Cross-Country Skiing in Mariánské Lázně: Five Groomed Loops Above Town — and a Piste by the Colonnade

When the fountain falls silent, the tracks wake up

On 31 October the Singing Fountain plays for the last time this year. The colonnade then goes quiet for months — and at roughly the same moment the people from the local cross-country club start watching the Slavkov Forest for the first snow. Mariánské Lázně is one of a handful of European spa towns where you can be on skis in the morning and in warm water by the afternoon.

The town sits at 630 metres above sea level, which on its own guarantees nothing. What matters is what begins immediately above it: the plateaus of the Slavkov Forest (Slavkovský les) at 800 to 850 metres, as the town's own trail map puts it. Those two hundred vertical metres are the difference between wet pavement on the main street and a closed blanket of snow in the woods above the golf course.

A word on terms: Czechs call this běžky, and it means classic and skating tracks groomed across forest plateaus rather than anything resembling an alpine resort. If you have skied in Scandinavia, the scale and the quiet will feel familiar.

The cross-country area: where it starts

The centre of the area is the golf course above town near the village of Zádub. There is a car park, a town bus runs up from the centre, and in winter the cabin cable car reaches the Hotel Krakonoš nearby. The second starting point is the Králův kámen gamekeeper's lodge on the Mariánské Lázně – Prameny bus line, the third Pension Nimrod, which has a car park. All three appear on the official map.

Two figures circulate about the skiing here, and both are correct. The town states that around 90 kilometres of track are groomed regularly and 90 per cent of routes have two lanes — that is total groomed track kilometres, including the unmarked links towards Mnichov and Kladská. Marked loops, the ones you follow by colour on the map and on the ground, number five and come to a little over thirty kilometres. The two numbers simply measure different things.

The five loops

According to the operator's listing, the tracks run as follows:

• Red, 9.2 km — Golf, the headwaters of the Teplá, Na Zeleném, Rájov hunting lodge, Rájovský vrch, back to Golf. The longest loop, classic style.
• Blue, 8.2 km — Nimrod, Králův kámen, Modrý kámen, Tajga, Strážiště, Farská kyselka, Smraďoch, back to Nimrod. The forest loop with the most interesting stops.
• Yellow, 6.4 km — Golf, Žabí jezírko, above the dam, Polom, Golf. Groomed first, along with the blue.
• Green, about 2.5 km — Golf, Polom, Golf. A short skating loop, not waymarked on the ground.
• Pink, 4.6 km — the loop at Kladská, the highest and the last to lose its snow.

For a first day, yellow or blue is the sensible choice: they run through forest, hold snow and are groomed first. The red loop and the skating tracks cross open ground where drifts form — the town itself describes them as the hardest to maintain.

What lies along the way

The blue loop passes two places worth the trip even if this is your first time on skis.

Farská kyselka is a freely accessible mineral spring in the woods — a reminder that the waters here are not confined to the colonnade. A little further on lies Smraďoch, a nature reserve some five kilometres from town where gas escapes from the ground. According to the Egeria Geopark, carbon dioxide of deep origin predominates, while the hydrogen sulphide that gave the place its name (smraďoch means "the stinker") forms near the surface through bacterial activity. It is the same gas that Mariánské Lázně has used for generations in carbon dioxide baths and gas injections — here it simply surfaces by itself, and on a frosty morning you can see it hanging as a haze over the bog. The boardwalk begins about two hundred metres beyond the former Nimrod forest restaurant on the road to Prameny; from the ski track you walk the last stretch, skis in hand.

One caveat about Kladská: the educational boardwalk trail around the pond there is a summer facility and is normally closed in winter. The pink ski loop is a different thing — it follows forest roads, not the boardwalks.

Checking whether the tracks are groomed

This is the one thing genuinely worth doing before you set out. Snow at 850 metres is never a certainty, and grooming has its own rhythm:

• After fresh snow it takes around three days, the town says, before every route is fully groomed. The area around the golf course comes first, then the adjoining forest tracks.
• The unmarked links to Mnichov and Kladská are groomed only when conditions are good.
• Timber harvesting affects passability too — a section can be blocked even with perfect snow cover.

Grooming is done by the Ski Nordic Mariánské Lázně club, which publishes the current state of the tracks, a webcam and suggested routes on its website. The second source is the town information centre at Hlavní 47 (tel. +420 354 622 474), which also advises on ski hire. The fastest route of all is to ask at your hotel reception — in winter they field the question daily.

Rules that matter twice over in a spa town

The area is shared between skiers and spa guests out walking. The town and the club therefore repeat a few simple things:

• Walkers do not walk in the tracks — beside them, yes; in them, no. A trampled track is lost for the day.
• Skiers stay on marked routes and follow the signed direction rather than cutting off into the forest.
• Dogs do not belong in the tracks.
• Head-torch skiing after dark is discouraged in the Rájov – Myslivna – Homolka area; the club suggests the Golf area for evenings.

The ski slope by the colonnade

Mariánské Lázně is one of very few spa towns with its own downhill area, and what makes it unusual is the distance. The town puts Skiareál Mariánky about 400 metres from the spa colonnade.

The scale is that of a town ski hill, not an alpine resort. According to the České sjezdovky listing there are four runs: Krakonoška (1,000 m, red, 106 m of vertical), two Slalomák pistes of 300 metres each (one black, one red) and a children's ski park (80 m) — just under 1.7 kilometres in total, between 648 and 720 metres. Uphill transport is the cabin cable car (600 m, 350 people per hour), two drag lifts, a children's rope tow and a magic carpet. In winter the area is open, per the town, daily from 9 am to 4 pm to skiers, snowboarders and pedestrians alike, with evening skiing on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Fares and lift passes change from season to season, and the prices shown on comparison sites are usually out of date, so check the current tariff with the area itself.

The Koliba – Krakonoš cable car deserves a paragraph of its own. Its operator describes it as the oldest cabin cable car still running in Czechia; it works on a pulse system, sending cabins up in groups. It was built between 1988 and 1993, first ran in October 1993 and spent the winter of 1993/94 on trial; permanent scheduled service only began on 6 November 1998. It covers just under six hundred metres and 106 metres of ascent. In winter, roughly December to March, it runs daily from 9 am to 4 pm and takes pedestrians too — so you can use it as a lift into the cross-country area, or as a short cut on King Edward's Trail.

None of this is a new idea, as the first winter season of 1923/24 shows: the town built a bobsleigh run, a toboggan track and a ski jump so that it would have something to offer in the cold months at all. For what the town offers the rest of the year, see our guide to sport in Mariánské Lázně.

"Through the winter land of healing waters"

Once a year, usually in early February, the cross-country area becomes the destination of a larger gathering. Zimním krajem léčivých vod — "Through the winter land of healing waters" — is a ski crossing with an accompanying walking march, organised by the Mariánské Lázně branch of the Czech Tourist Club with the town's support. The 2025 edition was the 44th: a morning start at the Hotel School building, the finish at Hotel Krakonoš, ski routes of 10 to 20 kilometres and walking routes from 10 kilometres upwards, with your own line to the finish permitted. The date and details of the next edition are announced around the turn of the year — worth asking the information centre if you are planning a February stay.

If the snow does not come

Expect that it might not. At 630 metres every winter is different, and skiing is not the reason to travel here — it is the bonus. The programme that holds in any weather:

• Walking instead of skiing. The promenades and park paths are cleared and lit in the evening. Longer circuits, including the Hamelika lookout tower and the Forest Spring, are in our guide to hiking and nature trails.
• Warm water. Pools, saunas and the thermal area run regardless of snow; the overview is in our piece on Marienbad Therme.
• The quiet people come for. January and February are the stillest weeks of the spa year — what that means for prices, occupancy and atmosphere is set out in our January and February guide.

If you are here on a treatment stay, one more thing applies. Terrain therapy with a physiotherapist is a prescribed treatment, not the same as a day out on skis. Whether it belongs in your plan, and in what form — and whether exertion in the cold suits you at all — is decided by the spa physician at your initial examination. The same goes for carbon dioxide baths and every other treatment you may be looking forward to after a morning in the tracks. The background to treatment by climate is on our climate therapy page.

What to bring

Few guests arrive with skis on the roof, and that is fine — equipment can be sorted locally through the information centre. What to reckon with:

• Daylight. In December and January dusk falls around four in the afternoon. Go up in the morning.
• Layers and a flask. The wind on the plateaus is not the wind on the colonnade.
• Shoes for the way back. There is a stretch of town between the tracks and the hotel lobby.
• An offline map. The colour waymarking is good, but junctions disappear under snow — and the green skating loop is not waymarked at all.

The full packing list for a winter stay is in what to pack for a spa stay.

Why it works differently here

You can ski cross-country in a hundred places in Czechia, and most of them have better snow. Mariánské Lázně offers something else: twenty minutes after you put the skis away you can be in a pool. Hotel Hvězda has the largest pool in town, and the Roman Baths of 1896 are in Nové Lázně — the distance between track and water is one you would drive anywhere else. An overview of the houses, their pools and their saunas is on the accommodation page, and a comparison of the seasons on best time to visit.

If you are still weighing up a winter here, start with our winter guide. Cross-country skiing is only one of its forms — the one almost nobody expects.

Sources

Studies and official documents this article relies on. Our content does not replace medical advice.

1. Town of Mariánské Lázně — Cross-country skiing (official website, leisure / sport / winter sports) — About 90 km of track are groomed regularly, 90% of routes have two lanes; after fresh snow full grooming takes around three days; routing of tracks A, B, C, E; current conditions at skinordicml.cz.
2. Town of Mariánské Lázně — Cross-Country Ski Resort Mariánské Lázně (trail map, four-language leaflet) — Plateaus at 800–850 m a.s.l.; starting points Golf Course, Králův kámen gamekeeper's lodge, Pension Nimrod; track lengths A 9.2 / B 8.2 / C 6.4 / E, F 2.5 and 4.6 km; trail rules; information centre contact. Published by the town, design PLANstudio 2009 — lengths match the operator's current listing.
3. Skiareál Mariánky — Cross-country tracks (operator's listing) — Five loops: red 9.2 km, blue 8.2 km, yellow 6.4 km, green 2.4 km, pink (Kladská) 4.6 km; grooming by the Ski Nordic Mariánské Lázně club.
4. Skiareál Mariánky — Koliba–Krakonoš cabin cable car (official website) — Described by the operator as the oldest cabin cable car still in operation in Czechia, running on a pulse system; summer season 18 April – 28 October 2026, in winter (December to March) daily 9:00–16:00, also carrying pedestrians.
5. Town of Mariánské Lázně — Skiareál Mariánky (sport in town) — The area lies about 400 m from the spa colonnade; in winter open daily 9:00–16:00 to skiers, snowboarders and pedestrians; evening skiing on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays.
6. České sjezdovky — Mariánské Lázně (pistes and lifts) — Krakonoška 1,000 m (red, 106 m vertical), Slalomák I 300 m (black), Slalomák II 300 m (red), children's ski park 80 m; 1.68 km in total; altitude 648–720 m; cabin cable car 600 m and 350 persons/hour, two drag lifts, a children's rope tow and a magic carpet. The prices shown there are from the 2024/25 season.
7. Czech Tourist Club, Mariánské Lázně branch — "Zimním krajem léčivých vod", 44th edition (event details) — Ski crossing and walking march, 1 February 2025; start at the Hotel School building, finish at Hotel Krakonoš; ski routes 10–20 km, walking routes from 10 km. Entry fee and side programme apply to the 2025 edition.
8. Ski Nordic Mariánské Lázně — trail rules and grooming report — The club that grooms the tracks: grooming status, webcam and rules — no dogs in the tracks, head-torch skiing discouraged in the Rájov–Myslivna–Homolka area, the Golf area recommended for evenings.
9. SNOW.cz — Cabin lifts with "eggs" in Czechoslovakia (part 2), and Lanová dráha Koliba – Krakonoš (Wikipedia) — Built 1988–1993, first put into operation in October 1993, trial winter season 1993/94, permanent scheduled service from 6 November 1998. Corroborated by https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanová_dráha_Koliba_–_Krakonoš.
10. Geopark Egeria — Smraďoch (Slavkov Forest) — Nature reserve about 5 km from Mariánské Lázně; carbon dioxide of deep origin predominates, while the hydrogen sulphide is produced near the surface by bacteria; the boardwalk starts roughly 200 m beyond the former Nimrod forest restaurant on the road to Prameny.
11. Town of Mariánské Lázně — Ceremonial end of the Singing Fountain season 2026 — The season ends on 31 October 2026; the fountain is out of operation over the winter.

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