The next few days were full of waiting and hoping. This desperate situation at the beginning of a 4 week trip was pretty depressing. The temperatures dropped to subzero levels even in the valley but that was about it. Our depression escalated during the next days as the snow cover was boosted just a tiny bit. One morning we managed to wake up to a 15cm layer of fresh dry powder and this made us opt for a second hike. Our choice of the day was a closer ridge this time – 8-10 kilometers away and 600 meters vertical above. About mid-way we figured, that the base might be just about enough to use our splitboards for the first time during the trip! This reduced the load of our 15kg backpacks and made us move a lot quicker. Unfortunately after reaching the mountain range the snow cover didn’t get much better and even grass was still fairly visible within the snow. We connected our splits and had a short freeride down towards the treeline. This ride raped my splitboard pretty well and created visible memories on my board. :)

After this experience we had enough. We packed our stuff and decided to return home the next day in the morning. The whole trip didn’t work out at all, but brought interesting memories as well as new experience that was earned the hard way. During the upcoming weeks the weather in Ukraine was extremely mild and even throughout January a significant base didn’t form on the tops of the local mountain ranges. All in all we were lucky we didn’t stay around for a longer time and it was a good decision to move out early…