Climbing Festival in Ukraine

Anna Schliakhova reports from a recent climbing festival in Kniazhi Skeli in Ukraine including an interview with the organizer and bolter Volodymyr Kushka.

”Ukraine is a large and mostly flat country with not so many climbing areas or big potential for new-routing. However, there are a few areas, especially in the west. Despite the full-scale war in the country, people still climb and even establish new climbing areas and hold climbing festivals. Last year it was Kykoshiv Rock Festival held in a brand new area, and this year it was Kniazhi Skeli Festival.

It's been a tradition in the short climbing history in the west of Ukraine to hold a climbing festival on the rocks dedicated to the August 24th Independence Day, with the holiday allowing for travel for the entire country.

It's a little bit strange with the emptiness at the cliffs due to those who have fled, those who are defending the country, those who were killed in this war and those who avoid travelling in order not to get summoned to military service. But, for those who made it to the event, it was a much more rare and precious opportunity to get distracted from the reality of living in the war-torn country and to do our favorite sport.

All that being said, this story is mostly not about the war but about a guy who bolted and prepared several sport climbing and bouldering areas in the past few years. Let me introduce him: Volodymyr Kushnir aka Kushka from Lviv.



How did you start climbing?
Formally, I started climbing in 2000 at the age of 23 or 24, because actually first years five or six... [interruption] oh, cool, air raid sirens sounded all-clear, hooray. Today, by the way, a missile hit a little more than a kilometer away from my house. It was loud.

Yes, I’ve heard there is a huge crater in Lviv’s kindergarten’s yard?
We haven't got accustomed to it here in Lviv as people do in Kharkiv or Kyiv. It was a single attack before, so we all got scared. Okay, let's go. At the beginning it wasn't really like sport climbing. We went to Dovbush rocks, to the only crag and to the only one place there, to be more precise. This cliff and the campsite fell into to a gully, in 2016, and none of the routes survived. So, it isn't there anymore. We climbed Terminator (6b+), at least those who could, but mostly the level of our climbing didn’t allow us to do so. We climbed badly and had actually nothing to climb on, because there were about 5 routes for lead climbing on Dovbush Rocks.

I saw some progress after the first climbing gyms appeared in Lviv. The very first one was Pohulianka opened in 2006. Before we went to comps to Kyiv once a year and it was a great deal for us, we were looking forward to such an event all year long.

Tell us a little bit about establishing new routes and areas?
There are pioneers of bolting in Ukraine who should be mentioned first. They are Serhiy Krasovskyi, Yevhen Grafov, Serhiy Fedirko. The last is serving in the army right now. Those three bolted the majority of the routes on Dovbush Rocks. The first wave of the bolting, if I'm not mistaken, was funded by a presidential grant from (Viktor) Yushenko. At the time I assisted a little Krasovskyi and Fedirko with the bolting.

Out of the bolters who are still in action, I am the one who experienced times before cordless drill bolting. We used just a hammer and a hand-drill. Battery powered drills were like a miracle for us. Later we got a generator and used it with an extension cord. Fedirko use it still sometimes. It was awful [before that] because it took about two hours to place one bolt [hand drilling]. You were hanging on a crag and -- clang-clang-clang -- pinging a hole. It was a breakthrough for us to have a generator.

There are about ten of my routes on Dovbush Rocks. Together with Fedirko we established long routes on Bronia of 20+ bolts. There are also my routes on another crag Tiulpan, including 8a+ (Time to think) which I also managed to [do] the first ascent.

My first major project was Kykoshiv Rock, where I bolted almost all routes except for 5-6 routes established by Pasha Vasylenka and another two by Yura Levitskyi. There 107 routes in total. It turned out to be a "Hero's Wall," because there are not so many easy routes and all of them are pretty fancy. However, there is an excellent set of 6c, 7a, 7b routes. Some eighth grade routes have seen a first ascent already, about 3 or 4 of them. And there are still about 20 open projects starting from 8a and harder.

How do you balance your life to fit also a normal work and a family with three kids?
I used to work in wholesale trade in an outdoor store and for the last five years I sell software for a start-up company. And now I have much more flexible hours which is exactly the thing which has allowed me to start actively bolting. I try to kill many birds with one stone, so to say, still it doesn't work as well as I would like it to.

My family has been in Poland for over a year. It's good that I can go to visit them, which I do every one or two months. They want to come back but here is the war and attacks, so my wife Ira is worrying about our kids and doesn't want to come back yet. Everything is not certain. Climbing and bolting allow me to escape from problems while doing things useful for others.

Note: As a father of three children, Kushka is allowed to travel abroad according to military law, while the majority of conscription age men are banned from doing so.

What motivates you to bolt?
It's interesting for me to do something new. I like climbing even more, but I also like the process of creating some new routes which will be available for climbing for me, as well for others. I like this. I started to realize that for me to establish a route, and then to climb it toprope or just manage to do all the moves to discover that it could be a 7c or 8a in order to announce it to everyone is much more interesting than to do the first ascent itself as it takes too much time. I can say that it's a cool route. I will be sincerely happy for the one who climbs it first.

You are also raising some funds for military needs while bolting, aren't you?
Yes, we send UAH 100 (£2.15) from every printed festive t-shirt, and it's about UAH 5000 (£108), to Vlad Chumachenko who runs a tactical medicine unit. From registration fees we will direct money to our friends who assemble drones by themselves. Yurko and Oksana Kovalchuck order all spare parts from China and assemble drones together with a small team of other volunteers. There will be about UA 20,000 (£430) for their needs. It's like a drop in the sea but still we do something for the military.