This report is about the tour: Ice and Stones
Impressions of the Ice and Stones hike in January 2012
The closer the New Year holidays are, the more conflicting feelings they evoke. Yes, the opportunity to break the usual weekly work and leisure rhythm and the prospect of ten days of doing nothing called and beckoned, but at the same time it was very alarming. The prospect of “guests and guests”, very attractive for an ordinary weekend, did not seem so interesting for a whole decade and was seen as a vicious circle from which there was no way out, and the snowless Moscow winter only aggravated the situation.
The search for an alternative in mid-December was like a brainstorm, but did not last long. Experience in outdoor activities and Internet skills have done their job and now the choice has been made - Crimea, Outdoor Ukraine, “Ice and Stones”, January 3-8.
Road
It would be possible to omit this part, but it turned out that not only in summer, but also in winter, getting from Moscow to Simferopol is a whole story. There are luxury train tickets for 12 thousand or slightly cheaper plane tickets on free sale. Therefore, at the beginning, Moscow-Belgorod, Belgorod-Simferopol tickets were taken, and only three days before the New Year, Moscow-Simferopol tickets appeared and we parted with the previously purchased tickets.
The New Year's champagne bubbled, the caviar sandwiches were eaten, we, like other dear congratulated Russians, breathed a sigh of relief and on the morning of January 2 we boarded the train, which took us on the morning of the 3rd to the meeting point, the Simferopol railway station.
Group and instructor
As it became known a little later, two dozen people were recruited for the tour, who in turn were divided into two groups according to age. Our group consisted of 9 people 26-40 years old + instructor. The second group was younger. Despite the fact that there are wonderful people everywhere, such a division looks very reasonable. The groups moved separately, but sometimes could meet for overnight stays.
Our march was led by instructor Anton, a harmonious and friendly person who is in love with all types of outdoor activities and Crimea. Anton knows the route so well that in some places it seemed that he could walk it with his eyes closed. Now we can say for sure that thanks to Anton we had the best places to relax, dine and spend the night.
We rationally used the daylight hours, which literally “turned off” immediately after we set up tents and lit a fire. Anton made slight adjustments to the route so that we could have time without straining, avoid excess dirt and slush, sweat at will, and get the best angles for photographs. In general, special thanks to Outdoor Ukraine for the instructor!
Yes, meeting the instructor of another group (Sergei and his assistant Tasya) shows that the guys were also lucky. However, it’s better to let them write about it themselves...
Route and weather
The route line is well described on the website and there is no need to write about it separately. Difficulty level: comfortable trekking. Yes, if a person is going for the first time, it may seem more difficult, but if a person is going to the PVD, then the route will not seem difficult to him. We were lucky with the weather - almost every day there was sun, no wind, no snow, no rain. On the last night, the rain lightly knocked on the awnings of our tents and stopped.
Meals
The standard menu for a six-day hike, shown on the website, coincides with reality only in terms of breakfast. This doesn't mean it's worse, just slightly different. For example, thank God that there were no sugar pills, but the usual sugar.
Lunch was very filling and consisted of a decent quality and quantity of sausage and cheese, a can of pate and sprat, chocolate, bagels and dates. It’s good that for a significant part of the journey, for one reason or another, we had bread - crispbread, which they provided us with, of course, a product for everyone. However, someone in the group liked them. Unfortunately, there were no dried bananas. We washed everything down with tea from a thermos, saved from breakfast.
For dinner there was more stew than stated (2 for 525g), of average quality. For tea there were cookies, biscuits, and candied fruits. There was a shortage of vegetables and fruits, as well as soup. Yes, of course, you can’t dry cucumbers on a hike, but eating a clove of garlic at night would be nice. It gets dark early, we set up camp accordingly, and dinner turned out around 6 pm. Around ten o'clock you want to eat something else, so it is useful to have some kind of supplement to your hiking food in your backpack (honey, lard, sausage, onions, garlic, vitamins, crackers, nuts, chocolate, etc.). Yes, if you drink coffee, be sure to take it - it’s not in the layout.
The critical points here are purely subjective, and in general, the nutrition is in order. The food was planned out until the end of the hike and ended by lunchtime on the sixth day, not, say, the fifth.
Bonuses
Thanks to instructor Sergei, on Christmas evening we had a real camp bathhouse, assembled from stones, with swimming just above the Dzhur-Dzhursky waterfall. How nice it is to open the swimming season on January 6th. And on the 8th we went to the sea near the village of Rybachy. Everyone wanted it so much that we covered the descent (15 km) in three hours. Right opposite the bus station, we undressed and plunged into the winter Black Sea!
Thank you
Thank you, Outdoor Ukraine! With your help, we:
- escaped the captivity of the festive feast, from the asphalt-concrete jungle;
- felt among like-minded people;
- “grounded” by replacing the bed with a rug and the blanket with a sleeping bag;
- took a deep breath of fresh air;
- squinted in the sun and enjoyed the panoramas of the mountainous Crimea.
Until we meet again...))
Ilyin Nikolay, Moscow, www.ilyin@gmail.com, VKontakte group http://vkontakte.ru/club33974803