The Beskids • the third highest mountain • summit closed
The summit belongs to natural mountain forest and its rare inhabitants - people are not allowed in. The walking routes stay lower down.
Kněhyně (1,257 m) is the third highest mountain in the Beskids, after Lysá hora (1,323 m) and Smrk (1,276 m). Rare natural mountain forest grows on its summit and its slopes - and that is what makes it one of the most valuable parts of Beskid nature.
Kněhyně falls under the strictest category of protection: it is part of the Kněhyně – Čertův mlýn national nature reserve, one of only seven in the whole Beskydy Protected Landscape Area. The summit itself forms the core of the reserve and is closed to people.
Why it is rare
Natural mountain spruce forests have always grown in the Beskids only on the three highest summits - Lysá hora, Smrk and Kněhyně. On Kněhyně a remnant of them has survived, along with the original mountain ecotype of spruce.
What to respect
The summit of Kněhyně forms the core of the reserve and no waymarks lead there. Stay on the waymarked trail, do not enter the caves and keep your dog on a lead.
When to go
A red-waymarked trail leads from Pustevny to Kněhyňská louka below the summit. Spring and autumn are finest; leave the spring and summer nights and the mating season to the wildlife.
Only the summit is closed
Only the summit of Kněhyně itself is closed, not the whole mountain. A red-waymarked trail runs below it from Pustevny, skirting the summit, and can be walked without restriction. It passes places you may enter - Kněhyňská louka, the U Partyzánky spring and the memorial to Růžena Valentová.
A 360° panorama of the accessible places along the waymarked trail. The summit of Kněhyně is not among them - the core of the reserve is off limits.
The last forest of its kind in the Beskids remains up there. It has grown naturally for thousands of years.
An island of original forest
Almost all of the Beskids is covered with spruce today - but commercial spruce, in tidy planted rows. The natural mountain spruce forest that grows here by itself has always survived only on the three highest summits – Lysá hora, Smrk and Kněhyně. At middle altitudes beech and fir prevail.
One of the three last islands of natural spruce forest lies on the summit of Kněhyně. On the steep slopes below it grow spruce-fir beech woods, while the flat summit itself is covered with stunted rowan-spruce woods. The main tree in the summit area is Norway spruce - and it is a spruce with a surviving original population of the rare mountain ecotype, a tree that has grown here for thousands of years.
What grows beneath the trees and among the stones is rare as well: the shrub rock currant and alpine currant survive in the summit zone, and a whole range of mountain herbs grows in the exposed scree. It is not one species that is protected on Kněhyně - it is the entire composition of a forest that has survived nowhere else.
Why the summit is off limits
No waymarked trail leads to the summit today - conservationists withdrew the waymarks in 2007, when visitor numbers in the summit areas of the Beskids became unsustainable. Climbing to the summit has been banned ever since.
The summit forms the core of the reserve and leaving the marked trails is an offence. The Eurasian lynx needs the quiet here for breeding, as does the critically endangered western capercaillie, of which only a few individuals remain in the Beskids. Trampling also threatens the Moravian monkshood - a plant that grows in Czechia almost exclusively here. Rangers patrol the summit and issue fines.
The summit of Kněhyně offers quiet and old forest. Rare plants depend on them, and so does the capercaillie, which reveals how the forest is faring. The rarest of the plants is the poisonous Moravian monkshood, an endemic that grows in the whole of Czechia only in the Moravian-Silesian Beskids; with it come willow gentian, alpine blue-sow-thistle and clasping twistedstalk. The forest is also a habitat of the Eurasian lynx, and in recent years a brown bear has wandered in several times.
The summit forestPlants that grow nowhere else
Mountain species tied to the cool, damp and undisturbed forest on the summit of Kněhyně. They grow here rarely and slowly.
Picea abies
The summit area of Kněhyně has kept the original population of a rare mountain ecotype - trees that have grown here for thousands of years. You can recognise the mountain form by its narrow, columnar crown with short branches (which hold less snow) and by its long hanging cones, the longest of our spruces.
Foto: Jacek Halicki, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Ribes petraeum
A rare mountain shrub related to the garden currant. In the summit zone it survives together with alpine currant on stony scree, where ordinary forest cannot reach.
Foto: opioła Jerzy, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.5
Aconitum firmum subsp. moravicum
A highly poisonous mountain herb with blue-violet helmet-shaped flowers - an endemic that grows in the whole of Czechia only in the Moravian-Silesian Beskids.
Foto: Mizera Ondřej, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0Quiet and old forestWho has the most to lose here
The Eurasian lynx hunts here in silence and the western capercaillie needs a vast old forest - both vanish as soon as the quiet goes. Stay on the marked trails, keep quiet and keep your dog on a lead.
On the brinkTetrao urogallus
Europe's largest grouse and a measure of a healthy mountain forest. Only a few individuals are left in the Beskids; since 2017 the population has been reinforced by a rearing station of Lesy ČR in Krásná pod Lysou horou. Kněhyně offers them the forest they need, but disturbance is pushing them out of it.
Foto: Simon Bailey, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
Lynx lynx
Europe's largest cat. It moves through the summit forest hunting and looking for a mate - it needs silence and undisturbed thickets just as much as the capercaillie does.
Foto: Tim Sträter, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0The species photographs are taken from Wikimedia Commons - the author and licence are given with each picture. They show what the species looks like; they were not taken on Kněhyně itself.
Timeline
the folding of the Carpathians
The rocks of the Silesian unit fold and are thrust over one another; Godula sandstones form a ridge with summits above 1,200 m - Kněhyně (1,257 m) and neighbouring Čertův mlýn (1,206 m).
after the ice age
Natural mountain spruce forest returns to the highest Beskid mountains - Lysá hora, Smrk and Kněhyně - while beech and fir prevail lower down. On Kněhyně this rare forest has survived to this day.
19 January 1989
Kněhyně, together with Čertův mlýn, becomes part of a national nature reserve of the strictest category. The details are on the reserve page.
the 1990s
The once common western capercaillie is now only rarely seen in the area. The Beskid population reaches the brink, increasing the pressure to preserve its last undisturbed habitat.
2007
Visitor numbers in the summit areas of the Beskids become unsustainable and conservationists close the trail to the summit of Kněhyně. Climbing to it has been banned ever since.
2017
Lesy ČR begins releasing capercaillies reared in Krásná pod Lysou horou into the Beskids. For that to pay off, the birds need places where they have peace.
today
A red-waymarked trail leads to Kněhyňská louka below the summit. Even so, the rangers' sensors count up to 800 people a year who go higher; entering the reserve can bring a fine of up to CZK 10,000.
Human traces below the mountain
In the autumn of 1944 the forests below Kněhyně hid the bunkers of the 1st Czechoslovak Jan Žižka Partisan Brigade - and the waymarked path still passes reminders of that time. A stone with a plaque commemorating the brigade's fighting stands in the saddle by the signpost. A short way on along the waymarked route are the U Partyzánky spring and a memorial to the partisan Růžena Valentová, a teacher from Olomouc who was killed here on 6 November 1944.
The original spring and cairn lay deeper inside the reserve, on a dead-end branch off the waymarked trail. It was the route most often taken by people going down into the core of the reserve, so the waymarking team closed the branch trail; a new spring and a new memorial were built right beside the main route. They were made by children from the scout troop in Pražmo and from a primary school in Bohumín.
The stops along the route are shown on the walk's page; the partisan movement in the Beskids is covered by the Partyzán memorial.
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Head east from the saddle, with Radhošť behind you. A short way from the junction by Libušín, the small lake Mořské oko lies hidden in the forest – a refuge for newts and other amphibians.
The walk to the junction with a rest area is easy. The red-marked trail then climbs more steeply for the last kilometre and a half or so along a stony forest path. Just below the junction are clearings kept open by grazing sheep for three hundred years.
The red-marked trail runs across the summit of the highest mountain in the Zlín Region (1,206 m), which is accessible on the marked trail. A short way below, at the end of a 100-metre fissure, lies Čertův stůl, a stone slab on two plinths. No marked trail leads to it, however, and visitors must stay on marked trails in the reserve, so you can view it in the 360° panorama. The remains of the Greiffka hunting lodge also stand beside the red-marked trail, about 497 m to the north.
A junction on the red-marked trail below the summit of Kněhyně – the furthest you can go towards Kněhyně on a marked trail. On the way, you pass memorials to the events of autumn 1944 and the U Partyzánky spring. The summit of Kněhyně (1,257 m) is closed to visitors – it lies in the core of the reserve and no marked trail leads to it.
The summit of Kněhyně is closed. Do not look for a path or a short cut to it - it lies in the core of the reserve and leaving the waymarks is an offence. The Čertův stůl rock formation, which also lies off the waymarks, can be viewed in the 360° panorama on the Čertův mlýn page.
The summit of Kněhyně lies in the core of the reserve and no waymarks lead to it - entry is therefore banned by law. Rangers patrol it and entering can bring a fine of up to CZK 10,000.
You are in a national nature reserve of IUCN category Ia. Visitors must stay on marked trails only - leaving them risks a fine and, above all, damage to the very thing the mountain is protected for.
Lynx and bear live in the area. Keep quiet, leave loud music at home, keep your dog on a lead and stay away from the cave entrances - bats hibernate in them.
It is windy up here and the weather changes faster than in the valley. After rain the stones and roots are slippery; in winter the ridge is demanding and the days short.
Refreshments and toilets are at the Pustevny saddle, just under five kilometres away along the red waymarks.
It lies in the core of a national nature reserve and no waymarked path leads there, so entry is banned by law. The Eurasian lynx, the western capercaillie and rare mountain plants need the quiet here.
To Kněhyňská louka - the furthest point the waymarked trail reaches. The rest of the mountain is closed.
Natural mountain forest grew in the Beskids only on the three highest summits - Lysá hora, Smrk and Kněhyně (1,257 m, the third highest mountain in the Beskids). Kněhyně has also kept the original population of the mountain ecotype of spruce.
To neighbouring Čertův mlýn, which does have a waymarked trail. Kněhyně and Čertův mlýn together form the Kněhyně – Čertův mlýn national nature reserve.
No, Kněhyně is only the higher of the two summits of the Kněhyně – Čertův mlýn national nature reserve.
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