Mountain Polyanytske Lake (Dead Lake)

To the east of the lake, within one kilometer, there are many rocks-boulders in the forest, some of them up to 20 meters high. There are places where the rocks form impassable walls up to 200 meters long. Starting gently in the lowlands, they end in steep cliffs. This feature was actively used by wolves for their deer raids. An animal driven to a narrow sharp top was doomed.

You can get here from the villages of Polianytsia, Bukovets, Sukil of Bolekhiv City Council, or Trukhaniv of Skole district. Our way is from Bukovets. The route is not better, closer or easier than any other. The goal was to walk along the paths that I used to walk a long time ago and reach the Dovbush Rocks. At the end of the village, near the sawmill, we turn right from the hotel, cross the bridge over the Sukil River and immediately find ourselves in the forest. Then there is a forest road, and a stream with many playful waterfalls runs parallel to it. To tell you a secret, I was guided by them when choosing the route. Once upon a time, when I was still with "Smena", I ran around here trying to take pictures of a strange bird, the olyapka, and the waterfalls themselves. When was that... And where are those birds! Two kilometers of tolerable road, no birds, cloudy, dark in the back. What kind of photography is there? On both sides of the slopes is the forest element, the post-felling state. It's something you have to see. And the stream is murmuring... Further on, the road as such disappears altogether, there is not even a path in some places. We jump from stone to stone along the stream bed. (I chose this route for my lady companion!). Twenty years ago, after heavy rains and floods, everything was washed away, including the road and bridges. I'm happy in my heart, because you can't cut a forest from here. Nature itself did its best. There is no equipment that can get through this pile of boulders, rapids, tree debris, stumps, landslides in nature. Not even a tank... And then there are such fir trees, two times as tall as you are... And no traces of a tractor.

Finally, the surface of the lake began to show through the tree trunks. You always get an exciting feeling when you approach it like this. There are not many natural mountain lakes in the Carpathians, and if for someone it is just a "puddle," for a local resident it is something. I remember what an impression it made when I first saw it. On a fine summer day, while wandering among the mountains in a ripe spruce forest, I felt some freshness and coolness of the water. Going down the slope, I came across a stream and followed it to the lake. The lake was surrounded by spreading spruce trees that reflected on the water surface. It was hard to tell whether these fir trees were below or above, where the sky was, and I couldn't tell at first. My head is spinning, and I feel some kind of loss of orientation in space. The water was crystal clear, and through the many meters of depth I could see the bottom with the smallest details. And the silence around me was frightening. I just stood there frozen...

And again, once upon a time... Somewhere in the seventies, they began to cut down these spruce trees above the lake. The foreman of the logging team, a hero of social work, a tractor driver, dragged the sawn trees in full length and soaked each bundle in the lake. The skidding was carried out along the very edge of the reservoir, with a right-angle turn. So it turned out that the tractor was moving along the road, and the tops of the trees were on the bend across the lake, with all the dirt and debris... And as a mockery of this, a full house is set up nearby: - "Mountain lake. Rare in the Carpathians. Protected by law". It was defended for a long time, for many years. And something is no longer right. It began to overgrow, algae appeared. The unfortunate tourists are also contributing, cutting down everything nearby for fuel.

We are climbing to the top of the ridge, heading for the Dovbush Rocks. We pass this old clearance where fir trees once (again!) grew. I think that on the forestry inventory maps, young plantings of spruce and larch are "abundant" here... Of course! We are planting them! The Carpathians will be green forever! In fact, there are aspen and birch "groves"... And nothing else.

Here is the top. Below are villages, towns, and there are the Rocks, as if scattered among the forest. It's a nice day, birds are chirping, the meadows are covered with tall grass, and flowers of different colors warm the soul. Everything is good.

Not to mention the fact that we again "stumbled" on a clear-cut overgrown with rowan and elderberry, and it was in the protected area, and in another place the trunks of these long-suffering spruce trees were "damaged by bark beetles". And so somehow it all went wrong. I just wanted to take some nice photos... (Source: https://foto-kadr.io.ua/)