Carpatia Divide - Day 3
Carpatia Divide - Day 3
Korbielów → Witów ~92 km
We go on further journey right after breakfast – for good start we have uphill which lasts for several kilometers. It starts as a paved road, then it become fire road. On our way up we meet again with our fellow competitors, Jaca and Slovak. After quick chat we get to the top of the hill and here's the surprise – water point [sic !] and possibility of sending luggage. We don't use it however and we go down. We get to the nameless stream and we go right up again. All of the sudden something cracks in my bike, but after quick look around I didn't find the cause. I thought at first that one of the pawl in my freehub has given away, but after regular noises I disregard this idea. Well, I could still ride so haven't stopped and went on. Finally I met the others and we continue our way to the Babia Góra Trails. Riding conditions are good, but riding itself it's hard. At the top we pass another water point, so we stop for a while and then we go down. After quick while, noises from my bike are becoming unacceptable, so we stop for a while and we've found a root cause – dogbone in my frame has cracked, so my crankset (with bottom brakcet) is moving back and forth. Only thing to do was to come down to Zawoja and try to fix it somehow. We figured that if we put rest of dogbone between parts of the frame, I'll be able to ride on, so we test it, jumped it several times, patch with zip's and surprisingly it worked ! Suspension were not as plush as before, but it's definitely rideable. So we get back on and we continue our trip to Babia Góra Trails and after this we're pointing our bikes to Krowiarki pass. On a top we see a lot of cars and even more people going to the summit of Babia Góra, but that's not our directions, so we go down and we make lunch stop at a bar. After we finish our traditional polish dinner, we continue to little town called Czarny Dunajec. After quick talk and checking out what time is it, we decide to go up to the Magura Witowska and then go to Zakopane [As we finally figured, Zakopane was 25km from the peak of Magura Witowska so it was well beyond our capabilities, but we couldn't know it at the time]. At the peak we get at sunset, and views are lovely. Weather is very mercifull so we stop for a while to make some pictures and we go down, just as it starts to getting dark. Downhill is a total survival, because there was a lot of mud and very difficult terrain, so it's a walk mostly. After that, we get to the Witów and we stop at local pizzeria. It is very late [after 10Pm] and very cold [below 10 degress of C] so we find a place to sleep and get there as fast as we can.
