Tuim failure in Khakassia

Why don’t people fly like birds? You know, sometimes I think I'm a bird. When you stand on a mountain, you are drawn to fly. That's how I would run away, raised my hands and flew ..." - remember the monologue of Katerina from the play Ostrovsky "Thunderstorm"?

It is such inspiring and amazing feelings, incredible and unforgettable emotions that you can experience if you go on a tour - "Tuim Failure".

The famous place “Turquoise bowels” or Tuimsky failure is a place of extraordinary beauty, it fascinates and attracts the attention of tourists around the world. A stunning sight, the feature of which is that it captures the spirit, makes you tremble, someone catches up with fear, but does not leave anyone indifferent!

Standing on the edge of a mountain, you begin to realize that a person is only a piece of sand in this world, that his strength is not enough to summon Mother Nature to a duel.

Just imagine a giant failure, the depth of which is five nine-story houses! A huge depression in the mountain with steep walls on the site of a closed underground mine is a creation of human hands. Among tour guides, this place is called a lake of technogenic origin.

Our ancestors were wise people, they knew how to get along with Nature, learned from her and watched her. It is thanks to the observation of the ancient people living in the territory of modern Khakassia and Shirinsky district in particular, the Tuimsky Failure got its name. The word "tuyukh" in translation from Turkic in the modern Russian sound "tuim", literally means "deaf, having no way out." And indeed, the Tuim River, on which the village with the same name stands, where our landmark is located, has no way out, it ends with a lake from which it no longer flows.

Previously, this place was called Kiyalykh-Uzen, i.e. “Second Log” and looked quite different – it was a mountain, and in it – a copper ore mine, so this place is also called Copper Mountain. The mountain was all cut with galleries and tracks, some galleries were trolleys with ore. The mine began to function in 1953. Then copper, lead, gold, tungsten and iron were mined here. In 1974, after the main reserves of ore were developed, the mine was closed due to safety violations. At first, the mountain, empty from the inside, did not seem to pose any danger until animals began to fall into the ground. A hole with a diameter of 6 m appeared on the top, and the mountain had to be blown up. After that, a huge dip formed, which eventually partially filled with water: this is how the lake was formed. The water in it is bright turquoise color because of the great depth (previously it was believed that this color was caused by a high content of copper salts, which was not confirmed by laboratory studies). Currently, the dimeter of the dip is about 200 meters, and the height from the highest peak to the surface of the lake, located at the bottom of the basin, is 125 meters.

The Tuim failure is a page in the history of our people, our country, which must be known and remembered. If you open the book by Alexander Solzhenitsyn “Archipelago – Gulag”, then on its pages you will find a mention of Tuimlag.

Indeed, in the 50s of the last century, Tuim was a closed zone, where, according to official data, 25,000 prisoners worked, mainly political prisoners, who built the village itself, the CHP, ore processing and enrichment factories, and the railway.

A lot of camps appeared here even before the Great Patriotic War. Prisoners also worked in the mines, extracting the mineral Shelith-tungsten, which was used during the war as an additive to alloy steel, which made impenetrable armor for the legendary tanks of the Soviet army T-34.

In 1995, a wide range of people learned about the Tuimsky failure thanks to the TV programs of Yuri Senkevich “Cinema Traveler Club”. This is a place that attracts people of different temperaments and different interests: lovers of history, mining, travelers, lovers of sharp impressions, athletes and connoisseurs of unusual and mysterious places that keep many more mysteries. A huge depression with almost vertical walls especially attracts extreme lovers of adrenaline. Ordinary tourists are sometimes afraid to just look at the jump from a steep mountain, but daredevils can experience the strength of their spirit, making a jump from the highest point, almost reaching the surface of a turquoise lake. In the recreation park there is an observation deck, and one of the tunnels, accompanied by a guide, you can go to the lake.

Many secrets are kept in the azure waters of the Tuimsky failure, a place to visit if you look into Khakassia.