Říčej: thirty metres beyond the map pin
A 1.6 km forest out-and-back above Chudenice where the mapped summit looked slightly low, so I continued about 30 m to an old survey remnant and a more convincing natural high point.
The mapped summit was not quite where the ground said it should be. That small disagreement became the whole point of Říčej: a very short forest walk where the interesting part was not getting to the top, but deciding exactly where the top was.
A high start on an old forest track
Říčej was the fourth summit of my eight-peak day. On this visit I could drive to a forest-road junction on the west-northwest side of the hill, which reduced the outing to a 1.6 km out-and-back. I started at about 15:19. What appeared on the map as a road was, on the ground, an old forest track narrowing to a path, but it remained easy to follow through dry leaf litter and open beech woodland.
Higher on the ridge, the line became clearer and the lightly thinned woods admitted more March sunlight. Říčej sits on the north-eastern edge of the Branžovský hvozd forest complex, and local natural-history sources describe it as the highest of the indistinct summits in this part of the forest. That description fits the ground rather well: the upper ridge is broad, wooded and not remotely interested in providing a theatrical apex.
With 133 m of prominence and 2.86 km of isolation, it still clears the P100 threshold comfortably. The challenge here was simply identifying the correct few metres of forest floor.
Thirty metres beyond the pin
I reached the mapped summit area at about 15:34. The point shown on my map seemed slightly lower than nearby ground, so I kept going roughly 30 m along the broad top. There I found a small old survey remnant set into the ground and a red-and-white pipe leaning against a tree. The surrounding ground appeared marginally higher and felt like the more convincing natural summit.
My highest recorded GPS point was 694.7 m at 49.458901, 13.213208, close to this spot. I would not use one handheld GPS reading to settle a subtle wooded summit, but it agreed with what I could see. The practical solution was uncomplicated: visit both the mapped point and the nearby survey remnant. On a broad forest top, that is more reliable than expecting one obvious rock or marker to settle the argument for you.
There was no tower, summit sign or open panorama. Bare branches and thinning offered only filtered glimpses beyond the ridge. That was fine. Říčej did not need more summit furniture; the interest came from the small exercise of reading the terrain properly.
Early spring on the return
Common hepatica (Hepatica nobilis) was flowering through the leaf litter beside the route. The blue-violet flowers were the clearest sign that winter was giving way and, visually, a welcome change after several kilometres of brown March forest.
I began descending at about 15:37 and followed exactly the same track back, reaching the car around 15:49. The whole outing took about 30 minutes. Říčej was not a scenic mountain and did not need to become a longer story than it was. A quiet beech forest, an old survey remnant and 30 metres of doubt were enough to make this small P100 distinct from the others that day.