Traveling along the rivers Nugush and Belaya, tourists I met on the route often ask - where are the Kutuk caves? How to get to them? To my question - do you know that the caves of the Kutuk tract require special sports speleo training? And I often hear that we have already visited many caves. Nothing wrong.
Such an amateurish approach to speleotourism with conceit of permissiveness, bordering on recklessness, often leads to sad consequences. And this Kutuksumgan cave examines tourists not only in sports skills, but, most importantly, in human qualities. Without this, it is better not to meddle in it, as in other caves unknown to you.
The first mention of this beginning of the deepest "abyss", the cave belongs to the geologists A. I. Ollie and R. E. Alksne, which was shown to them by local residents in 1960. They knew her for a long time. hay was mowed there - in a wide hollow with a diameter of 200 m. In this place two dry lands converge - places along which the rivers Sumgan and Uluktan flow only in rainy or during spring snowmelt. By determining the time of free fall of a stone thrown down, they estimated its depth at 120-150 m. The cave begins with a collapse mine, which is covered with ice growths from autumn to mid-summer. This is one of the deepest mines among the caves of the South Urals. Its depth is 116 m, and the upper part (mouth) has dimensions of 9.0 x 4.5 m. The overhanging walls of the mine are mostly flat, but in some places there are protrusions in the form of canopies.
In the Kutuk tract, the modern karst was superimposed on the ancient, formed and passed geological epochs, in the form of prints left on the walls of caves under the reliable protection of bats.
For the first time, members of the karst-speleological expedition of the Bashkir University under the leadership of E. D. Bogdanovich and I. K. Kudryashov in 1965 went down into the abyss and discovered galleries departing from it. Their subsequent research, as well as research together with the Bashkir Regional Speleological Section under the leadership of Mikhail Chvanov (now a well-known writer), in 1966-1967. determined the length of the cave at 5000 m.
The exploration of the caves of the Kutuksky tract at different times was carried out by speleologists from the cities of Moscow, Yekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk), Ufa, Ust-Kamenogorsk.
Promotional video:
The Kutuk tract is a karst and speleological unique with many karst phenomena and unique caves. This is a school for karst studies and speleology. This is a valuable natural monument with the poetic names of grottoes, lakes, dripstone formations, majestic stalactites in winter reaching a length of 16 m and a diameter of 2 m. Grotto "Waiting", well "Foggy", well "Weiss, hall" Gate ". Unusual - Grotto "Beard", Prospect Geofaka, Grotto "Puppet Theater", corridor "Serpentine".
Photos by Ramil Yusupov.