FolkloreGreen

The Kungur Ice Cave

added29 August 20261703

A gypsum cave in Perm Krai some six kilometres long, with seventy underground lakes and permanent ice in the entrance chambers. The first survey was drawn in 1703. Tradition holds that Yermak's band wintered here before crossing the Urals, and one grotto is called the Ladies' Tears — legend has a daughter of Christian X of Denmark slipping and dying here on a visit.

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57.44090, 57.00590

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More in Kungur

Ghost sightingYellow

The White Caver

The underground counterpart of the Black Climber, known to everyone who goes into caves across the former Soviet Union. What makes him white is calcite, settled on his clothes over years below ground. Meeting him traditionally means the party has lost the route. Cavers have a half-joking initiation rite for newcomers in which he is described — a rare case of folklore whose carriers know perfectly well it is folklore, and which is none the weaker for it.

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Nearest on the map

Ghost sightingYellow

The White Caver

4 km away

Anomalous zoneBlack

The Ordinskaya Cave

The longest underwater gypsum cave in the world — over five kilometres of flooded galleries under the left bank at Kungur. The water is clear enough for fifty metres of visibility, and divers describe flying rather than diving. The cave has killed several experienced divers: the sumps offer no landmarks, and someone who loses the line does not find the way back. Locals kept clear of the sinkholes long before anyone arrived with tanks.

30 km away

UFO sightingYellow

The Molyobka Triangle

A stretch on the border of Perm Krai and Sverdlovsk Oblast that became, in the late 1980s, the first Soviet anomalous zone written up in the national press. From 1989 thousands travelled here, reporting glowing spheres, equipment failing, loss of bearings, and "luminous people". The place is linked to old Mansi sacrificial sites. A statue of an alien stands by the village now, and the flow of researchers dried up long ago.

60 km away

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