Holica (828 m a.s.l.) is one of those Pieniny peaks that impresses not with its height but with its raw, untamed character. Steep cliffs dropping nearly 400 metres above the Dunajec gorge, dramatic limestone towers, and almost complete silence — nature is firmly in charge here.
The narrow, roughly one-kilometre-long ridge of Holica rises above the Dunajec like a natural wall. Its northern slopes, inclined at around 45°, hide an impressive collection of limestone rock formations — the finest group is called the Seven Monks ('Sedem Mnichov'), a cluster of rock pinnacles stretching from the foot of the mountain up to over 700 m a.s.l. The entire massif is cloaked in typical Pieniny beech-fir forest, while remnants of natural lime-tree stands survive on the south-western slopes. In spring and summer, the limestone rocks host an interesting flora of drought-loving and thermophilous plants; in autumn, the beech woods blaze with gold.
How to reach the summitThe peak was formerly known as Holica — according to 19th-century researcher Eugeniusz Janota, the name comes from the fact that the forest on the mountain burned down decades earlier, leaving the hillside bare ('goła' in Polish). Today lush forest covers its slopes once more, and Holica remains one of the wildest corners of the entire Pieniny range.