There must be Indian country up there somewhere. A paradise with a beautiful lake that every boy in eastern Germany knows. Many, many years ago, the Delaware chief Chingachgook, known as "The Great Serpent," fought here against the marauding Hurons and their evil allies.
With his friend Deerslayer, a friendly, quiet white man, the heroic Indian protected the innocent women and he even defended the right of a bad gangster to live with his family in a houseboat in the middle of the idyllic lake.
It's a mountain lake
The boat, supposedly moored in the USA, was actually floating here on the Popradské pleso (German Poppersee, Hungarian Poprádi-tó, Polish Popradzki Staw). It is a mountain lake (Slovak pleso) on the Slovak side of the High Tatras.The
Popradské pleso is located in a valley called Mengusovska dolina, but to reach it you first have to climb to an altitude of 1,500 meters.
It's a long but beautiful path. Either you go up through the forest, which is light and green, along the red hiking trail from the town of Štrbské Pleso. Or you can use an asphalt forest road that climbs very slowly upwards as a so-called blue hiking trail from the Popradské pleso stop, where the Tatra Electric Railway arrives.
Afterwards we walked downhill for another hour to Štrbské Pleso 1,355 m (Tschirmer Lake) 1,335 meters, which is even more interesting because of its cinematic history.
Frog Lake Valley
Access by car is only possible with a special permit. In summer you can reach the lake with the Tatranská magistrála hiking trail from the mountain hotel Sliezsky dom via the Batizovské pleso mountain lake (3:30 h). From Popradské pleso you can go on hikes to surrounding destinations around the Mengusovská dolina valley and in the high basin Kotlina Žabích plies (German: Frog Lake Valley).
The area including to the largest mountain lake in Slovakia, Veľké Hincovo pleso, or to the Polish-Slovak border mountain Rysy. The choice of path determines the hiking time: it takes an hour to the top on the red path and an hour and a half on the blue path. However, these are Slovakian statements and the locals are known as true mountain racers.
The climb to the alleged Indian country in the middle of Eastern Europe is definitely worth it, because here it's not just the journey that's the destination.). As you hike up, you can already see why the High Tatras have long been an inspiration for many filmmakers.
Directors from all over the world have come to this picturesque mountain landscape to immortalize its beauty. The German Richard Groschopp filmed “Chingachgook, the Great Snake” here in 1967 but the famous Vamoirfil “Nosferatu” was already here in 1922 developed. “The Copper Tower” was added later and a film from the “Marco Polo” series was made in 2016.
A Mohawk-born warrior
In most works, the Tatras are portrayed as their true self, but there are also films in which the Tatras represent other parts of the world, such as Transylvania, Mongolia or North America. Chingachgook, for example, is a Mohawk-born warrior from Delaware who, in the film, tries to free his wife Wahtawah from the clutches of an enemy Huron camp.
Together with his loyal friend Deerslayer, the two face racist pioneers and brutal British soldiers on their search. The plot of the story works like a seesaw: the characters constantly move back and forth between a lake house and the Huron camp until the violent climax.
A green eye in the blue sky
The lake is like a fellow player and when you stand on its shore you know why. Deeply cut between high peaks, it shines in the sunlight like a green eye in the blue sky. At the lakeside are the mountain hotel Horský hotel Popradské pleso and the mountain hut Majlathova chata, both of which are of course never seen in the film.
There is no longer a wooden house in the middle. In just 30 minutes a path takes you around the lake, a detour can lead to the famous cemetery of mountaineers and extreme skiers who died in the High Tatras - Symbolický cintorín, an amazing and oppressive place.
The view of the lake in the incision called Mengsdorfer Tal in German at an altitude of exactly 1494 meters above zero is much more beautiful and easier. Almost seven hectares in size, it measures around 380 × 250 meters and is up to 17.6 meters deep.
The lake is home to indigenous brown trout that come via the only surface tributary, which is called Ľadový potok, or Eisbach in English. To the east flows the Krupa, the only drain that joins downstream with the Hincov potok to form the river Poprad, which gives its name to the next town has to give.
Old name for an old paradiese
The name Popradské pleso has nothing in common with the city of Poprad, which is about 25 kilometers away, but is derived from the fact that the Krupá stream is a source of the Poprad. The name Poppersee is already mentioned in the work Bibliotheca seu Cynosura Viatorum (1644) by the Käsmarker scholar David Frölich. In 1736, the polyhistor Matthias Bel used the name Rybie pleso (literally fish lake) due to the fact that fish lived only in this lake south of the main Tatra ridge.
Since this was also a name of the lake in Poland now known as the Sea Eye, the Popradské pleso was also called Malé Rybie pleso (German: Little Fish Lake) to distinguish it. In the 19th century people also spoke of the Mengusovské pleso (German: Mengsdorfer See) due to its belonging to the municipality of Mengusovce at the time. Ultimately, however, the name Popradské pleso came through.
Frozen most of the year
As pretty as it all looks, so pretty that countless hikers stroll around the lake at any time, the lake is frozen over most of the year. On average from around mid-November to mid-May, the idyll is a pure winter sports paradise. The two mountain huts Majláthova chata (German: Majl áthhütte) and Chata pri Popradskomp plese (German literally: Hut am Poppersee) provide shelter for skiers, ice skating enthusiasts and children with sledges.
Štrbské Pleso has been a climatic health resort since the end of the 19th century. The city has countless large spa houses and large hotels. The electric Tatra Railway, which has been running from Poprad since 1912, also has its terminus here. Ski lifts and cross-country ski trails as well as two large ski jumps, which were used for world championships in 1970 and 1989, ensure that there is no chance of boredom, even in winter.
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