The once little-known provincial village Tuim in Northern Khakassia has its own deep man-made miracle - Tuim sinkhole. This sinkhole is the result of the "failed" Stalinist project on field development in Siberia. Northern Khakassia is generally rich in deposits of various minerals, where almost the entire periodic table is concentrated. In Tuim area, there are deposits of copper and tungsten-molybdenum ores in the ground. They will be the start of our story.
History of the phenomenon
Copper, widely used by people, began to be mined in this area back in the Tagar archaeological era 8-3 centuries BC. The territory of the present villages of Tuim and Ulen was then the largest center for the extraction and processing of metals in South Asia. As evidence of this, archaeologists show the findings of ancient smelting furnaces. Local craftsmen learned how to cast and forge copper products and trade them from the Urals to China.
But after the fall of the Scythian state metalworking skills were lost for many centuries ahead.
Until the end of the 19th century the tiny Khakass ulus Tuim consisted of only 10-12 yurts, whose population was engaged in traditional cattle breeding and did not dig into the earth’s depth to avoid the wrath of spirits.
The fate of this settlement suddenly changed when ore was mined in its vicinity again. It is believed that the founder of this business was the Frenchman Delarue, who founded several copper mines in those regions in 1886-1896 and romantically named them after his daughters: Julia, Daria, Theresa, Lydia. At the same time that fateful copper deposit Kiyalykh-Uzen ("rocky ravine" in Khakass) was discovered.
By the beginning of the October Revolution a syndicate with the laconic name "Copper" had already launched its large-scale work in the vicinity of Tuim. New mines and copper smelters equipped with the latest technology steam engines, electric motors and oil engines were opened. At that time life in the taiga village was in full swing: the mountains acquired adits, the ore was melted in furnaces, and horse carts with copper were sent to Achinsk with enviable regularity. Thus, everything went well. And if it had not been for the insolent Bolsheviks, such a prosperous life would have existed for a long time. But the new owners nationalized everything that was possible and impossible in the country and drove the bourgeoisie out.
The civil war and the raids of partisans from Solovyov's gang on carts with metal did not contribute to the development of production. It was only in 1933 that the Kialykh-Uzen exploration party was created, which in addition to the already explored copper deposits discovered tungsten-molybdenum ores.
They returned to the deposit in the late 40s. The government formed “Tuimwolfram” Plant of the Yeniseistroy Main Directorate of the NKVD of the USSR widely used the labor of political prisoners to mine and enrich ore. It breathed new life into the old mine. By the end of the Stalinist purges a sufficient number of specialists in ore mining and simply manpower were concentrated in the created concentration camp. Many of the prisoners of Tuimlag did not live to old age thanks to such care of the state which turned the people into beasts of burden. Slaves were not counted there. The ore was transported by wheelbarrows to the processing plant, and the constant flywheel of repression provided more sets of doomed men. By the end of the Stalinist era Tuim remained a closed zone: 25,000 political prisoners worked in a molybdenum mine, built a village, power plant, coal-processing plant and a railway. The work was carried out mainly by hand - with a pick and a shovel. In narrow adits ore was chopped practically on the knees. Then the ore was loaded into trolleys, which were manually moved to the surface and then to the processing plant.
One can only imagine what kind of negative energy consisting of pain and sufferings of mostly innocent people who were forced to die for the prosperity of a new empire was absorbed by the mountain.
The amounts of ore mining were not decreased during the post-Stalinist era. However, the workers became civilian labour. The so-called "to catch up and surpass the U.S." Stakhanov approach led to a rapid depletion of reserves. By 1968 the burglarious business of the state monster was on the verge of collapse. The huge cavities formed inside the mountain jeopardized all work. The "roof" could shrink at any moment. However, the work on ore removal continued for several years and only in 1974 the Kiyalykh-Uzen mine was finally closed.
In the 50s cows and small livestock began to disappear from Tuim residents. During their search a gap with a diameter of six meters was discovered at the top of the mountain. The lost cattle fell into it. In 1961 explosives were placed in this crack without taking into account that there was a huge cavity under the mountain. After a series of explosions the diameter of the crater increased to 70 meters. But even after that the mine was not closed. According to experts, about 60% of the metal deposits still remained inside the mountain. Miners with directed explosions and jackhammers went lower and lower. However, the work was complicated by the groundwater filling all the free space. And if it were not for the constantly running pumps, the adits and drifts would quickly fill with water. Unable to withstand the force of nature the management of the mine decided to close it.
Over time nature completed the conservation of the object. In 1991 a collapse occurred as a result of a small earthquake and the crater acquired its current size. Now it is incredible. The diameter of the hole is more than 200 meters, the depth to the water surface is 120 meters and another 200 meters are under the water. All the lower adits and drifts were quickly filled with water, having formed a turquoise lake.
The magnetic attraction to this hole was discovered among local youth back in the 60s, when a deep crack appeared on the top of the mountain. Later, the indignation of local residents began to grow. They wanted to close the mine for children. But the authorities were unable to make the edges of the hole flat, so they simply surrounded it with a fence. In 2008 a huge piece of rock came off the edge of the cliff and frightened the locals. There is one more lump held with spit and bailing wire. Some thrill-seekers dare to descend into the crack between the lump and the mainland. If the ground moves, they risk to repeat Smolin's "feat".
In 1996 Yuri Senkevich filmed a story about the Sinkhole for the popular TV program “Travelers Club”, and then the place became the background for filming an episode of the TV game "Fear Factor".
Wooden fences, wire and forbidden signs do not stop anyone, and the terrible hole in the underworld attracts more and more people here.
Thus, in 2019 a TV show about travelling around Russia "Heads and Tails" filmed an episode about the Tuim sinkhole which was hosted by Maria Gorban.
In the 2000s the Tuim sinkhole became the center of extreme tourism in the region. Cavers started exploring adits, divers plunged into flooded underground passages, and base jumpers did bungee jumping from one hundred and twenty meters to the otherworldly bottomless mirror.
Nobody knows how many secrets this underwater abyss has. Some divers have tried to dive to the bottom but they found only a side cave that led into an expanding void. According to the miners, there are three more horizons with a total depth of 200 meters. Among the researchers of the Tuim sinkhole, there are rumors about the bottomless depth of the lake and its deadly attraction.
The history of the creation of the Tuim sinkhole in each source is different since it was created from old surviving archives, as well as from the words of the indigenous people who are not alive anymore. Anyway, the Tuim sinkhole is an extraordinary man-made miracle which everyone wants to see again and again.
In 2020 a new type of attraction appeared in the “Tuim Sinkhole Park” – a descent along an equipped staircase into the crater itself from the side of the observation deck. The overall number of steps is 120. The excursion is conducted only with a guide and takes about an hour. The cost of this excursion is 500 rubles per person. When you go down and reach the water, you get incredible emotions and feelings of the inner beauty of this miracle.