In July 1957, a group of climbers arrived at Rangkul Lake in the Eastern Pamirs, located at an altitude of about 4000 meters. The expedition was organized by the Moscow branch of the Geographical Society of the USSR under the leadership of Academician Igor Evgenievich Tamm, an outstanding Soviet physicist and famous mountain climber.
Academician Igor Tamm was a very experienced climber. Since 1926, he participated in the first ascent to the peaks of the Caucasus and Tien Shan, and visited the Pamirs. This time, his attention was attracted by the legendary Mata-Tash cave. It is located approximately in the center of the five-hundred-meter almost vertical northern wall of Mount Kalak-Tash, approaching the eastern end of Lake Rangkul.
Guarded by vultures
From the top of the ridge to the entrance to the cave, 220 meters, from the bottom - 180. The entrance to the cave is deepened into the wall and has a height of about 5 meters, and a length of 15-18 meters. Visual inspection showed that the lower half of the entrance hole was covered with masonry, as if made by human hands, to seal up the access to it. But upon closer examination through strong binoculars, it was found that the "masonry" was formed by the natural destruction of the rock, and the white coating on top of it was not snow, but a perennial layer of droppings of vultures - permanent inhabitants of the cave.
Mata-Tash was called "the cave of treasures". An amazing story about her was first told by "Turkestanskie vedomosti" in 1898, published in Tashkent. “Two hundred years ago,” the newspaper reported, “in winter, numerous Chinese troops appeared in the Rangkul Basin. Having found a good pasture along the banks of Rangkul, they decided to spend the winter here and camped on the shore of the lake, at the foot of the sheer wall of Mount Kalak-Tash. However, the snow soon fell so deep that the horses could not get their food from under the snow - and their mortality began. In addition, food supplies began to deplete … Seeing the inevitable death, the Chinese decided to save the treasury and the wealth that was with them. Choosing a place for the storehouse of valuables, they stopped at a cave, located two hundred meters in the rock wall above their camp, which seemed to them to be a reliable storehouse. It remained to find a way to get to the cave. To do this, they cut the corpses of horses into pieces and attach them to the plumb line of the rock. The pieces freeze firmly to the granite, and a staircase is obtained, with the help of which the Chinese reached the cave and put all their wealth in it, and they themselves settled in another cave, on the southern side of the ridge, but soon everyone died from hunger and cold. With the onset of spring, the pieces thawed and fell, and the cave again became inaccessible, preserving the treasures entrusted to it to this day … Forty years ago, one daredevil, clinging to minor irregularities of the rock, crawled to the cave and already managed to see folded yag-tans, chests and various bales, when suddenly some terrible black beast scared him so that he fell and broke his ribs. After that, no one dared to encroach on these treasures, and from time to time they make themselves felt. So,once a brocade robe was blown out of this cave by the wind, and relatively recently a small silver bucket rolled out of there, which was sold in Kashgar for 80 rubles. The Kyrgyz are sure of the existence of riches in this cave and, passing along the road above which it is located, they look up with envy …”.
First assault
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In the early 1950s, Soviet climbers decided to uncover the secret of Chinese treasures. It is unlikely that they thought about the possibility of a real meeting with the "black beast" - the keeper of state chests, because the Soviet people did not believe in the shaitan.
The first assault was undertaken in July 1951 by climbers from the Turkestan Military District. One of the two groups, after a difficult rocky ascent, climbed to the top of Kalak-Tash and organized an overnight stay there. In the morning, the climbers tried to throw down a three-hundred-meter rope in order to go down to the Mata-Tash cave. But, despite the commands given from below through the radio by comrades from the second group, nothing came of it: the rope got stuck between the stones. But not only stones and irregularities in the wall prevented climbers from lowering the rope. They also had to fight with a whole flock of huge black vultures, which dived from the heavens at people. The birds struck violently with their powerful wings and ignored the pistol fire. Here they are the very "black beasts" of the Kyrgyz … Having achieved nothing, the Turkestan climbers retreated. The secret of the treasure still remained unsolved.
Six years later, another attempt to get to the cave was made by an expedition led by Academician Igor Tamm. First, the climbers went to the bottom of the assault. Having hammered in a lot of rocky hooks, they overcame 120 meters and got to a small "pocket" in the wall, 20-25 meters below the stone "masonry" at the entrance to the Mata-Tash cave. But the section of the wall that remained before the "cave of treasures" was a monolith without a single crack for the hook, and it was not possible to overcome it. After that we decided to descend into the cave from the ridge of the Kalak-Tash summit.
Choosing the right equipment, the climbers decided to use a block-brake through which a flexible metal cable with people tied to it is etched. Having settled on a small rocky area discovered over a steep wall about 180 meters above the entrance to the cave, three of the athletes, using a block brake, began the descent of their comrades - Boris Shlyaptsev and Alexey Ivkin.
The leader of the expedition conducted observations from below. The descent route was planned in advance. Shlyaptsev was the first to fix the line, and Ivkin was a meter above him. In anticipation of a raid from the notorious vultures, both put on firefighter helmets on their heads, and Shlyaptsev took a gun with him. Behind Ivkin was a heavy backpack with ropes, hooks, a pick and a shovel: you have to dig for the treasure with something!
The descent on the block-brake began, but it was complicated by the fact that the climbers on the site did not see their comrades dangling on the cable at all: they were hidden by numerous ledges in the rocks. At first, the upper group kept in touch with the descendants by telephone, and then the cable got tangled, it had to be cut off and continue the descent, using "voice" communication. Shlyaptsev had a special "cat" on a nylon cord, which, finding himself at the level of the cave entrance, he had to throw, catch it on a ledge or crack, and thus pull himself to the wall. However, due to the fact that the entrance was deeply "pressed" into the wall, this could not be done.
Shlyaptsev and Ivkin decided to go down to the stone "masonry" under the entrance to the cave. Having reached the bottom of the "masonry" they managed to stand on it. Now, in order to get into the cave, it was necessary to overcome the 12-meter wall of "masonry" - a rock that was badly destroyed and fragile in appearance. The fear that it might collapse at any second forced people to retreat; it was also not possible to climb up on the cable again. So another attempt to master the "cave of treasures" failed. All these days vultures flew over the climbers, but people were not attacked.
The last push
In April 1958, the mystery of the Mata-Tash cave was finally solved. Members of a group of nine masters of sports, employees of Leningrad universities and research institutes, led by the master of sports Gromov, climbed to the top of the cliff. They lowered a steel cable and a rope, and then began their ascent from below, all the time using rocky hooks and rope stirrups, which, with the help of a special grasping knot, gradually moved up the lowered rope. Valentin Yakushkin ascended directly to the cave. The last 8-10 meters all passed along the same stone "masonry", really very loose and free-flowing, but, thanks to the fact that Yakushkin was reliably insured from below and from above, he boldly moved forward.
On April 19, Valentine entered the cave, the depth of which was only two meters, the height was one and a half, and the width was about twenty. In addition to the vulture egg and the centuries-old droppings of birds of prey, nothing was found in the cave, and its floor - a massive rock - excluded the possibility and expediency of excavations.
By hoisting a red flag high above the valley, Leningrad climbers have dispelled the centuries-old mystery of the inaccessible Mata-Tash cave.
Magazine: Mysteries of History №39. Author: Mikhail Efimov