Caves of Chatyrdag |
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There are a lot of carst shafts, caves and wells on Chatyrdag. If you walk two or three hundred meters eastward through rare woods after going down from the upper plateau, you may come to a path which is parallel to the main route. Here is the firts karst shaft: the path goes by its black hole. The shaft is called Vyalov's Shaft after Ukrainian academician Vyalov. In 1927 practising student Vyalov worked together with geological expodition searching through Chatyrdag and he was the first to go down so called bottomless well to the depth of 95 meters.
In 1964 scientific groups of the Complex Karst Expedition of the USSR Science Academy started researching karst holes of Chatyrdag. They worked together with speleologists of Simferopol, Sebastopol, Kharkov, Moscow. Two months of tense searches, hundreds of descents and climbs… As a result not 18, but 127 shafts and caves became known. One of them was called after Vyalov. This shaft is a 110 meters deep steep hole with vertical ledges. Remember that it is very dangerous to go down this well without special training and equipment. Having come back to the marked path you should go along it to the north about one kilometer and a half. Close by the path there is a slide into a deepening with a karst well with two steep entrances on the bottom. When you carefully approach one of them you may see clusters of ice and snow at the bottom, icy stalactites on the walls. Several more kilometers along a smooth path and there is a steep descent into a hole - entrance into Cold cave. Two holes are in a hollow devided by a small crosspiece at the center. So there is a rounded entrance into a Thousandhead cave. First you enter a narrow tunnel. Then the course forks. You may follow any one - both lead to the next hall of seven meter height. The floor is covered by fragments of stalactites and rubbles. Tuff bathes which are usual for caves where water is running, here, under feet of tourists, lose their crystality and grace. Several legends are linked with the name of the cave. One of them witnesses that some time a tribe hid in the cave from the enemy - their number was one thousand. Their persecutors burned fires at the entrance into the cave and smoke killed all the people. Since then, as it goes, the cave is called Thousandhead cave. According to the opinion of archeologists the burial place in the cave belongs to the Middle Ages. Unfortunately it was ruined and plundered before being studied, that's why the geniune meaning of this sad monument cannot be set at the moment… After visiting Thousandhead cave you may look at Cold cave. This cave is really colder than others: water temperature of the source in it is not higher than 5 degrees by Celsius. The entrance into the cave is disguised by stone lumps and dense grass of beach grove. Slippery and steep descent leads into an underground vault. We recommend to keep to the right side where there is a sort of steps (remember: footwear with leather sole is prohibited here). There is a twisting manhole with a water bath at the end. Teeth hurt because of condensed water. The descent finished. Now look back at the walked way. Bright sunrays shine from the entrance hole, illuminating the huge hall. Abruptly descending floor of the cave is blocked up with strange stone lumps fallen from the ceiling. A narrow gallery leads you from the hall and in some places one has to bend down. Chatyrdag occupies first position among other Crimean pastures by the number of surface karst forms per square kilometer. On Chatyrdag you may meet hollows, holes and valleys. They were created at different stages of lime destruction and differ both by size and sight Hollows and holes give birth to underground karst hollows - caves, wells, shafts. Many caves start at rocky sides of hollows (Thousandhead and Cold caves). Sometimes the hollow starts a deep shaft: for instance a two-hundred meter wide karst hollow at the depth of 30 meters turns into a trunk of a bottomless well, which is situated about 1 km from Cold cave. The shaft became well known in 1959 when young and unexperienced speleologists descended to the depth of 161 meters, reached the bottom and set their first record. Nowadays Bottomless well is not any hard for speleologists: during twenty years they gained experience of mastering deeper hollows. But the shaft is still called Bottomless. It is prohibited to descend into it without special training and equipment. Deep in Bottomless cave another course is found and in future this cave may take first place from Horse Step cave which is considered the deepest on Chatyrdag - 213 meters deep. From Bottomless well you should go north-east. After 2,5 - 3 km you will almost reach the edge of the lower platteau. Here is another interesting cave called Three-Eye cave. |
Tourism Library Ukrainian Sights Crimea sights Caves of Chatyrdag
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phone: +380973278698 Kirill Yasko
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phone: +380973278698 Kirill Yasko
+380679151257 Lana Yasko
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