It is our planet!: The Grand Canyon of Crimea, Crimea, Russia

For those connoisseurs of nature who have visited the Grand Canyon of Crimea for the first time, this grandiose, forested gorge with deep baths, invigorating waterfalls, clear springs and clumps of rocks remains a favorite for life. The desire to return here will never leave.
Visitors to the Grand Canyon are ready to scream with delight, but they keep quiet, and not only because of fatigue on the rare steep ascents here. Many feel that nature herself imperiously demands silence. And then they remember how this delicate silence allowed everyone to take their time, alone with themselves, to their impressions. Silence here is so relevant that it is like the best music in the world, I want to record it on a tape recorder.

Grand Canyon of Crimea

Inside the Grand Canyon of Crimea

The source of Paniya and Auzun-Uzen

The main disadvantage of the canyon in the middle and late summer is the surplus of tourists. Excursion buses come from all cities of Crimea, and from eleven to three lines of people wander along the creek with a continuous two-way flow along the only path, the latter just leaving the bus, and the first are already jumping into the Bath of Youth, waiting for the turn as if before another water slide in the water park .

The second drawback of organized visits is a short route (there and back - about three kilometers). The main beauty of the canyon, indeed, the canyon itself begins above the Bath of Youth. The path in it is more complicated, but within a hundred meters you can be completely alone. Only yours will be transparent baths, rocks heated in the sun, covered with yew and beach spruce. A little more - and you will see a real canyon.

The Grand Canyon was formed as a giant split of the Ai-Petrinsky Massif, when Boyka Mountain departed from it. The edges almost did not fall off, and the gorge in form resembles a not completely split log. Its depth is 250-300 meters, and the minimum width inside is such that two tourists can join hands and touch the opposite walls. It is this steepness, this narrowness, this dimness and coolness in the July noon, and the silence, and the sense of the greatness of nature (and therefore the insignificance of our own problems) that attract people who are tired of civilization.

Eversion boilers of the Grand Canyon of Crimea

Plaque at Bath of Youth

Forest in the Grand Canyon of Crimea

Even a very small stone, accidentally fallen from the 300-meter-high wall of the Grand Canyon, is dangerous for the life of a pedestrian on the lower path. Under this natural fortress, it is better not to linger, throw stones, do not shoot, do not whistle, and most importantly, do not correspond with those who walk along the upper path (which only jokers can not be found in the mountains). Very sensible are those who put on helmets.

It is difficult to come to the Grand Canyon of Crimea. Without your transport, you will get stuck, especially if you have to return to Yalta via Ay-Petri in the evening. Perhaps the ideal option for visiting the Grand Canyon of Crimea is an excursion.

A route through the Grand Canyon of Crimea

The sightseeing bus stops above the road, near the foresters. Scheme of the canyon - near the highway, after studying it you can go down the wide path - the remnant of the Roman road, to the Sary-Su river - "Yellow Water". In fact, there is not water in the Sary-Su river, but yellow-brown stones from the plaque of salts and algae. The river itself is so clean that you can drink from it ... although it is better to still endure and climb to the spring.

Cascades in the Grand Canyon of Crimea

Panorama Great Crimean Canyon

Oak in the Grand Canyon of Crimea

Crossing the bridge, you must pay the entrance to the Grand Canyon of the Crimea. The paths here are marked and so well trampled that one can not talk about them. All the same polugrutovka-polutropa steep long rise will lead to the long-burnt Postal Oak. The path here will turn to the left, into the Falcon, and the main road (the same Roman one) will lead to the right, into the depths of the canyon.

The five-hundred-year-old oak was considered a meeting place and memorable news, which visitors of the canyon left in a large dark hollow. This tradition arose during the Great Patriotic War - so the guerrillas relayed important messages to each other.

In 1982, someone set fire to letters of tourists, and a huge tree was killed by fire. In obsolete guidebooks they write that the oak has caught fire from lightning. So it would be more effective, but the questions of local residents left no doubt - the oak was set on fire. Nevertheless, even this day, scraps are put in the charred hollow. There is also a legend about the Post oak.

The Auzun River Uzen (Wellhead, or Mouth)

Over the Grand Canyon of Crimea

Notes in the postal oak. The Grand Canyon

From the remains of the oak, the path leads past the cliff of Parus, and opposite Cape Pine Descent to the widest bath of the canyon - the Blue Lake. Here they usually bathe, even swim though the depth is not more than one and a half meters. Hardened with pleasure sit tied a rope with a rope, in an inclined "jacuzzi waterfall". The test is not for sissies - water 10-12 ° C.

Further the path leads to the Karst source of Paniya, one of the most abundant in the Crimea. Over the source, under the yews, you can find the entrance to the cave of Paniya. But it's better not to do it: the cave is practically impassable. They interfere with the roots of the yew, the water level changes, and you can easily drown. Even the professional pioneer Nikolai Leonov, who opened a dozen caves of the Crimea, refused to try to penetrate the water siphons of Paniya.

To the Bath of Youth from the source of Paniya is only 600 meters, this is the most interesting way - along the stone bottom of the brook canyon of the Auzun-Uzen Creek ("River mouth"), past the 300-meter Watchtower that "guards the entrance to the canyon". Here you can see traces of water work - erosion boilers, as Professor II Puzanov called them in the first brochure about the Grand Canyon. In a random deepening, stones fall, a rapid current turns them, pierces and rounds a hole. So these "boilers" are formed, of which there are more than a hundred in the canyon, so the deepest of them, the four-meter Bath of youth, was formed. There are traces of flooding the river into the flood; It is dangerous and difficult to walk along the lower trail in the spring. For this there is a winter trail, a little higher, although it is also uncomfortable.

Cliffs of the Grand Canyon of Crimea

Eagle zalet

Auzun Uzen, Oral or Mouth

After the Bath of Youth, the path goes along the right side of the stream, along the rock, from where they jump into this bath.
But there it is tight and you can slip after the jumpers, so it's better to go a little higher, bypassing. Then you have to jump from stone to stone, make your way on the left side, then on the right, somewhere to climb on all fours, somewhere to walk a few steps along the standing (in summer even stagnant) water ... But if you normally feel yourself on the mountain Trails, a hike through the canyon will be quite affordable.
Here the eternal twilight. Spring and summer, judging by the flowering time, come in this gorge a month later ... Let us give the floor to Professor Puzanov: "After a few hundred meters of the way the walls of the canyon begin to hang more and more menacingly, and the channel is cluttered with gigantic, Cataracts and even stairs. Deep erosion cauldrons, drilled with water in a stone bed of the stream with the help of round stone nuclei, were partly filled with never-drying ... water, on the surface of which swift, like mercury, beetles twisted. Everything ... the gorge becomes darker and darker, only a narrow blue strip remains visible from the sky. At the bottom of the canyon more and more often there is fresh crushed stone from the boulders, which were thrown from the vertical walls and smashed to pieces. It was quite real that there was a danger of getting such a "hotel" on your head. "

Bath of Youth (Kara-Gol) Grand Canyon of Crimea

Three-hundred-meter-high walls of the Grand Canyon of Crimea

The bridge over the Kokozka River in the Grand Canyon of Crimea

The Grand Canyon is suitable for botanical research. At the bottom of it there is only one path, around which plants are concentrated. Just there, among the numerous yew tree trunks, strange and rare for the Crimea needles are the hyoid and scoloprene fern. They will not be confused with anything if you know what a Mediterranean needle looks like, which is a lot in the forests of the Southern coast, and an ordinary fern growing in forests, more often in places of fires. Among the lilies of the valley, you can suddenly see the rarest orchid "Venus shoe".

Over the summer light day, it is possible, if desired, to go through most of the canyon along the bottom and return to the upper path that will again flow into the main "Roman road" over the Blue Lake.

One of the most interesting and popular options for visiting the Grand Canyon of Crimea is offered in the route of the excursion New Crimean Switzerland.
In the canyon are different trails. Passing through Ai-Petri, buses usually stop above the main entrance to the canyon. If you start the trip from there, it is better to go down to the river immediately. You can go and through the forest, along the Almanchuk creek (Yablonevy Ruchey), across the ferry "Yablonevy Brod" - on a common trail. Or, without reaching the ford, climb a path upward, through a small pass, to immediately come to the cave of Paniya under yews, to the spring.