Hutyn Tomnatyk from Zaroslyak

Hutyn Tomnatyk (2016 m) is Ukraine's fifth-highest summit. It does not stand on the Chornohora main ridge itself but on a short spur that branches off it to the south-west between Rebra and Brebeneskul. The summit is asymmetric: below its north-eastern slope, in a glacial cirque, lies Lake Brebeneskul (1801 m), the highest lake in Ukraine. The park derives the name from old Dacian as «the Grey Top»; Polish Wikipedia, from the Romanian tomnatic, «autumnal».

One waymarked line leads from the Zaroslyak base to the fork below the summit. The yellow trail runs through the forest and across the Pozhyzhevska meadow to Lake Nesamovyte. Below the lake there is a steep step and a bog that stays wet all summer (Marian Slabinoha, 2021). From the lake a path meets the red trail — the Transcarpathian Tourist Trail — which runs south along the ridge over the Rebra massif. The green trail from Bystrets ends at the «Below Rebra» signpost: per Wikipedia, it meets the red here, while in OpenStreetMap the signpost stands ~170 m off the red, reached by 0.35 km of path that OpenStreetMap does not tag as waymarked.

As Slabinoha describes it (2021), a gentle path leads down from Rebra to the fork below Hutyn Tomnatyk. Here, at the «Below Hutyn Tomnatyk» signpost, the waymarks end: an unmarked path leads to the top, 0.7 km (OpenStreetMap), no more than 20 minutes. Where it nears the steep south-eastern slope, Lake Brebeneskul comes into view, and from the summit, which stands off the main ridge, all of Chornohora. The way back is the same.

No waymarked path climbs to the summit from Lake Brebeneskul. Above the lake Hutyn drops in a nearly vertical wall about 250 m high, and the south-eastern rib from the lake is a mountaineering pass graded 1B: scree, rock outcrops, 35–⁠55°, rockfall (KPI «Globus» club, 2013).

The red trail also runs along the ridge from Hoverla. From Zaroslyak over Hoverla, out and back comes to ≈ 17–⁠17.5 hours by estimate, longer than the longest day of the year (16 hours), so it is not given here as a day hike.

There is no quick way down off the ridge between Nesamovyte and Hutyn Tomnatyk. Hikers in 2020–⁠2023 describe the path down the Brebeneskul stream to Luhy as washed out by floods and hard to follow.

Weather on the ridge turns fast: a thunderstorm with hail and squalls can blow in within 20–⁠30 minutes even on a clear day. Carry a rain shell and a warm layer, and turn back in a thunderstorm or fog. In mid-June there can still be snow on the slopes.

In autumn, daylight at Zaroslyak shrinks from 13.4 hours in early September to 8.7 in late November. From early November it is shorter than the estimated 10 hours of walking, so part of the way will most likely be walked in the dark: carry a headlamp.

Hutyn Tomnatyk is not on the list of border-zone places closed to visitors without a border-guard permit, so this route needs no permit. But from the fork the red trail runs on to Brebeneskul, and that one is on the list.