is an excellent vantage point, with good visibility from the top you can see a large part of the Sudetes, and the visibility can reach up to 200 km.
Śnieżka was one of the first European mountains visited by numerous tourists. This was mainly due to the relatively small technical difficulties of reaching the summit and the fact that from the 16th century numerous patients came to the nearby Cieplice Zdrój and the clearly visible Śnieżka, visually dominating the entire Karkonosze Mountains, was an important attraction for them. An important factor was also numerous, for those times, large shepherd's huts and a good network of trails leading to the very top, which was associated with a fairly large population in the foothills of the Karkonosze and the widespread grazing in the mountains themselves. Moreover, in 1563–1566 the first measurement of Śnieżka's height was made. Although the obtained result of 5,500 meters was fundamentally incorrect, it gave grounds for maintaining for a long time that it is one of the highest mountains in Europe. One of the first confirmed group ascents of Śnieżka took place on August 7, 1577, when a group of 12 townspeople from Trutnov. In 1677, the first Polish tourists, Michał Kazimierz Radziwiłł and Teodor Billewicz, climbed to the top. The latter left a description of this trip. When on August 10, 1681, at the top of Śnieżka, the Cistercian abbot from Krzeszów consecrated the chapel built from 1665 of local rock blocks, dedicated to one of the most venerated saints - St. Wawrzyniec, the tourist attractions of the summit also include pilgrimage values. For the first 100 years after the construction of the chapel, masses were held there 5 times during the summer season, and about 200 pilgrims came to the most solemn of them on August 10. In addition, the chapel served as a shelter in the event of frequent bad weather on Śnieżka. Therefore, as early as 1696, a book of entries for tourists and pilgrims was placed in the chapel. That year, the first woman climbed the mountain, Maria Adlerin, who had a successful childbirth eight days after climbing the mountain. In the last years of the 17th century, the first scientist to study its nature and mining history, Georg Anton Volkmann, author of Silesia subterranea from 1720, climbed Śnieżka several times in the book. in 1715 the summit was reached by an 83-year-old man. Already in the 18th century, tourists from distant parts of Europe were climbing the mountain: in 1792 the first Russian, in 1795 the first Spaniard, and in 1800 the American John Quincy Adams, the future president of the USA, who devoted not only an account, but also a poem published in 1804 (in the following in the years also published in French and German). In the second half of the 18th century, the pilgrimage traffic weakened and most of the entrances were of a tourist nature. The scale of this movement is indicated by the fact that during the season (May 17 - September 27) of 1786, 230 people were registered in the book at the top, in 1801 - 551 tourists, and in 1828 - 808 visitors. Due to the rapid increase in tourist traffic and the decline in the number of pilgrims, in 1824 the chapel was temporarily transformed into a tourist shelter. On July 23, 1873, the first illustrated postcard was sent from the summit of Śnieżka, in 1897 they were sent 12,000, and in 1900 the daily sale of postcards on Śnieżka was 1,500. who managed to climb this summit.
Tourist routes running through Śnieżka are:
- red tourist trail to the Okraj Pass (eastern direction) and Równia pod Śnieżką - the Polish-Czech Friendship Road
- black hiking trail to Karpacz through the Silesian Road
- blue tourist trail to the Okraj Pass via Skalny Table (eastern direction) and to Karpacz via Mały Staw (the peak of Śnieżka, however, the trail bypasses the Jubilee Road approx. 100 m below)
- yellow trail - Velká Úpa along the trail under the chairlift (Czech)