Pylypets

Polonyna Borzhava is the rare Carpathian ridge you can take in at a glance. Above roughly 1,300m the trees give out and the tops run in unbroken grass from Hymba (1,491m) to Stiy, the massif's high point at 1,681m, with nothing in the way of the eye. Pylypets lies directly beneath it, and a two-seat chairlift does most of the climbing on your behalf.

That pairing — a bare ridge and a lift onto it — is the whole proposition, and it pays off twice a year. In winter Pylypets is among the better-known ski villages in Zakarpattia; in summer the same cable carries walkers, downhill riders and people going up to fly a paraglider off the grass. The village is strung along about six kilometres of a single road at roughly 700m, which matters when you book: near the lifts is dearer and convenient, the far end cheaper and quieter, and you will be driving.

Everything hangs off the chairlift

The ride up Hymba takes fifteen to twenty minutes and sets you down short of the summit — about 1.7km of walking left, an hour at an unhurried pace. Two places at the top station turn a viewpoint into an afternoon: the Suriya tea house, which does Carpathian herb teas and pancakes filled with berries or brynza, and the Vershyna kolyba beside it. Plenty of people remember that terrace better than the summit. One warning: the lift has stopped and restarted more than once in recent years, so confirm it is turning before building a day around it.

Thirteen runs, and one honest weakness

The skiing comes to around 20km of piste over thirteen runs — two green, four blue, seven red. The long descents are on Hymba, the best close to four kilometres; beginners do better on Zhyd-Mahura, where the longest is about 1.5km. The one skiers talk about afterwards is the drop off Hymba through beech forest towards Shypit. The lift by the Zatyshok hotel is floodlit for evening skiing.

The weakness is worth knowing before you book. Snowmaking covers the Mahura run and nothing else, so in a mild winter the resort is at the mercy of what falls out of the sky. Check conditions rather than the calendar — a February date guarantees nothing on this side of the range.

Non-skiers get sledging, snow tubing, walks towards Shypit and the local ritual of a chan — a wood-fired tub of herb-steeped water, outdoors, best with snow banked around it.

Summer is the busier half

The bike park on Hymba has been running since 2011 and is among the most established in the Carpathians. Riders take bikes up on the two-seater and descend to the base; three of the marked trails are graded professional, with jumps, rock sections and timber features, and Ukrainian championship rounds have been held on them. If that is not your idea of a holiday, hire a bike anyway for the dirt road towards Rostoka, or the easy track down to Shypit Falls, a 14m cascade on Hymba's northern flank with paid entry and a car park.

Borzhava's open slopes and steady thermals also make this one of the better places in the country to fly. A tandem flight runs to a pattern — briefing, jeep to the launch, then ten to fifteen minutes over the village and the ridge — and hinges entirely on the weather, so agree the day rather than the date.

The village under the ski village

At the entrance to the village stands a wooden Church of the Nativity of the Theotokos from the second half of the 18th century — the fabric is dated variously to 1759–62 and to 1780 — with baroque cupolas, a carved arcade, an 18th-century iconostasis inside and a two-tier bell tower of 1758 beside it. This was a Carpathian settlement for two centuries before it was a resort.

A short way off is a museum most visitors never hear about: nearly thirty scale models of the wooden churches of Zakarpattia and the Ivano-Frankivsk region, opened in 2007. Several of the originals no longer stand, which is what makes the room worth twenty minutes.

Volovets, and what else is in reach

Pylypets has no station of its own. The nearest is Volovets, about 15km away and twenty minutes by road, on the main line with trains from Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv and Odesa. From there it is a bus towards Mizhhiria, a taxi, or — the sane option with skis or a bike — a transfer through your guesthouse. Drivers come over the Volovets pass, which wants winter tyres in season. That position is part of the appeal: Lake Synevyr, the brown bear rehabilitation centre near it, Kolochava and the old wooden churches of the Repynka valley are all within a day, and local operators run jeep and quad trips that string several together — useful with children, or when the ridge is in cloud.

Why here rather than the Prut valley

Come to Pylypets if you would rather have one thing done properly than a long list done adequately. Two nights is a weekend; four lets you ski or ride, walk the ridge to Stiy, and still get to Synevyr.

It is the wrong choice if you want everything within walking distance and a wide choice of kitchens — that is Yaremche, over on the Prut side, with its market, its beds and a station in the middle of town. It is the wrong base for Hoverla and the Chornohora two-thousanders, which belong to Vorokhta, a long drive around the range. What Pylypets has that neither can offer is Borzhava: broad, bare, walkable in a day, and reachable by chairlift when your legs have had enough.