Big Canyon of Crimea
In the center of a huge stone arch of the western part of the Main Ridge of Crimean mountains there are Ai-Petri hills. Big Canyon, having huge interest of tourists, is situated on its northern slopes.   We will cover the first part of the arch by bus going from Yalta fo Bahchisaray. We will go along a beautiful twisting forest road up to Ai-Petri bus-stop on the plateau.
  The walk from Ai-Petri to the upper part of the canyon will take not a long time – from 4 to 5 hours. If you already have according permission we advise you to stay for night at Kuru-Uzen hollow. The most convenient place for night-stay and recreation is situated somewhat higher or lower of the full water inflow confluence into a dry channel. River water is quite good to make food. And if you would like to drink spring water you'd better climb higher up the stream a kilometer and a half. There are springs with water coming down along the Kuru-Uzen channel.
  In the morning before going on you should carefully think out the further route. You can walk by two different paths along the canyon and each one of them is interesting in its own way. The first goes along the bottom of the canyon. You can go by it during summer and automn time. In winter, spring and in time of strong downpours this path becomes very dangerous and therefore it is limited. During these periods a furious flow rushes between steep rocks of the canyon. It breaks with a roar across the sides of the gorge and crushes everything along its way. The other path goes along the right side of the canyon and is passable any time of the year. From the glade we go down into the gorge. The path imperceptably crosses to the right side of the river and several meters slides near to its channel covered with rich bushes and then forks.
  If the weather is favorable the path will go along the right side of the canyon. But we will walk along the canyon bottom. The path is situated either right opon the channel or somewhat aside from it, and sometimes it gets lost at all for several meters.
  At the beginning the slopes of the canyon are flat and low, they are covered with magnificent vegetation: mosses, ferns, ivy, yew-trees. The sunshine gradually becomes dim and soft coolness covers you, different sounds of the summer day behind your back become lower and lower.
  The path goes deeper and deeper into the canyon, the walls of the gorge becomes tighter and tighter. The impression is as thought you go inside a huge crack. And it is really true. The line of the huge dump that moved blocks of rocks to the hight of about one kilometer, pass not far from the left side of the canyon (but not upon its bottom). The lifted block looks bloken. And this giant crack is the main reason of the canyon creation. Later it was washed intensively by water floods, but its original form remained up to present days.
  Not far from the entrance into the gorge and to the right you will see enormous lumps of limestone, collapsed in 1975. Approximately 1 km from this place there is the right inflow named Yohagan-Su running into Kuru-Uzen. From this place the river, flowing along the canyon, is called Auzun-Uzen (river mouth).
  You will have to go about two km crossing the channel all the time, slipping from ledges, jumping from one stone to another. For decades past from the time when the canyon became visited often by tourists, there appeared paths and ways bending around dangerous places. Do not trust narrow paths only, which go steep upward. They will lead you either onto the board of the canyon (at best), or into unpassable thicket or steep rocks. If spring is rich in rain and snow, at the beginning of summer you will often meet sites of the channel filled with water. It is impossible to pass them therefore you will go sometimes up to the knees in water.
  Here it is very hard to denote any remarkable places. Everything here amazes with its greatness, behind every turn there are rocks and slopes of unusual, sometimes freakish form. The sky is somewhere high and only a slice of blue caught steep edges of the canyon. Sometimes the walls move very closely to each other and create a corridor only several meters wide.
  At the end of the second kilometer of the path the walls move aside a little. Let's stay for a minute and look back at the covered way, at the gloomy gorge left behind. There is something fascinating in its wild severity, in its silence, sometimes broken only with sharp bird shouts. Hanging gloomy rocks, terrible beauty of slopes, going into the sky, transparent blue air above white rocks, pine-trees situated almost vertically on the rock surface.
  There is indistinct noise of water ahead. This is a rivulet pouring down from the right board at the height of a meter and a half from the bottom. A flood goes from here along the canyon and it does not dry up even during the hottest days. Let's pass 300 meters more along the bottom of the gorge and we will hear gay voices, water splashes and laughter over the turn. It's a following group of tourists has gathered at the famous Youth bath - a little lake with water temperature not higher 9-11 C even at the hottest days. Youth Bath is a hollow in the channel of a mountain river. Such hollows arise at the bottom of waterfalls, jumping onto a rather equal bottom from the steeps. A little deepening in the channel in course of time may turn into a big hollow. And because there are rather big blocks rotated at the bottom of these hollows, the size of such hollows may reach many meters both in diameter and height.
  From the bath you can get right to the highway (the distance to it is about 2,5 km). This way is much easier than the past one, there are almost no ledges and all the paths are passable. After the rest at the lake let's go on with the route. From the start the paths go along the bank, then into the channel and back to the bank. Anyway you may not come down into the channel. We go along the canyon bottom more than 1,5 km, taking over groups of separate tourists or giving way to them. At the end of this part of the path a gloomy woody ravine cuts into the canyon from the left. Near to its mouth at the bottom of the left board of the canyon there is a karst source called Pania. Two separate outputs of the source are devided by a minute peninsula. The main exit is a flood pouring out from a tight crevice grown by trees, and a seperate side exit is slightly lower. The channels of the main flood and a side exit of Pania are partitioned by water-measuring frames. Woods are stacked upon the columns they are fixed to, through the main channel of Pania. These water-measuring constructions are intended to measure water quantity of the source.
  If you walk 70 meters up along the narrow gorge where the source is, you will see a muzzle of a steep karst well leading into Pania cave. It was found and investigated by Simferopol cave explorers in 1976. The well (17 m deep) enters the system of underground caves with unpassable siphons at the end. Underground lakes in the cave are part of the hydro-geological system through which underground waters pour into the source. It is prohibited to come down into the cave for it is very dangerous because of unstable ceiling and a possibility of a sudden flooding.
  Let's return to the source. Upon the woods overthrown across the channel or right on stones we go to the right board of the canyon and continue our way to one of the most picturesque places of the canyon – Apple ford. On the left bank a path is seen and it goes straight up to Ai-Petri pastures. Several woods, put upon huge stones in the river channel, lead to the beginning of the path. A majestic peaked rock hangs over the ford from the eastern side. It's the first of the rocks on the right bank of the river and is called Guarding Rock. A flat ascent starts from the Apple ford and it leads you further and further from the canyon channel. You may admire the look upon the rocky gorge for the last time from this place where a shadowed path turns to the right.
 

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