- Part one -
On one of these days off in early June 2015. I and S. Izofatov (izofatov) again made a sortie around the outskirts of Krasnoyarsk. Again with questions on a geological theme, in search of confirmation of the version of the "mines of the Gods", their products of activity as layered hills of silt-limestone soil. In the first part, we drove around some places on the left bank of the Yenisei, where, as Sergei suggests, in the floodplains of the rivers, there was mining and processing of soil containing rare earth metals. This time, we visited some places on the right bank of the Yenisei in the vicinity of our city.
So, we started our route from the hills towards the village of Zykovo: link to the map.
The road and these hills are separated by the Transib railway and the Berezovka river. The railway and auto roads run in a valley, a floodplain, possibly a once more full-flowing river. Now it is practically a stream.
In some places, either slopes have crumbled, or gravel is being mined there, a quarry has been made. But even from a distance, the layering of these sections is visible.
Promotional video:
We drove up to these slopes as close as possible, but there was no way to drive up close. on the other side of the river it was necessary to call in from the city.
Almost everyone says that there is nothing unusual here. The bottom of the former ocean, which heaved to form these hills. But pay attention - there are no layers of clay (many meters, tens of meters thick). A thin layer of sod (humus) of grass is immediately located on gravelly layered rocks, trees do not grow, they have nothing to gain a foothold on the slopes.
Let's go further … The next destination of the trip was "Krasnoyarsk pyramid". You can read about it in this article when I took a number of photos of its slopes. But the purpose of this visit was to check its structure for layers, which I did not think to focus on the last time.
Let me remind you that one side of the "pyramid" was cut off during the construction of the Trans-Siberian, dismantled into gravel and rock. Transib passage a few dozen meters from this hill.
At the foot, next to the road, a spring still beats. During our time, people collected water for drinking.
Structure at the cut edge of this hill (vertical layers).
From the recess on the left, I took out one of the round stones of river gravel, pebbles and put it on the ledge for clarity. A question for geologists: how did the river pebbles get under these layers of the soil of the hill? The river, if it was in the past more full-flowing, how was it able to wash up this hill. And the hill is a "pyramid" of complex structure. Stone rocks (at first glance not of sedimentary origin) and clayey soil interspersed with pebbles.
On this side, the layers are both vertical and horizontal. How they formed is unclear.
Blotches of black soil unknown to me with grains of quartzite.
There is such a stone next to the spring. It looks like concrete. And in color and in inclusions (filler) of pebble. But he is clearly from the structure of this hill.
Macro photography.
Slope to the south from the side of the road.
Slightly higher from the foot.
At the foot, there is still a stone, which he mentioned during his first visit to the "pyramid". In its structure (filler) there are rocks of the rock. The "block" is clearly artificial (there is plaster). Perhaps this is part of the old Transib drainage system.
In the thickets by the road are the rest of the blocks, which were not visible last time due to the foliage in the height of summer.
One of the slopes of the "pyramid".
View from the east.
Hills adjacent to the "pyramid".
Then we drove to the village of Kuznetsovo along the dirt road connecting the village of Zykovo and the village of Vodniki …
Black Sopka, the highest point in the vicinity of Krasnoyarsk.
And so, at the village of Kuznetsovo, such a stone "fence" was waiting for us. I saw him earlier, driving along this road, but there was no opportunity to investigate him in detail. As I understand it, Sergei saw him for the first time. Link to the map.
We climbed to the top of the hill by car. The red color is lichen.
Blue chamomile blooms. Sergei said that he was told by a geologist that such chamomile grows only on gold-bearing soils. In no way do I want to provoke a "gold rush" in this place.
The surface of one of the outlier boulders.
The material of the outliers is marble (recrystallized chalk). But this breed is like a ridge along the top of a hill. Left and right - there are no such exits. How thermally the chalk structure of the hill could undergo in such a narrowly localized part - I do not understand.
Another feature. The upper layers of the remnants have a more complete structure, without cracks. A huge number of cracks are found at the bottom of the stones. Sergei and I made this assumption. If this is a product of artificial processing of chalky soil, then either this material was dumped hot onto the surface of the hill, or during the process of polymerization (crystallization), a reaction took place with the release of heat. The lower parts of the stones were in the ground and cooled slightly. Due to the high temperature, they cracked. When setting modern concrete of good brands (for example, during the construction of a hydroelectric power station), such concretes are even cooled by passing cold water through pipes inside the monolith, and then filling them. So, the upper part of the remnants at one time cooled better and remained more monolithic.
Even small cavities - caves - have formed in some parts.
A pebble was found in the destroyed structure at the top. Who among the geologists can answer: how did these river stones get to the top of the hill 100m?
Here is the pebble in the structure of this marble.
View from this hill. 20 years ago, these were all fields. Now - cottage building. People are drawn to the ground.
Very revealing stones. One is adjacent to the other, but they are not one whole. One with a lot of cracks (small). Another, more like a monolith.
These are the marble megaliths. They are very similar to the stones of the Krasnoyarsk pillars, but the difference is in scale and structure. Pillars - syenite (not granite), here - marble, chalk.
An outlier that has fallen off from the main "masonry" against the background of the Black Hill.
View of Krasnoyarsk.
Many stones have cracks or slots 5-10 cm long. As if something had been poked into them.
A little lower, someone began to cut the slope, build a road.
They turned out such a large marble stone. Most of the rock of the hill is sedimentary by the standards of modern geology. Where does the chalk recrystallized into marble come from?
Pieces of marble.
The layer of soil on the slope in some places is minimal; it cannot fix on the stones.
We went down from this hill, drove on …
They are building a road to the catedges, poured silt-chalk soil as the basis of the road.
We went up the next hill. This is a cut from the road construction through it.
Sergey shows that above the Cretaceous layers there is immediately a layer of black soil, then a layer of clay, and then again a small layer of modern black soil. Perhaps it is clay from the opposite slope of the hill (there is a slope in clay), during the construction the bulldozer turned the clay onto this part of the hill and covered it with black soil. But it is possible that the black soil under the clay is antediluvian in the literal sense of the word.
The bulldozer cut is not old. There is black soil both on the surface and under the clay.
View of the hill with outliers.
There is only one lime at the height of the hills of ten meters.
Illegal quarry on top of a hill, turned into a dump by the locals.
On the one hand, there are calcareous layers, on the other, clay layers.
A macro shot of a limestone rock. Blotches of other rocks are visible.
This is the clay slope of the same hill.
We drove further towards the city.
Someone was digging communications along the main road.
And we noticed that on the cut of the trench, a "cake" is visible from: black soil, red silt-clay gravel and above from clay.
Higher up the slope - the same picture. It became a little cloudy, the photos were not so saturated.
Above this was no longer observed, tk. the clay layer increased, but the depth of the trench remained the same.
View of the outliers from the other side.
At the top of one of the following hills, we saw a construction site. One of her objects was a cellar. A pit was dug by an excavator. According to the stories of the owner of the construction site, there is a "cake" of layers: black soil (20-30 cm), sandy loam, clay, then sharply - red gravel (with silt-clay rock).
We admired the beauty a little from the top of the hill and we go further …
This is a slice of an illegal quarry practically within the city of Krasnoyarsk (where are the regional ministry of natural resources and the prosecutor's office looking?). Link to the map.
View of the village of Vodniki.
The limestone base of the hill.
Even some outliers are visible on the slope (as well as on Pokrovskaya Gora within the city of Krasnoyarsk). I am not even talking about layering.
Interesting fact. Part of the hill is located above the layers of clay.
Silt-limestone from the structure of the hill.
Remains on the slope of the neighboring hills.
Here is such an excursion on an amateur-geological topic, rich in photographic material. This material can be viewed as just introductory (beautiful photos, landscapes), or you can go deeper and ask questions: how much (like pebbles, for example) could be on the tops and in the structures of the hills, where is so much lime? As far as I know, there were no oceans and seas here in the coming geological epochs. Why are sedimentary rocks mixed with marble outliers? Why is there clay on some of the rocks, but not on some? Etc. The version with the mines of the Gods is just a version. But this photographic material only adds personally to me questions to this topic.