Kriváň (peak)

Geobox|Mountain
name = Kriváň
native_name =
other_name =
category =
etymology = "angled"
nickname =

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country = Slovakia
country_

state =
region = Prešov
district = Poprad
municipality =
range = High Tatras
location =
elevation = 2495
prominence =
lat_d = 49| lat_m = 10| lat_s = | lat_NS = N
long_d = 19| long_m = 60| long_s = | long_EW = E
coordinates_type =
geology = granite
orogeny =
period =
biome =
plant =
animal =
public =
access = hike from Štrbské Pleso
ascent = Andreas Jonas Czirbes, 1772 / 1773
free =


state =
region = Prešov
district = Poprad
municipality =
range = High Tatras
location =
elevation = 2495
prominence =
lat_d = 49| lat_m = 10| lat_s = | lat_NS = N
long_d = 19| long_m = 60| long_s = | long_EW = E
coordinates_type =
geology = granite
orogeny =
period =
biome =
plant =
animal =
public =
access = hike from Štrbské Pleso
ascent = Andreas Jonas Czirbes, 1772 / 1773
free =

---

map_caption = Location in Slovakia
map_background = Slovakia demis.png map_locator = Slovakia
map1 = Prešov Region - outline map.svg
map1_caption = Location in the Prešov Region
map1_background = Prešov Region - background map.png map1_locator = Prešov Region
website =
footnotes =

Kriváň (Audio|Sk-Krivan.ogg|pronunciation) is a mountain in the High Tatras, Slovakia, that dominates the upper part of the former Liptov County. Multiple surveys among nature lovers have ranked it as the country's most beautiful peak. Readily accessible along maintained marked trails and with the exceptional vistas afforded from its summit, it is the hikers' favorite mountain in the western part of the High Tatras. Kriváň has also been a major symbol in Slovak ethnic and national activism for the past two centuries. It has been referenced in works of art from 19th-century literature, through paintings, film documentaries, to a Polish rock track. A country-wide vote in 2005 selected it to be one of the images on Slovakia's euro coins.

Name

The name Kriváň, first recorded as "Kriwan" in 1639, is derived from the root "kriv-" meaning "bent" or "crooked" (the words do not have the secondary negative meanings of their English equivalents). It reflects the angled appearance of its shape when viewed from the west and south, characterized in the work from 1639 as an "oxtail" ("cauda bubula" in the Latin original). [David Frölich, "Medulla Geographiae Practicae, Peregrinantium inprimis usui, deinde Historiarum & rerum hoc tempore bellicosissimo gestarum..." 1639; referenced in several works including: Ivan Bohuš, Alojz Lutonský and Ján Olejník, "Kriváň." 1968.] The Slovak name is used in other languages including in Polish, rather than its potential Polonized version ("Krzywań"), except occasionally in Podhale in the immediate vicinity of the Tatras.

Two adjacent peaks in the nearby Malá Fatra range carry the same name, and so does the village of Kriváň farther away in southern Slovakia.

History

Elevation

Based merely on visual observation, Kriváň competed for the status of the highest mountain in the High Tatras with Lomnický štít, which dominates the view from the east, until 1793 when the latter one was accurately identified as the higher of the two (but wrongly as the highest peak in the mountain range, an error corrected by Ludwig Greiner in 1837):

[Kriváň] is generally said to be the highest of all the Alps in the Carpathian chain; but this opinion is not supposed to be founded upon any measurement.Robert Townson, "Travels in Hungary, with a short account of Vienna in the year 1793." 1797.]

The relative elevations of the two mountains were determined by the Scottish physician Robert Townson, who ascended both peaks in August 1793 and also made an early recorded comment on Kriváň's aesthetic appeal:

The weather was very fine, and the Krivan, having got in the night a cap of snow, looked sublime. [...] 1888 yards above the village of Vasetz [Važec] ; the Krivan is therefore something lower than the Lomnitz Peak [Lomnický štít] .

The exact elevation of Kriváň is currently recognized as 2,494.7 m (8,184.7 ft.) [Ivan Bohuš, "Mení sa výška štítov?" "Tatry", 2007.]

Ascents

Before 1800

Records of explorations by miners in the Kriváň massif date to the first half of the 15th century. Their presence increased during the gold rush of the 16th century. Although they may not have been the first to do so, it is probable that some of the miners reached the top of Kriváň − remnants of their shacks have survived below Priehyba Ridge at the elevation of about 2,000 m (6,560 ft.) through the present, and the highest, long abandoned, Terézia Shaft is merely about 60 m (200 ft.) below the summit. The commercial exploitation of the meager deposits discovered at Kriváň proved to be barely viable. It was abandoned in the 18th century.Ivan Houdek, "Osudy Vysokých Tatier; dejinný náčrtok so zvláštnym zreteľom na Kriváň." 1936.]

The Scottish doctor Townson who ascended it in 1793 provided some evidence that Kriváň was already a recognized occasional destination for tourists in the second half of the 18th century. His guide from Važec had been to the top several times before and Townson saw him collect small coins from under a summit stone where hikers would leave them for luck. The first recorded ascent of Kriváň was by the Lutheran Pastor Andreas Jonas Czirbes from Spišská Nová Ves on 4 August 1773. [Several sources give the year as 1772, more say 1773 including: Szilárd Schermann, "Szögescipők nyomai a Kárpátok bércein." 1937.]

Celebrities

The first celebrity to ascend Kriváň was to be the 30-year-old Habsburg Archduke Joseph in 1806, but the plan was abandoned due to inclement weather although parts of the winding road to the old gold mine high on the slopes had already been improved and a campsite built. The first VIP actually to reach the summit was the 43-year-old King Frederick Augustus II of Saxony in 1840. The plaque placed at the top to commemorate the first monarch who stood there was gradually destroyed by activists in the 1850s-1860s, who would have wished the inscription to include a comment in Slovak and who objected to where the inscription spoke of the Hungarian (ethnic) nation in reference to all the subjects of the Kingdom of Hungary.

Lower nobleman Gašpar Fejérpataky Belopotocký, an influential publisher based at Liptovský Mikuláš merely 20 miles from Kriváň, and his six friends climbed to the top of Kriváň on 24 Sept. 1835, which he described in the literary journal "Hronka" in 1837. The account may have stimulated its readers who lived farther away to follow their steps. [Branislav Choma, "Hornoliptovský panteón: Na 650. výročie prvej písomnej zmienky o hrádockom hrade z roku 1341." 1993.]

The ascent that became most memorable in Slovak culture was by Ľudovít Štúr, then a 25-year old teaching assistant of Slovak at the Bratislava Lutheran "Lýceum" (a preparatory high school and college). In the summer of 1841 he traveled through the Slovak counties with his private Greek student Prince Aristarchos and stopped at Michal Miloslav Hodža's parish at Liptovský Mikuláš, whose younger brother Juraj was Štúr's student at the lýceum. [Zdenka Sojková, "Knížka o životě Ľudovíta Štúra." 2005.] Štúr and a group of locals, Fejérpataky Belopotocký among them, hiked to the top of Kriváň on 16 August, its first recorded ascent that included women.

National excursions

A similar hike, without Štúr, took place the following year, and then sporadically later. Their organizers called them "national excursions" with increasing frequency. They were constituted as an annual late-August event by the authorities at Poprad in 1955 in order to commemorate the anniversary of the uprising of 1944. [Witold Henryk Paryski, "Krywań, narodowa góra Słowaków." "Wierchy", 1956.] The attendance reached 480 people in 1981.Zofia Paryska and Witold H. Paryski, "Wielka Encyklopedia Tatrzańska." 2004.] They have continued with a broader national designation through the present. The National Ascent of Kriváň ("Národný výstup na Kriváň") is an annual two-day event on the third weekend in August organized by the Slovak Tourist Club, Matica slovenská, and the towns of Vysoké Tatry and Liptovský Mikuláš. The number of persons allowed to ascend the summit on each of the event days is limited to 300. [Ján Kamien, [http://www.kst.sk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=219&Itemid=65 "Vyhodnotenie Národného výstupu na Kriváň," (2007). "KST - Slovak Tourist Club."] ]

Access

The three marked hiking routes to Kriváň start at different locations, but all ultimately converge at the elevation of about 2,145 m (7,035 ft.) for the final ca. 350-meter (1,150-foot) steep, rocky ascent to the summit − the only segment where both hands may be needed to maintain balance in places.
*The trailhead of the blue-marked trail is on the road between Štrbské Pleso and Pribylina, the color stays the same to the summit; elevation gain ca. 1,300 m (4,265 ft.).
*The green-marked trailhead is on the same road closer to Pribylina at Tri Studničky, the green trail links with the blue trail below the summit; elevation gain ca. 1,360 m (4,460 ft.).
*Hikers starting from Štrbské Pleso follow the red-marked trail towards Podbanské only to its intersection with the blue-marked trail at Jamské pleso from where they follow the blue trail to the summit; elevation gain ca. 1,150 m (3,770 ft.). [Július Andráši and Arno Andráši, "Tatranské vrcholy: Vysokohorský sprievodca." 1973.]

The historical winding road built by miners for horse-drawn ore carts and used by hikers in the past, including the participants of the revered 1841 excursion, is between the green and blue trails and links up with the green trail above the timberline below Priehyba Ridge. [It is shown with a dash-dotted line on this
http://www.vysoke-tatry.sk/mapy/krivan/krivan.html "Kriváň, mapa." "vysoke-tatry.sk"] ] The road is not marked, the Tatra National Park management decreed it off limits. It is partly obscured by shrubby mountain pines at higher elevations.

Kriváň has been favored by those appreciative of its aesthetic and historical allure, as well as by those who seek vistas from the top. Polls of nature lovers at large as well as of connoisseurs have consistently rated it as Slovakia's most beautiful mountain. [Zuzana Kollárová, "Prvenstvo patrí Kriváňu." "Krásy Slovenska", 2006.] The 360-degree view from the top is among the best in Slovakia with the scenery ranging from the populated valleys of upper Liptov, Spiš, and distant parts of Podhale, to the rugged drops of its north face, and many of the notable peaks of the Tatras including Giewont over Zakopane, Rysy, Lomnický štít, and Gerlach, the highest peak of the Carpathians. The panorama is framed by the Western and Low Tatras, and by mountain ranges beyond them in good visibility. [Vladimír Adamec, "Slovensko: 69 vyhliadkových vrcholov." 1981.]

=Cultural

Early development

After lower nobleman Gašpar Fejérpataky Belopotocký (1794-1874) published an account of his 1835 ascent of Kriváň in the literary journal "Hronka" in 1837, its editor-in-chief Karol Kuzmány (1806-1866) wrote the novella "Ladislav" (1838), whose title character, taking the long way home from Italy via Germany and the Polish Podhale, hikes to the summit of Kriváň where he and his friends talk about brotherhood among the Slavs, sing ethnically-nationally arousing songs, and imbibe Tokaj wine. Both works may have motivated the hike by Ľudovít Štúr and friends in 1841 that inspired him to write two poems published in 1842. [Jacek Kołbuszewski, "Modele estetyczne liryki słowackiej romantycznego przełomu." 1975.] Romantic poets soon became fervent admirers of the eye-catching mountain. Eugen V. Šparnensis (1827-after 1853) called Kriváň a marker of his homeland, the Slovaks were "Kriváň's children" for Janko Kráľ, Samo Chalupka's poem saw the mountain as a symbol of their place among the nations. [Pavol Mazák, et. al. "Dejiny slovenskej literatúry 2: Novšia slovenská literatúra, 1780-1918." 1984.]

Popular culture

The significance the intellectuals began to ascribe to Kriváň and its images they created were gradually adopted by popular culture. An early instance is the poem "Oh, Below Kriváň" ("Hej, pod Kriváňom"; originally: "Hej, pod Muráňom") by Samuel Tomášik (1813-1887), which came to be seen as an anonymous folk song [ [chor and pa] , "Profil: Slovenský predštúrovský básnik Samuel Tomášik sa narodil pred 195 rokmi." "TASR", 7 Feb. 2008.] and is sometimes featured as such on folk albums. Likewise, the Polish poem "Kriváň, High Kriváň!" ("Krywaniu, Krywaniu wysoki!") by Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer [Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer, "Jak Jasiek z Ustupu, Hanusia od Królów i Marta Uherczykówna z Liptowa śpiewali w jedno słoneczne rano ku sobie." In: "Na skalnym Podhalu." 1903.] was labeled as a folk song and the author of the verses was not credited when its rock version by Skaldowie was released in 1972. [Lidia Długołęcka and Maciej Pinkwart, "Muzyka i Tatry." 1992.]

Visual arts

The short film "Up the North Face of Kriváň" ("Severnou stenou na Kriváň"; 1947) directed by Karol Skřipský with original music by Šimon Jurovský documented the first winter ascent of the Kriváň North Face, which, unlike the southern slopes of the massif, requires technical climbing. The mountain featured as an attractive backdrop in several films including "Native Country" ("Rodná zem"; dir. Josef Mach, 1954). It has appeared in numerous paintings, including by Ján Hála (1946), Miloš Alexander Bazovský (1956), Andrej Doboš (1967), and Ladislav Čemický (1979). [Anna Ondrušeková, "Tatry v umení; Tatras in Arts." 2006.] The role of Kriváň in popular awareness and high culture was highlighted when a country-wide vote in 2005 selected it to be one of the images on Slovakia's euro coins. [cite news | work = The Slovak Spectator | url = http://www.spectator.sk/articles/view/21704/ | title = Public chooses national symbol | date = 2005-11-28 | accessdate = 2008-03-12]

References