In the north of Eastern Siberia there is a beautiful, but strange and deserted place - Putorana, which is often called “the land of ten thousand lakes and a thousand waterfalls”. This vast basalt plateau extends for about 650 km both from north to south and from west to east.
In the west and north, the plateau ends abruptly with 300-800-meter ledges resembling a giant staircase. Its main part is occupied by the Putoransky Nature Reserve, created in 1988 - one of the largest in Russia. It is here, within the plateau, that one of the highest waterfalls in Russia is located - Khibarbinsky, 108 meters high, and the deepest - Beldunchansky, 40 meters wide and 25 meters high.
Beldunchansky waterfall / Dmitry Sakash
The Putorana Plateau, which is translated from the Evenk language as "lakes with steep shores", stretches a little to the north of the Arctic Circle, on the largest elevated plain in the world - the Central Siberian Plateau.
According to scientists, the plateau was formed 10-12 million years ago as a result of a powerful earthquake that affected most of the Eurasian continent and led to the appearance of large islands in the Barents and Kara Seas. After this cataclysm, the mild climate was replaced by severe cold here, vegetation and fauna changed.
According to scientists, the plateau was formed 10-12 million years ago as a result of a powerful earthquake that affected most of the Eurasian continent and led to the appearance of large islands in the Barents and Kara Seas. After this cataclysm, the mild climate was replaced by severe cold here, vegetation and fauna changed.
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Today the surface of the plateau is a kind of "layer cake" formed by numerous lava outpourings. The number of basalt layers in some places reaches two dozen.
Most of the year, there is snow on the tops of the plateau, this is precisely why the abundance of water sources here is connected - the snow begins to melt only in August, feeding numerous reservoirs.
In the epic of the northern peoples, there are many legends and traditions associated with the lost plateau. Among the Evenki, Nenets and Nganasans, who have lived in its vicinity from time immemorial, Putorana is considered the habitat of the Fiery God - the owner of hell, the tormentor of human souls.
According to scientists, such beliefs are associated with the fact that four to five thousand years ago, volcanic eruptions were frequent in these places. So, according to one of the Evenk legends, a fiery spirit escaping from the abyss soared over the Khatanga River, forcing its clean waters to boil, scorching villages with its hot breath, destroying people and livestock, burning the taiga.
Lake Khantayskoye, located on a plateau, is called the Chalice of Tears by the local population - it is one of the deepest lakes in Russia, its depth reaches half a kilometer. Previously, the Chalice of Tears was considered sacred. For centuries, Evenki and Nenets girls came here to see the fate of the lake in the waters of the lake, to complain to the great goddess Eshnu about their hard lot.
Lake Khantayskoye / Sergey Karpukhin
According to an ancient legend, in time immemorial, the Fire God took the life of his only son, Eshnu, and took his immortal soul to his lair under the ground. The grief-stricken goddess cried for a very long time, and then turned into a huge black basalt rock. Ashnu's tears filled the once-dried-out hollow, making it a lake.
On the plateau itself, for many decades, there has been only one permanent settlement - a meteorological station near Lake Agata, which employs about a dozen people. There are no roads throughout the vast area of the basalt plain. The nearest settlement, located 275 km south-west of the station, is the village of Turukhansk, which has lost its city status. The main mode of transport is a helicopter.
Meteorologists watch the weather day and night, and sometimes they happen to observe very unusual phenomena that they do not enter in the meteorological reports. So, according to the recollections of the oldest employees of the meteorological station, from December 25 to January 7 of each year, starting from the mid-seventies, almost every evening in the area of the frozen hundred-meter waterfall Khabarba, rotating concentric circles rise from the ground to the sky, forming a giant luminous spiral in a few minutes, which rests against the starry sky. This phenomenon lasts no more than fifteen minutes, after which the spiral fades and dissolves in the dark.
Today, for no apparent reason, the plateau rises up to 1.5 cm per year, deepening its tectonic faults more and more. This circumstance makes it possible to assume that active processes are going on deep underground. Taking into account the widespread increased geological activity, scientists are increasingly expressing the idea that another geological catastrophe should be expected in the plateau region in the foreseeable future.
There are three possible scenarios for the development of events. According to the first scenario, a young but extremely active volcano will appear in the place of the plateau. The second scenario considers the emergence in the next century of a series of powerful earthquakes, as a result of which a new mountain range will cut through the Central Siberian Plateau from north to south, up to the Eastern Sayan Mountains.
According to the third, worst scenario, catastrophic geological processes will lead to the appearance of a giant fault at the junction of the West Siberian tectonic plate and the Siberian platform in the area of the Yenisei River basin. As a result, the Taimyr Peninsula may turn into an island, and the waters of the Laptev Sea will rush into a huge continental crevice that has arisen.