Chernyk. In the Middle of Nowhere

Picturesque dead end in Ukrainian Carpathians

From long ago, a lifetime in the mountains gravitated to river valleys. Closer to water which gives life, under protection from piercing winds, which do not allow staying in the highlands for a long time. Roads appeared through valleys and accreted with human habitation. That’s typical that a whole village has only one or two streets above the river, but they are stretched over many kilometers.

From some of these valleys, it’s possible to climb almost the upper reaches of rivers, then to the mountains passes with another world waiting on the opposite side. And some valleys remained dead ends. It seemed a good option for me to escape to one such dead end at the current time. Even if for one week.

That’s what I did at the beginning of August. The week of vacation is worth a lot for mental health, especially in a place where time stopped a long ago. We were based in Chernyk village, 60 km from Ivano-Frankivsk, the nearest regional center. I thought such a wilderness could be only far away from large cities, but no. A road to Chernyk saves it from civilization because of its low quality, especially on the last 10–12 km. Also, there’s not an extensive choice of places to overnight (if you don’t have tents), exactly one. It is a “Zatyshok” homestead that can place 8–12 people.

It is located almost in the village center. The house is fully wooden, so we lived inside the acoustic system where it seemed to hear even neighbors’ thoughts. For one week, it’s not a problem, but locals live in such houses all their lives. The homestead is between ordinary village yards, so neighbors’ cats visited us often. Marusya asked for food, and an unnamed red boy arrived only to show us how awesome he is.

The house is higher than other huts, which allowed us to look at mountains in different directions. The best photos on this vacation I took were not on hikes but just from the veranda, which means it is placed successfully.

Chernyk lies in a deep dead-end valley of a stream with the same name. The creek flows into the Zelenytsia river, which flows into the Bystrytsia. Even if you won’t hike to the nearest hills, anyway, it’s interesting just to walk in the village. Homesteads surrounded by mountains are unbelievably aesthetic, with wooden huts, horses, and other flavors. There’s only 15 km straight to Yaremche or Bukovel, the most popular places in the Carpathians, but how different reality is here! I often wanted to call it the “lost paradise” but stopped on the “lost world” definition. As for paradise, it’s a too hardcore place with the necessity to work grievously just to survive.

The village has no old architectural monuments. A modern, big church is surprisingly well integrated into the landscape. At a cemetery on a hill above it, soldiers of the UPA are buried. In this backcountry, they fought against red occupiers for the longest time. Not far from Chernyk, the “Berezovachka” tract is located. A group of colonel Hrim acted here until 1954.

Another urban highlight of the village is a museum in a school (which is proudly called a “gymnasium” now and has two buildings). The school looks like a museum by itself, thanks to its flavor. Here, ancient stoves easily coexist with modern multimedia boards, and paintings by schoolchildren can be much more interesting than praised contemporary art.

The exposition is typical for such a place: modest, imbued with the spirit of antiquity, and soulful.

But let’s look at the main thing people arrive here — the mountains. Actually, one trail starts directly from the homestead to an unnamed hill. It has a few tiers. From the lower levels, you can see Chernyk; and the Zelena village in Zelenytsia and Bystrytsia valleys from the upper ones.

It’s comfortable to climb here in the evening or morning to catch beautiful lighting. There’s impossible to see full-fledged sunrise or sunset, but pink evening clouds — of course:

Or mesmerizing morning fogs. To select the day to take courage on early wakeup, I orientated on the forecast on the internet, but I suspect it’s typical views for this place.

A mountain range above the opposite Zelenytsia coast is called Sukhyi Verkh (“Dry top”). And really, the trees on it are dry and poor (because of human activity, I guess). This ridge is well-visible from our homestead. In the daytime, lawns with horses are the most catch the eyes. Especially the white one. One day, we visited him, treated him with carrots, and got to know him closer. For the sake of such a handsome horse, it is not a pity to climb on the hill through thickets and swamps.

Two waterfalls are located directly in Chernyk. The first one has the same name as the village, situated 3 km southwest of the center. It has two cascades dissimilar from each other. You can bathe in the lower cascade on a hot summer day if you love ice water (I don’t).

The Kudrynets waterfall is situated 7.4 km southeast of the center (remind what I’ve said about distances in mountain villages). It is smaller, but I liked it more.

Worth mentioning which ridge is nearest to Chernyk. It is called Horhany and is famous because of the placers of giant stones. Somewhere it’s possible to find such rocks in an entirely photographic view after a minimal climb. One such place is in Breduletskyi nature reserve. The uplift to the stones goes through some enchanted forest.

Zelenytsia is also charming inside the nature reserve and has green water, according to its name. But it’s not that sickly green we used to see in summer ends in lowland rivers.

Worth mentioning that people extract oil in this district, including around Chernyk. Just casually, we saw two points with oil pumps. In one of them, they were working actively.

One of the exciting places outside of walking distance of the village is the high-mountain arboretum which is located above the Bystrytsia river valley. Only 19 km from Chernyk, the road to it takes about an hour due to its condition (and not every car can pass it). The last civilization point on this road is the Bystrytsia village. It impresses with various green shades and deceptively looks like it is on a plain. In fact, there are still mountain tops and ridges around it, but the village huts stand almost on the same level as them.

Then some more twisting road, and finally, we arrived at the arboretum created as an experiment in 1963. It’s the most alpine in Ukraine. Directly from it, we could see beautiful landscapes of the surrounding mountains, like the Dovbushanka massive, which looks like the dragon’s back from here. Hoverla, the highest Ukrainian mountain, is well-visible too.

We went 4 kilometers with a small height gain by the Tavpyshyrka ridge to its highest point of 1499 m above sea level. On my mobile navigator, this top is called Podyny, but I didn’t hear this name from locals. From the top, the Big and Small Syvulia mountains are well-visible. Big Syvulia is the highest in the Horhany massive with 1837 m. A few hundred meters further, we found an old border pillar of 1920. There is a frontier between the two Ukrainian regions, but earlier, it was the border between big dead empires. It was strange to realize there weren’t any villages or roads for kilometers around us, only trails through forgotten passes…

On all described roads, bilberry was the greatest of our retarders. It drew so strongly. Also, we caught raspberries, but lingonberry and blackberry were only starting. Getting good vitamin doses in August is not a problem.

I could show and tell about this small piece of the Carpathians more and more, but everything must end. Note that both the overall landscapes and details look equally stunning here.

I shan’t hide, one week wasn’t enough, and I didn’t want to return. Of course, I mean rest but not about permanent residence here. Everything is so different compared to all I used to. And as for these people, it would be unusual to live for a long time in a big city with its crowds, supermarkets, and traffic jams. We are so different being so close, in a few hours of driving inside the single country, and it’s valuable.

The people of the mountains live synchronously with daylight, so I doubt I could be caught for curfew violation (but I didn’t check). After sunset, the village sleeps quickly and dives into total darkness. I can’t remember such bright stars in the sky anywhere. It seems nothing changed in this enchanted world, even in this awful year. Being there, on another side of the mountains, I could have thought all these horrors wouldn’t continue here. And all who passed away are still alive.

Both cities and people.