Malinowska Skała in the Silesian Beskids

Malinowska Skała (1,152 m above sea level) is a junction peak in the main ridge of the Barania Góra and Skrzyczne range in the Silesian Beskids. Here meet the borders of three villages — Wisła, Szczyrk and Lipowa — as well as the historic boundary between Lesser Poland and Silesia. In the early 18th century the Żywiec reeve Andrzej Komoniecki noted in the „Dziejopis Żywiecki” that the summit, then called Skałka, marked the border of the Żywiec estate.

A pulpit of conglomerates

The massif is built of distinctive Upper Cretaceous conglomerates, known as the Malinowska Skała conglomerates — quartz rocks with fragments of shales and granites, rare elsewhere in the Beskids. The summit outcrop is a pulpit-shaped conglomerate rock measuring 6 × 14 × 5 m, protected as a monument of inanimate nature. Just below the summit lies a natural pond about 10 m across, and next to the green trail opens the entrance to the vertical Malinowska Cave, where a ladder fixed in the rock allows descent.

The panorama from the bare summit

The treeless ridge offers views in every direction: to Skrzyczne and the Czantoria range, Babia Góra and Pilsko, the Little and Island Beskids, and in clear weather to the Tatras, the Low Tatras and the Malá Fatra with Kriváň, reaching as far as Praděd in the Sudetes.

In practice

The fastest approach follows the red trail from Przełęcz Salmopolska: 4 km, about 1.5 hours. From Skrzyczne it takes 1 h 15 min on the green trail, from Barania Góra 1 h 50 min. The summit has no infrastructure at all; food and toilets are available at the Biały Krzyż Inn on the pass, where there is also a car park. Strollers will not manage the steep sections.