Czartowska Skała is a small but strikingly distinctive hill in the Kaczawa Foothills, rising boldly from the flat surrounding landscape like a lone volcanic cone. It's the remnant of an ancient volcano, and its raw, rocky silhouette catches the eye long before you reach Chełmy Landscape Park.

The hill forms a slightly skewed cone, cut on two sides by former quarry workings that expose part of the old volcanic chimney with distinctive columnar basalt jointing. The slopes are fairly steep, and the sharply defined summit gives the hill a striking presence quite different from the gentle countryside around it. Its northern side is covered with patches of trees and shrubs, offering welcome shade in summer and lovely colour in autumn. From the top, a viewpoint opens onto the Kaczawa Foothills and Kaczawa Mountains, and on clear days even the Karkonosze range — a rewarding view for such a modest climb.

How to reach the summit

• Yellow trail (Trail of Extinct Volcanoes) — running from Jawor to Sędziszowa and beyond, easy to moderate, suitable for most hikers
• The hill lies about 6.5 km northwest of Myślibórz (Lower Silesian Voivodeship) — a convenient starting point for a short outing

Practical information

• Since 1991 Czartowska Skała has been a protected nature monument (inanimate nature) — damaging the rock formations or vegetation is prohibited
• It's a habitat for rare protected plants, including stemless carline thistle, military orchid, elder-flowered orchid, mezereon and Primula elatior

Interesting fact: during the last glaciation the hill was never fully buried under the ice sheet — it stood out as a small rocky nunatak, a silent witness to the ice age poking above the frozen expanse.