Ukraine Hoverla 2061 m

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UKRAINE HOVERLA 2061 M

HOVERLA IN THE CARPATHIAN MOUNTAINS

Hoverla (Ukrainian: Говерла, Hoverla; Hungarian: Hóvár; Romanian: Hovârla; Goverla, Polish: Howerla) at 2,061 metres (6,762 ft), is the highest mountain in Ukraine and part of the Carpathian Mountains.

The mountain is located in the Eastern Beskids, in the Chornohora region. The slopes are covered with beech and spruce forests, above which there is a belt of sub-alpine meadows called polonyna in Ukrainian. At the eastern slope there is the main spring of the Prut River. The name is of Hungarian origin and means 'snow fortress'. Hoverla is composed of sandstone, a sedimentary rock type.

2019-05-17 The Carpathian Mountains - I have waited a long time to visit this place. I flew to Ivano-Frankivsk via Kiev. At arrival on IFO-airport it was like traveling in a time machine to the 1920s. Not much had been changed since Lenin ruled. First thing I noticed was that the runway consisted of concrete block with grass growing between the cuts. I wonder when they last time did some kind of maintenance on this runway.

Flying a Embraer RJ145 made it even more special. A very small aircraft with one seat on left side and two seats on the rights side.

My plan was to rent a car and drive from IFO to Vorokhta but I canceled the car rental when I realised how cheap it is to go by taxi in Ukraine. In Vorokhta the taxi driver let me off on a street which he said was the central part of the village. It was just a square with some restaurants, cafées and a bank.

I looked for my hotel, Skarbivska, on Google Maps and found out it was on a abandoned way full of clay where my rental car probably wont have made it.

Turned out that I was the only guest at the entire hotel, and the owners who lived in a seperate hous in the garden. The owners could not speak a word in english. So we used Google Translate to understand the most basal you need to know to go through a check in. After leaving my packing at the hotel I went out to explore Vorokhta.

2019-05-18 Woke up early and met my local guide Nazar at 7 clock. Before my departure I had been in contact with a guide operator named Edelweiss Travel. I had booked a guided group tour to the top of Hoverla. Since everyone else in the group had cancelled their booking due to bad weather it was only me and the guide. I can truly recommend these operator, very easy correspondence with them from the beginning to the end. And they are a service minded company with an experienced guide.

If you want to go to Hoverla you need to pass the entrance to the National Park and pay a fee before you can go to Zaroslyak where the hiking trails starts. The road from the national park entrance up to Zaroslyak is in really bad condition.

The first part of the hiking trail is dense forest, later on it thins out and you can after some minutes of hiking see the top of Hoverla. Usualy it takes around 3 hours to reach the summit. But we walked quite fast and only took a few short breaks for drinking so we reached the summit in 1 hour and 50 minutes. It was a lovely day even if it had been some rain earlier and it was a little bit cloudy.