Carpathian Mountains

The Carpathian Mountain range stretches roughly 1,500 km through Central and Eastern Europe passing through Ukraine, Romania, Poland and Slovakia. The Carpathians are divided into three parts: Western Carpathians, Eastern Carpathians and Southern Carpathians. Ukraine lies in the Eastern Carpathians along with Southeastern Poland, Eastern Slovakia and Romania. The Carpathians are home to lynxes, brown bears, red deer and remains to be the last great refuge for wolves in Europe. The mountains are rich with rivers including the Dniester, Danube, Tysa, Prut, Seret and Wisloka. Flash floods are common in the spring and summer. The temperature ranges from -3 C in the winter to 20 C in the summer. Most precipitation occurs in June and July; the least, in January and February. The summers are quite cloudy and the winters are sunny. There are only small towns in the mountains, the largest of them are Sianik and Turka.

The Carpathians are a great destination for vacationers looking to ski, mountain bike, horseback ride, river rafters or hike. The Carpathians would be a very fun place to backpack because there are few areas were camping is prohibited and hikers are not restricted to the trail. As we can see in the pictures, this is a very beautiful region that would be exciting to explore! If you decide to go be careful, with no maintained trail system it is easy to get lost!

For those of you interested in skiing the Carpathians I recommend you check out Dan's post!
For more information on the Carpathians check out:
http://www.tryukraine.com/carpathians.shtml
http://www.traveltoukraine.org/carpathian.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpathian_Mountains