Death Valley (Yakutia)

Death Valley (Dolina Smerti) is an anomalous zone in the upper reaches of the Vilyuy River, in the Mirninsky district of the Sakha Republic (Yakutia), north of the Vilyuy Reservoir. The Yakut name of the place, Eluyu Cherkochyuoh, translates as "valley of death". The remote taiga area is tied to a legend about mysterious metal cauldrons hidden underground, and to several expeditions that tried to find them.

History of the legend

The first mention of a copper cauldron "sunk into the ground" in the upper Vilyuy dates back to the second half of the 19th century. Between 1853 and 1855, the geographer and ethnographer Richard Maak led an expedition of the Siberian branch of the Russian Geographical Society across the basins of the Vilyuy, Olyokma and Chona rivers. He recorded the cauldron story as a local legend in his book "Vilyuysky District of the Yakutsk Region", though in some retellings he is said to have claimed he saw a cauldron about ten metres across with his own eyes.

In the early 20th century, an expedition led by geologist Vladimir Obruchev reportedly found a giant cauldron made of copper and its alloys on a mountaintop.

In 1971, the Moscow writer Arkady Vyatkin visited the valley and recorded the story of a local Evenk hunter about "metal burrows" where thin, black, one-eyed people in steel clothing supposedly sleep.

In 1996, traveller Mikhail Koretsky from Vladivostok told the newspaper Trud that over three seasons he had seen seven cauldrons six to nine metres in diameter and had even spent a night inside one. According to him, the metal resisted even a sharpened chisel.

In 2006, Czech researcher Ivan Mackerle organised an expedition to search for the cauldrons. For aerial reconnaissance the team used a powered paraglider, from which they spotted perfectly regular concentric circles in the taiga that they took for traces of the cauldrons. In 2008, an expedition led by TV journalist Evgeny Troshin into the Olguydakh river basin found no cauldrons, but its members noted hills with an unusual pyramidal shape. In 2011, a film crew from "Iskateli Yakutii" rafted down the Olguydakh and found a strange rounded object in a bog.

Legends and accounts

According to legend, huge hemispherical cauldrons once stood in the valley, and hunters and lost travellers used to spend the night under them. After residents of nearby settlements suddenly fell ill and died, the place was declared cursed.

The cauldron legend is also tied to stories of "black people" — said to be either the ghosts of miners who died here or aliens who arrived on some kind of craft. Science-fiction writer Alexander Kazantsev once suggested the cauldrons were wreckage of an alien vessel. Other stories claim that a bunker hidden underground holds the frozen bodies of people in metal suits, preserved by the permafrost.

The name of the Olguydakh river, a Vilyuy tributary, is translated as "cauldron place", which locals link to the legend. The Yakuts also tell of a column of fire that periodically rises from the ground and burns everything within a few hundred metres, and of people dying from an unknown form of radiation.

Versions

Modern science does not confirm the existence of the Vilyuy cauldrons: their exact location has never been established despite all the expeditions. Participants in later searches reported a strong magnetic field in the areas of supposed finds, but did not carry expensive equipment to study it. Researchers who visited the valley recorded no elevated radiation levels or anomalies in plants.

One common theory links the legend to spent rocket stages falling from launches at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan: Yakutia is officially designated as a drop zone for discarded rocket parts. However, legends about Death Valley are known from long before the space age began, which casts doubt on this explanation. Ivan Mackerle himself felt seriously unwell during his 2006 expedition, which he attributed to his implanted pacemaker reacting to the strong magnetic field.

Getting there

Death Valley can only be reached as part of an expedition. The nearest major town is Mirny in Yakutia, which has air service. From there, travel continues by all-terrain vehicle to the Olguydakh river near where it enters the Vilyuy Reservoir, and then by boat down the river. Local hunters tend to avoid this taiga area altogether.