Mount Kékes 1,014m (3,327 feet)
2009-04-25
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Trip Report 		Photos
A fun hike in a in the beautiful forest of the Matra mountains in Hungary, where I participated in a meeting of the FACEPA project, which I work on in Louvain-la-Neuve. Before going I had contact Virag, an Hungarian friend from Davis, about what to do in Budapest and how to get to Kékes. Virag responded with a description of the sights in Buda and in Pest, and also cced his brother-in-law Gabor, how lives in Budapest and how happens to be an avid outdoorsman. What a strange conincidence, hehehe. I exchanged a couple of emails with Gabor and made rough plans to do something outdoorsy (Kékes if the weather permitted) on the Saturday after my two-day conference. Matrafured, village where started. Trees=Electronic Barcode....7km up following green signs, 5 down following blue triangles..........to be continued............

A bit of background from the dictionary:
The Mátra is the highest range in northern Hungary, and part of the region’s central highland belt. The range’s maximum elevation is reached at Mount Kékes (3,327 feet [1,014 m]). The Mátra is a sharply defined volcanic mass consisting in large part of lava and measuring approximately 25 miles (40 km) east-west between the Tarna and Zagyva rivers and 9 miles (14 km) north-south across the range’s spine. The north slopes shelve sharply into the Nógrád basin; to the south are the Mátra foothills, a series of fingerlike projections onto the Great Alföld. The fingerlike pattern of the foothills was created by the erosive action of the several tributaries of the Tarna River system, flowing south.
The Mátras have a rich and varied vegetation, beech and oak predominating. The climate is mild, especially on the south-facing slopes, and on the high points long hours of summer sunshine have favoured popular resorts and sanatoriums, such as those at Kékesteto", Galyateto", Ágasvár, and Parádfürdo". The industrial basin in the Mátra foothills (centred on the Gyöngyös River) developed rapidly in the 1970s. The Kisterenye-Nagybátony coalfield is important, and there are small deposits of nonferrous metals around the range’s volcanic core.

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This page was last updated: Apr 27 2009