Thus it was in the remote south of the forest in the summer of 1978. A helicopter sent to find a safe spot to land a party of geologists was skimming the treeline a hundred or so miles from the Mongolian border when it dropped into the thickly wooded valley of an unnamed tributary of the Abakan, a seething ribbon of water rushing through dangerous terrain. The valley walls were narrow, with sides that were close to vertical in places, and the skinny pine and birch trees swaying in the rotors’ downdraft were so thickly clustered that there was no chance of finding a spot to set the aircraft down. But, peering intently through his windscreen in search of a landing place, the pilot saw something that should not have been there. It was a clearing, 6,000 feet up a mountainside, wedged between the pine and larch and scored with what looked like long, dark furrows. The baffled helicopter crew made several passes before reluctantly concluding that this was evidence of human habitation—a garden that, from the size and shape of the clearing, must have been there for a long time.

It was an astounding discovery. The mountain was more than 150 miles from the nearest settlement, in a spot that had never been explored. The Soviet authorities had no records of anyone living in the district.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    356 months ago

    I was legit coming to say “Great Read, thanks for posting” then saw the community name, so Excellent Read, thanks for posting.

  • @LesserAbe
    link
    266 months ago

    Thanks for sharing. Thought this section was interesting in relation to recent online discourse:

    ‘“It’s less dangerous,” the writer Vasily Peskov notes of this part of the taiga, “to run across a wild animal than a stranger,”’

    • @ChicoSuave
      link
      106 months ago

      Asked by an astonished Peskov whether she was not frightened to be out alone in the wilderness after dark, she replied: “What would there be out here to hurt me?”

      Sounds like there isn’t much out there that would hurt anyone, so people would definitely be the scariest thing around.

  • @ChexMax
    link
    96 months ago

    Thank you for sharing!

    • AwesomeLowlanderOPM
      link
      fedilink
      English
      17
      edit-2
      6 months ago

      Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and follow!

      This article was brought to you by Shadow Raid Legends

  • @lethargic_lemming
    link
    96 months ago

    Wow. That last sentence was pretty chilling. I have to imagine that after adhering to such a demanding lifestyle your entire life the suffering becomes something you almost hold on to.