Vápenný (790 m) is a striking summit in the Ještěd-Kozákov ridge, rising quietly above the village of Jítrava. It's a place for hikers who love wild forests, limestone caves, and forgotten military bunkers rather than crowded trails.
The mountain features steep slopes with a relative height of over 250 meters, built from Devonian to Lower Carboniferous phyllitic shales, greywackes, and metadiabases, with a vein of crystalline limestone. Its slopes are covered mostly with deciduous forest — beech woods and scree forests with maple, ash, and elm — while an abandoned limestone quarry on the western slope hides the entrance to the Western Cave. In summer the beech canopy offers cool shade, autumn brings vivid foliage, and winter blankets the ridge in quiet snow, with rare bats hibernating deep in the cave. Numerous bunkers from Czechoslovakia's First Republic-era fortifications still dot the slopes.
How to reach the summitFossilized remains of extinct crinoids have been found in the limestone layer on the western slope — a quiet reminder that these hills once lay beneath an ancient sea.