Bukovel: private ski lessons & instructors

Bukovel is Ukraine's biggest ski resort, and its youngest-looking. It was founded in 2000 beside the village of Polianytsia, in the Nadvirna district of Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, and its first lift went up from the end of 2001; it grew so fast that in 2012 it was called the fastest-growing mountain resort in the world, and today it presents itself as the largest in Eastern Europe. The skiing spreads over five wooded summits — Bukovel (1,127 m), Babyn Pohar (1,180 m), Chorna Kleva (1,241 m), Dovha (1,372 m, the top of the area) and the lower slopes of Bulchynokha — with around 67 km of runs on some twenty lifts between 874 and 1,372 m.

The map is organised by lift: every run carries the number of the lift that serves it plus a letter, from 1A to 1E, 2A to 2D and so on up to 22C, and letters on their own mark the links between sectors. Every piste has snowmaking, and five runs — 1C, 1E, 2A, 2C and 7A — are floodlit for evening skiing. The war shapes the day here too: the lifts stop whenever an air-raid alert is declared for the region and restart when it is lifted, and nothing runs during the curfew. Teaching is regulated by the resort itself: only instructors from the schools Bukovel has accredited may give lessons on its slopes.