Oh yeah, forgot to finish that story about the high ridge line in the Ukrainian Carpathians. We (Jim and I) started hiking at 1630 after hitching with a rafting outfit and then paying the driver another 50 грівень to take us the last 7km to the trail head(we forgot to bargain, but since the first 9km were free, it's ok). Then we bought lots of bread and cookies and started walking up the hill. We took bets on when the first snow would be visible. Jim is recovering from a high ankle sprain and I have tendinitis in my achilles so we sort of hobbled up the hills, past the cheese cabin (unfortunately too early for the sheep to be up in the mountains, so no cheese yet), past tree line, across snow slides and over boulders until the old top of the hills opened up (so old that not much sharpness remains) into a beautiful flower covered tundra.
Getting dark temperature dropping nice campsite except for the boulders under the tent stove running low on fuel last three cities had no camp fuel will be easy summit in the morning up black mountain the 4th highest in Ukraine 2028m buckwheat dinner not all the way cooked spicy ketchup wash dishes later to cold to hang outside the tent sleep
sun hidden long rising late start summit by 0900
back to get the now aired out tent and sleeping bags and started on our 17km walk to the base of Hoverla the highest mountain in Ukraine which at less than 8000ft is really not very high but still cool even if the neighboring Romanian mountains are so obviously taller walking and more walking need a real hiking pack and boots completely dead nice walking sticks found on trail both of some fruity wood lost trail only once under snow lots of hikers going other direction, difficult to melt snow for water carrying ice cold nalgenes inside our jackets to melt water partly sunny so many purple crocuses dark clouds gathering some rain drops hurry to lee side but find no wind break more time before sunset tent up mountain tops shrouded in mist cold wind no camp fuel left break and sausage for dinner early to bed.
That's not rain landing on the rain fly sounds more like grasshoppers bummer its actually ice pellets nothing visible pack up and summit before breakfast snow blowing trail invisible no compass or map trying to cut back in correct direction steep icy snow face much quicker slide down on butts avoiding rock wedgies snow getting wetter lower altitude rain at freezing bushwhacking so wet breakfast needed 1000 wring out socks good thing their wool argue about whether to continue bushwhacking back in direction of trail not sure how far in that direction or follow goat path down to who knows where decided goat path because drier and easier going two hours goat sheep logging truck road and much lower later first people all day have fire invite us for tea nice to dry and warm up new friends still 10km to train station we've ended up in another oblast like crossing a state border without even knowing it walking easy flat now police checkpoint didn't register for back country camping good thing I took off my hat and addressed him in the formal and he was drunk longest 10km in a while making Jim miss his girlfriend who is leaving for Prague an interesting last few km to train station a tiny village not on our road map in fact there is no road only a train station pretty close to Romania two hours on slow 3rd class train unhappy drunk dirty men who feel no hope missed bus in яремча making Jim miss his train my fault because trusted hand signals of driver instead of just stubbornly getting on the bus I was lucky catching last bus from Oblast center north toward home Jim waiting till 0100 for next train through Kyiv almost missed stop sleep easy on flat floor so warm indoors thank you fellow volunteer for letting me crash on floor
Next day at last through Lviv and home missed three days of school trees I planted still alive projects and clubs not really active without me where is sustainability got to put so much effort into getting people to do things they don't normally do and are not paid to do all day spent proving that this is good for students school Ukraine our town but some victories small and sweet
