Hutsulshchyna National Nature Park

The Pistynka crosses a band of rock at Sheshory and falls in steps, and under each step it has dug a pool deep enough to swim in. Waterfalls are guky here, named for the racket. The stone runs spilling off Grehit, the high point at 1,472 metres, are greghoty.

Hutsulshchyna is Hutsul land, and the park's stated purpose covers the culture of these valleys as much as the plants and animals. It is not one block of wilderness. The forest touches forty villages around Kosiv, and much of the ground inside the boundary is still worked by a state forestry enterprise and the district forest service.

Marked trails run from an hour up to a viewpoint to six hours along the Kormytura ridge. The park asks walkers to keep talking as they go, so that an animal hears them coming and leaves first.

Above the village of Kosmach, a summit at 1,464 metres holds a stone tunnel, a pit and a notched slab; the park reads the notches as marks for the solstices and equinoxes. Look west along the tunnel and Hoverla stands in the opening, 2,061 metres, where the sun set on the shortest day.

Zhang Yimou's unit worked these beech woods and meadows in September and October 2003, twelve sites inside a thirty-kilometre radius. Snow came early that autumn and would not melt, so the last fight in House of Flying Daggers was shot in it.