Mt Kukul

German soldiers killed in the First World War are buried on Kukul, at the top and just below it, and the ground around the graves still holds poured-concrete emplacements and the wreck of a Hungarian gun position. In summer, cattle graze within sight of them.

That is the mountain in one image. Kukul is 1,539m, north of the Chornohora massif, on the line where Ivano-Frankivsk oblast meets Zakarpattia, and the climb is long rather than steep — four to five hours on the usual route. The top holds a working dairy, a war cemetery nobody has tidied, and Hoverla and Petros square in the middle of the horizon.

Where Kukul sits

Vorokhta and Voronenko sit below the mountain to the north, Lazeshchyna and Yasinia to the northwest. Polonyna Kukul, the pasture that shares its name, lies at around 1,440m, with Zakukul and Labieska running off the same crest — between them, the treeless space people come for.

The ridge Kukul caps is an oblast boundary, and it is older than that. Under the Habsburgs it divided Galicia from Hungary; between the wars it was an international frontier, Poland on the northern side, Czechoslovakia on the southern. Nothing marks it now but the wind.

War graves above a working dairy

None of the war remains are signposted or tidied: the small German cemetery, a scatter of concrete positions built for the fighting that came across this ridge, the ruins of a Hungarian battery. You walk past them on the way to the summit.

The pasture below is a business rather than a set piece. Polonyna Kukul works roughly fifty head of cattle out of seven buildings, and the men who live up there through the warm months make the three Hutsul cheeses in sequence: budz, the fresh wheel; brynza, the salted crumble it becomes; and vurda, the whey cheese that comes last. Cheese and milk are usually for sale at the huts; a bed is not. In season the bunks belong to the herders, and out of season most huts are locked.

Crocuses, and when they actually open

Kukul’s busiest fortnight has little to do with the summit. When Heuffel’s crocus comes up — low, purple, in patches that run to the edge of the last snow — the Voronenko trail fills with people carrying tripods. On the western slopes the flowers usually open around mid-April; the higher meadows follow into the first days of May.

Usually is the load-bearing word. The bloom tracks the weather, not the calendar, and can shift a fortnight either way, so check the Ukrainian hiking groups before you commit. And leave the flowers alone: Crocus heuffelianus is in Ukraine’s Red Book, and picking it is an offence.

Four ways up

Voronenko is the standard approach. From the railway halt, walk about 2km up the valley to the railway tunnel, where an information board marks the start of the yellow blazes; from there it is roughly 13km and 720m of ascent, four to five hours at a steady pace. The route runs through the Prypir clearing, polonyna Bukovyna with its huts and spring, polonyna Hryhorivka — where Petros and Hoverla first show themselves — and polonyna Serednia.

The short way starts at Zavoiela near Vorokhta and passes the Carpathian National Nature Park’s Chornohora checkpoint: about 7km with 580m of climb. The first two kilometres up an old road are the steepest thing on the mountain; after that the angle eases and the forest ends on the lower part of polonyna Zakukul with the whole Chornohora crest in front of you. It is also the best end to finish at, since the checkpoint road runs down to the Bukovel–Vorokhta–Verkhovyna highway.

From Vorokhta itself it is about 12km and 800m of ascent, mostly under trees and often boggy — boots, not trainers. For a traverse rather than an up-and-down, start at Lazeshchyna, follow the Foresok stream onto the ridge, then carry on over polonyna Labieska and Mt Kychera into Vorokhta.

A night out, and how to get there

Kukul is a good first night out in the Carpathians if you carry a tent: water at the Bukovyna and Labieska springs, flat ground on Zakukul, sunrise with the valleys under cloud. Weekends are the exception — in crocus season the Voronenko trail is busy enough to spoil the point. Go midweek, or go in October.

Both start villages sit on the Lviv–Rakhiv railway, and Vorokhta also has buses from Ivano-Frankivsk on the Verkhovyna run. Voronenko is the smaller of the two, but its halt is closer to the trailhead, which is why most walkers use it. Driving, take the H-09 to Vorokhta, then turn off for Voronenko and continue about 5km.

Spring is for the crocuses, summer for cheese and bilberries, autumn for the air, which clears through September and October until the far ridges sharpen. Winter empties the crest and makes it hard work. Whichever month you pick, the walk pairs with Vorokhta’s stone viaducts of 1894–95 and the wooden Church of the Nativity, raised in 1615 and moved here from Yablunytsia in 1780.