Jawornik Wielki (872 m a.s.l.), also known as 'Holy Mountain', is the highest peak in the western and northern part of the Złote Mountains in the Polish Sudetes. It offers a rewarding forest hike, a renovated wooden observation tower, and a surprisingly moving piece of history hidden on its slopes.
The trails wind through a beautiful mixed forest of spruce, larch and beech, with rocky outcrops of metamorphic stone near the summit. On a clear day the tower's upper platform at 6.4 m gives you sweeping views over the Sudeten Foreland and the Silesian Lowland. Autumn turns the beech stands into a blaze of colour, while winter brings peaceful, snow-muffled paths that feel a world away from everyday life.
How to reach the summitOn the northern slope of the mountain lies a sobering reminder of the past: in 1633, during the Thirty Years' War, 1,291 victims of cholera and plague were buried here. A stone obelisk with a carved cross, erected in 2015, marks the site — well worth a quiet moment on your way down.