Stramchyně: the Czech P100 that gets a little higher every year

Stramchyně has one of the more literal summit traditions I have come across: people carry stones uphill and joke that the mountain gets a little higher every year. That would already be enough personality for a 543 m wooded P100, but the summit also has painted stones, a penguin, an old surveying story and a broad crest where the exact natural high point is less obvious than the cairn built on top of it.

A very short walk to a very local summit

This was the seventh summit of my eight-peak day, reached straight after nearby Tuhošť. I had originally expected to leave the car by the main road and walk more of the approach. Instead I drove farther in than planned, first along a small track, then across a meadow and finally onto the forest road on the east side of the hill. In dry conditions I probably could have pushed higher, but stopping there left a very short outing of about 1.4 km in total.

The opening section followed the forest road through quiet mixed woodland with old pines, some larch and leafless deciduous trees. Roe deer were moving through the forest, which helped the hill feel less like a checkbox and more like an actual place. The route itself remained easy: dry leaf litter, an obvious line and very little need for navigation.

The cairn that keeps growing

The forest road brought me high, then the summit broadened into the sort of wooded crest where it pays to look around rather than accept the first plausible bump. The first stones I reached did not quite convince me. A little farther on I found the practical summit reference point: a built-up cairn beside a red-and-white surveying marker.

The cairn is more than a random pile of stones. Borovy has organised a traditional early-January community ascent to Stramchyně since 2007 together with the local volunteer fire brigade. One of the event's running ideas is wonderfully literal: carry a stone uphill and help make the mountain higher. Over time ordinary rocks were joined by painted ones, and local reports describe decorated stones being carried up and, in some cases, later displayed back in the village. Some editions have attracted well over a hundred participants. A 543 m hill apparently needed a civic improvement programme; geology was moving too slowly.

The most memorable detail on my visit fitted the tradition perfectly: a hand-painted penguin perched among the summit stones. There was also a fire ring nearby and ground torn up in places in what looked very much like boar rooting. The surrounding crest was broad enough that the exact natural apex did not feel dramatically sharper than the cairn site, but the cairn and marker made the practical summit easy enough to identify. My highest recorded GPS point was 546.6 m at 49.508854, 13.286785, a little above the mapped 543 m in the usual way handheld GPS likes to flatter short forest summits.

U Panáče and the older summit story

The modern stone-carrying tradition sits on top of an older layer of local history. A local account from nearby Vřeskovice records the summit under the traditional name U Panáče, after a statue said to have once stood on the top. A story grew up that weapons were hidden beneath it, serious enough for people to dig there in 1888; according to the account, they found nothing. The same source records a protected triangulation point on the summit and dates its pillar to 1938.

That makes the summit feel less accidental than it first appears. The painted stones and penguin are recent, but people had already been using this broad wooded crest as a recognised reference point long before the current community ascent began.

A local mountain rather than a viewpoint

Stramchyně is not a viewpoint peak in any grand sense. In March, with the trees still bare, the woods felt open rather than claustrophobic and there were occasional glimpses towards the farmland around Červené Poříčí and the Úhlava valley. The wider setting is richer than the hill's elevation suggests: Červené Poříčí has its Renaissance château in the valley, while Švihov and its Gothic water castle lie only a short distance to the south.

I returned by the same route. Car to car, the outing took just under 20 minutes, with a little under 10 minutes to the highest recorded point and a little over 10 minutes back down. For such a small amount of walking, Stramchyně gave me a disproportionate amount to remember. Its 119 m of prominence makes it a genuine P100 objective, but the number is not what stays with me. The growing cairn, the old summit stories and one painted penguin do a much better job of that.