Mountain pasture |
View of Sheshory village below. Sheshory hosts a yearly music festival with groups and thousands of visitors from all over Europe |
Wildflowers |
View of forest and meadows |
Shady sections of the trail were very muddy after some recent rain |
Other parts were plenty dry |
Cattle are everywhere. Don't leave any backpacks with food around! |
A mountain hut |
Some local men and boys come up here to live and work each summer |
Here's what they fed us — a cornbread-type dish, cheese, bread (from the village below), and butter from sheep milk |
This man is making cheese and/or butter |
They're eating the same things we are — plus Obolon beer and Coca-Cola |
These beech woods are systematically thinned by local loggers |
A clever way to get a nice drink of water as you walk up the path |
This sign says "use fires to keep wild animals away." Just kidding. |
Suddenly this footbridge doesn't seem so sturdy anymore |
Metal decorative roofs are a common attribute of Hutsul homes |
Catholicism dominates in the region, and many if not most homes have a shrine outside in a visible location |
Some very rare signs indicating where this "environmental-educational path" (i.e. nature trail) leads |
Here locals are drying pieces of wood in the window frames of an unfinished house for use in souvenirs |
Here people have created some sort of oven. Every other house has a souvenir workshop. The Hutsuls continued their crafts even under Soviet rule and were allowed a bit more independence |
Another house "in the works" |
One of the most colorful cemeteries I've seen |
A finely decorated church |
The only paid, guarded campground (like those all over Europe) I have seen in western Ukraine was here in Sheshory village |
Rest spots like this are a convenient place to stop your car (or bike) for a picnic by the roadside |
Riding my bike further into the mountains |
Church and store at a pass at 830 m. |
View down the valley |
Riding through places like this is a real pleasure, however, usually there is development alongside Carpathian roads |
Verkhovyna at sunset. In the distance is the Chornohora ridge, still with snow in early July |
Verkhovyna and Kosiv are tourist centers of Hutsulschyna. The standard of living seems somewhat higher than in areas of Transcarpathia |
The Cheremosh river. The tractor is trying to move rocks around |
Ukrainian road repairs. I rode through a patch of tar in one spot and created quite a mess for myself |
Further south near the Romanian border you will be asked to present your passport at a checkpoint. Relatively few tourists visit this area of the Carpathians, and the road is 'barely' paved |
Sunlight illuminates meadows and forests at 800 m. |
Colorful wildflowers |
At some point the road becomes gravel and stays so for the 22 km climb up and over Shurdyn pass (1250 m.), which is supposedly closed to automobile traffic (unless you're local, judging by the cars that passed me) |
At 1100 m. you can see ridge after ridge to the northwest, culminating in the Chornohora ridge (where Hoverla Mt. is) |
This sign says "Warning! Ahead is a difficult and dangerous section of road 22 km. in length. Be careful!" Too late — I've just come down it at near breakneck speed |
