Rysy

Where is Rysy?

Rysy is part of the High Tatras.

You will find it in: Poland, Slovakia.

Summit: 49.179° N, 20.088° E

The story behind it

Rysy has three tops in a row, and only the north-western one touches Poland; the middle and highest top and the south-eastern top stand entirely in Slovakia. The numbers are a puzzle: Polish sources usually give 2 499 metres for the Polish top and 2 503 metres for the main one, while English-language sources often print 2500 and 2 501 metres, because the measurements come from different surveys and different height systems. That is why you will meet several figures for the same rock, and why the value used here, 2 500 metres, is only one of them. The name means scratches, after the long gullies that rake the slopes, and a folk story links it instead to lynxes, although lynxes do not live above the tree line. The first recorded summer ascent was in 1840 by Ede Blásy with the guide Ján Ruman-Driečny, and the first winter ascent followed in 1884. In 1899 the scientist Marie Skłodowska-Curie climbed Rysy with her husband, years before she won her first Nobel Prize. On the Slovak side stands the hut Chata pod Rysmi at about 2 250 metres, the highest mountain hut in Slovakia, where porters still carry food and fuel up on their backs.

Find it on the globe

Rysy is there as a small peak with its own shape — a horn, a ridge, a volcano — standing on the surface. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.

It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.