This report is about the tour: Mini-Gorgany 🗓 July 2020
Who goes where, and we are in the Carpathians. This time it will be a children's (or rather family) Gorganami hike. The railway ignores tourists for now, so we quickly came up with a circular route to make it convenient to return to the cars. Things are folded, condensed milk is stored, we start in the morning.
The first morning of the hike (along with insects) inspired some linguistic research. The midge is now so corrosive that we:
- came up with a new curse word (there are children all around)
- found in the dictionary a completely official term “trash” (it’s not just what you thought, but the same midge)
- invented another curse word specifically for manufacturers of non-working repellents
But in fact, there is only one way out - to run forward and not stop.
Traditionally, Gorgany is considered more difficult (than Montenegro), due to those large boulders on the peaks. But in fact, the adventure begins much earlier - the mountain is not yet visible, the road is still marked on the map, Google sincerely wishes you a speed of 4 km/h..., and you are already muddling through knee-deep mud or storming some kind of darkness littered by the wind across the path.
Tourism is a struggle. During the day, another small group moved in parallel with us - a family from the Odessa region. They were carrying an old tarpaulin tent and several bags of things in their hands, because they only had one large backpack for the three of them.
On the one hand, it was painful to watch. But there was also a certain sense of pride in them. After all, they overcame obstacles such as lack of equipment and lack of experience, got ready and went to the mountains no matter what. Against their background, my own backpack (as much as 19 kg, because we have a children's group) suddenly ceased to be the center of the Universe and a reason for sighs. What else does a tourist need?
P.S. in the evening there was a conversation that made me feel like a midget compared to my neighbors. They discussed equipment and noticed that, of course, we need to buy another tent (this one weighs 6 kg and is fastened with buttons), but the mattresses are just the bomb - comfortable and very light. What's surprising here, you ask? They had two Intex beach mattresses, 2.3 kg each! I wish I had so much strength...
What do you think about literary jewelry? I just climbed the mountain and realized that I had been deceiving people for quite a long time. Just a little, but a very long time ago.
Here's the thing:
Back in 2006, I was writing a description of the Gorganami route and came up with the concept of the “wildness” of this corner of the Carpathians. Somewhere on Hoverla there are crowds of tourists, and here near Sivulya “wild animals are burning chocolate.” How can this be depicted? Perhaps I’ll write something about privacy. This is how the following statement appeared: “When you climb to the top, you will not see a single village for many kilometers around.” It hung on the website for many years and everything was fine until today at the top of the ridge I started looking at numerous villages... I even looked at the maps! I really wanted to understand what was visible on the horizon - Frankovsk, or some kind of Nadvirnaya.
Sorry friends! I didn’t want to deceive anyone - I myself believed in this myth. It is likely that the words “no village” urgently need to be removed. But another question arises - is it permissible to leave mentions of Carpathian firs (smereka) on the site? Or maybe it would be more correct to refuse to use this word in the plural? It’s just that from that very top you can see so many stumps and empty slopes that you’re amazed at how hardworking we Ukrainians are...
I almost felt sad, but I remembered in time that evening coffee was waiting for me at the camp and happily ran on. This is how we live))
When it got a little dark and I stopped frantically photographing the sunset, the mountains and our beautiful camp, I managed to concentrate and finally found a comet in the sky - the same C/2020 F3 NEOWISE. My Facebook feed has been full of evidence of its reality for a week now, but while preparing for the hike, I didn’t have time to look up. Now everything is ok - you can relax.
While we were walking to Igrovets, I entertained the group with fables about winter hikes: Here in this very place, in a trench half-covered with snow, in January 2012 we shared frozen candy. But this path does not exist in winter, because the snow lays a layer on the ground and you walk along it, a meter above the ground, until at full speed (1.5 km/h) you fall into some hidden cavity.
And over there, in a cozy parking lot in the forest area, our tent almost blew away and at midnight I was running around coming up with new attachment points for guy ropes - like a squirrel from Ice Age was fussily burying brushwood, backpacks and snowshoes in the snow.
Our people walked, listened and quietly wondered - who are the crazy people who got themselves into such trouble? Who needs those winter hikes anyway? Meanwhile, they continued to jump on the magical Gorgan boulders, which look so aesthetically pleasing in photographs.
We arrived at the parking lot in the Pogar meadow early, quickly set up tents, organized dinner, and at first it seemed that we had every chance of falling asleep before dark. But then I remembered that I had a tripod, and ran to look for a stream. And the children ran to look for me, and then a new group of tourists passed through the clearing and I had to chat with everyone. In general, everything is fine - I didn’t carry the flashlight in vain.
Having studied the forecast, we decided not to go through the peak of Syvuli, but to go around it with a traverse. This trail is considered easy, but fallen trees can sometimes turn it into an obstacle course. However, this time everything was fine. We even had the opportunity to talk on the go and you won’t believe it, but we discussed literature, or rather the personal life of the “school” classics. Mountains inspire, no matter what you say))
In the afternoon the long-awaited cyclone arrived... and horses. We put up an awning and hid in tents to protect ourselves from the rain, but you can’t escape from horses so easily. By their behavior they clearly signaled to us that this was their clearing and we “didn’t stand there.” We had to negotiate compensation.
It rained all night, but at dawn they found a small gap in the clouds and finally rushed towards the top. Syvulya looks gloomy even in sunny weather, and even more so in a shroud of clouds. The result is a very fast and very atmospheric radial. I recommend it.
Breaking up camp in the rain is not the most pleasant experience. But we were already looking forward to returning to civilization, a hot shower and cold ice cream, so wet clothes and heavier backpacks did not make us despondent. However, some people began to look forward to drying out 4 sets of equipment...
The descent into civilization seemed to me an order of magnitude more extreme than the previous two days on the mountain ridge. The trail follows the river bed and you have to constantly move from bank to bank (over rocks and branches) and overcome powerful rubble. The children also seemed to be imbued with the process and were enthusiastically looking for a way through this maze.
It became much more difficult (psychologically) to walk when we got out onto a normal dirt road. I wanted to sleep, eat and not go anywhere. Especially when a motorcycle overtook us and it became clear that we could come here (so why go). But we heroically covered the last kilometers and were already at the cars around 5 pm. We wash our feet in the nearest stream and go to Ivano-Frankivsk to celebrate... and dry our sleeping bags.
Results: the children are happy, the midges are full, I remember the Carpathians. It's a shame that it's so rare to get out here. In addition to the hike, we should organize a classic road trip around Western Ukraine, since we have quarantines, slightly closed borders and all that.
Kirill Yasko, Kyiv