Złoty Groń

The Złoty Groń ski resort occupies the middle section of the north slope of the mountain of the same name, the most popular ski area in Istebna. Lying between Zagroń and Chichot, it is the largest and most varied of the three, and it also has the newest infrastructure, practically rebuilt from scratch after 2012. At the top it links with the pistes of the Chichot lift, with which it forms a kind of whole: since the 2013/14 season the two resorts have shared a joint ski pass. Skiers' attention is mainly on the wide slope, with several variants, served by a modern six-seater chairlift from the Swiss company Bartholet Maschinenbau AG, 765 m long, with a vertical drop of 150 m, a capacity of 2,400 people an hour, a speed of 5 m/s and a ride time to the top of 2.6 minutes. It is so far the only six-seater lift in the whole of the Silesian Beskids. The slope is fairly steep in its upper part and flattens out considerably lower down, forming a wide ski arena. Three pistes have been marked here, blue and red-blue, with a combined length of more than 1.6 km, but bear in mind that they are more variants than separate pistes. In the lower part of the slope there is a short (just under 300 metres) button lift and a ski kindergarten lift. In total, together with the Chichot lift, the resort has more than 2.6 km of pistes served by the chairlift and two button lifts, with a combined capacity of 4,600 people an hour. At the valley station there are 4 food outlets, an equipment rental shop, a small sports shop, the purpose-built Park Śnieżny Białego Misia (White Bear Snow Park) with a free children's lift, a ski and snowboard school and a playroom for the youngest. All in all, it is a fairly well-organised family area that can certainly satisfy more advanced skiers too, especially now that it shares a ski pass with neighbouring Chichot.