Waterfall Maiden's Tears, Yaremche

Maiden's Tears is a waterfall in the Ukrainian Carpathians (Gorgany massif). It is located within the Yaremche City Council of Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, west of the city of Yaremche. The height of the waterfall is 1.7 meters. The waterfall is located on the Zhonka River (a left tributary of the Prut), at the point where the stream crosses a horizontal rock formation.

The waterfallis remote from the main trade and transportation routes of the Carpathians, and has long been known only to locals as a cozy place and a safe haven from enemies, no matter what cohort or nation they belong to. That is why the history of this waterfall in the Zhonka River tract, as well as its ancient role as a secret place, is hidden from prying eyes.

Perhaps, people of the Mesolithic era stopped here for a short stay, or Ukrainians of the princely era took refuge here, fleeing from the invasion of Tatar-Mongol nomads who plundered their native land, or got a moment of rest traveling a long way from Volodymyr-Volynskyi to Pokutia and Podnistrovia along the Bug-Seret waterway.

During the reign of the Habsburg crown over these lands, the opryshky repeatedly used the remote Yaremcha Virgin Tears for temporary hideouts for three centuries. It is possible that the famous Oleksa Dovbush (1700-1745), who knew the area around Dora well and had a cousin and nephew in Yaremche, visited here from time to time, which makes it quite likely that he visited this cozy place.

However, the real fame came to the waterfall with the transformation of Yaremche into a green tourism mecca, when the Deliatyn-Yablunytsia road (1847) and the Deliatyn-Voronenko railway line (1894) were already laid past. To entertain the distinguished public that inhabited the first fifty wooden and brick private cottages of the village at that time, the waterfall emerged from oblivion.

Since then, despite all the storms of the twentieth century with their fall of empires, two world wars, changes of citizenship and state system, each time after the devastating blows of fate on the Ukrainian land, Yaremche was reborn to become one of the main mountain recreation centers of independent Ukraine. And with this, the route to Yaremche's Maiden Tears has gained wide popularity among tourists, having been modernized in the form of resting places equipped with wooden gazebos for those who walk among the centuries-old trees along the rocky path.

Located two kilometers from the last building on Hrushevskoho Street along the trail that runs through the Zhonky tract, the Maiden's Tears waterfall is a single-cascade stream falling from a height of about two meters of rock located along the riverbed closer to the right bank. After a small splash about one and a half meters deep, the fast-moving stream of a mountain spring, winding through centuries-old forest thickets, makes its way with cold jets to the distant Black Sea.

Location: Ukraine, Ivano-Frankivsk region, Yaremche, Zhonka tract.

By car on the highway H09 (Mukachevo - Ivano-Frankivsk - Lviv) to the southern outskirts of Yaremche along Svobody Street, then to the end of Hrushevskoho Street, from where you can walk along the path to the waterfall for about an hour. By public transport to Yaremche, and then along Svobody - Hrushevskoho streets through the aviary farm and along the path to the waterfall for about an hour.