Bukovel 6 Day Snow Forecast

Mike from United Kingdom writes:

Have been going to Bukovel for 4 or 5 years, often multiple times per year. Why? Because it's relatively nearby (3 hours) when I go to visit my wife's family for the holidays. If it were not for that, I'd say, frankly, stay away. The skiing is "ok" and the lifts are of good quality, but there are many more reasons why you should spend your money elsewhere:

1. The staff at Bukovel are drawn from the local population. They are chronically rude, inept, and totally clueless. I was physically assaulted (actually hit) by the on-piste ski patrol without warning for conducting "un-authorized instruction" because I was helping a friend of mine step into skis for the first time. I have seen food vendors yell at foreign guests and threaten to cancel their ski-passes since they could not understand the menu quickly enough to the servers satisfaction. I have seen parking lot security in their paramilitary uniforms openly taking bribes for better parking spaces. Don't get me wrong - many of the staff are fine - such as the ski instructors. However, there are enough bad apples that it can be really miserable. The 'security' staff should be fired immediately.

2. Other guests: Bukovel is a place where people with more money than class aggregate. While in some sense this is true for many resort areas, it is especially true in Bukovel where you have the chintzy boorishness of the Russian and Kievan 'biznes' types and their usual sins of tacky conspicuous consumption. There's a reason why the first thing people do when checking out Tripadvisor for, say, Egypt is to see whether their resort is a Russian package resort destination. Bukovel is kind of like that, many times over.

3. Access: Bukovel is far from everywhere. And, just when you think you've made it, you get stuck in a traffic jam at the resort's one road. To put things in perspective, it is far, far quicker, from Kiev or Moscow to go to Chamonix (plane to Geneva, then 2 hour bus) than to Bukovel. Amazingly, in all the years the resort has been open, the geniuses who run the place have not thought to make a dedicated ski train from Lviv or Kiev to as near the resort as the train can go (a little past Yaremche). However, if you like riding in dilapidated 'marshritkas', then, well Bukovel is the place for you! I'm lucky in that I have my own vehicle in Ukraine, but even so, it's not pretty.

Accomodation and prices are overall ok by western standards, though extortionate by local standards. I have heard myriad stories of opportunism by local accommodation owners - such as kicking people out of their rooms while they were away skiing because others sauntered in offering to pay more.

Overall, if you are compelled to be in the area, you can get some ok skiing at Bukovel and the mountains can be nice and there are always some nice times there. However, despite any pretenses to modernity, this is still Ukraine. There is absolutely no reason to come here from abroad. You can get similar quality skiing for similar prices in, say, poland, where you will find nicer people and none of the post-soviet / nouveau-riche nonsense of Ukraine. I've come to navigate the place ok, but suggest that others don't bother making a special trip. Even if you are taking a trip to say, Lviv, it is simply too far and too much hassle to be worth the effort.

2012-01-02