The best hiking routes in Lesser Poland Voivodeship

Lesser Poland Voivodeship offers a sharp contrast between jagged alpine heights and gentle, forested ridges. If you want steep climbs over exposed granite, Tatrzański Park Narodowy provides demanding trails where you will walk on stone steps and look down into deep glacial cirques. This is high-altitude terrain where snow often lingers in shaded gullies well into June, requiring careful footwork on hard rock.

For a softer underfoot experience, the northern flysch belt offers clay and leaf-mould paths. In Gorczański Park Narodowy, the trails wind through dense beech forests and open clearings, where the wooden huts of former shepherds still stand. Further east, Magurski Park Narodowy presents a quieter landscape of low, rounded hills covered in mixed forest, where the valleys are marked by abandoned orchards and old stone crosses rather than dramatic cliffs.

If you prefer dramatic river gorges, Pieniński Park Narodowy features white limestone crags rising directly from the water. Here, the paths are often packed dirt and gravel, leading to sharp summits that offer views of the river loop below. Choosing where to walk in this region is a matter of deciding between the rugged granite of the Tatra range, the quiet beech forests of the Gorce, or the steep limestone cliffs of the Pieniny.