Baytuk Stone Tents

The Baytuk Stone Tents (Baytukskie kamennye palatki) are granite tors on the left bank of the Suunduk River in the Kvarkensky district of Orenburg Region, about 6–7 kilometers northeast of the village of Kvarkeno, a kilometer below the mouth of the Baytuk River. They are one of the best natural granite outcrops of the Suunduk massif and a regional nature monument covering 102.3 hectares, under a special protection regime.

Nature

The outcrops are made of granites of the Adamov intrusive complex of the late Paleozoic; the massif finished forming in the Permian period. The characteristic shape of the rocks is cone-like stacks built of huge mattress-shaped boulders, produced by weathering of the granite along joints. The same type of landform, bastions of mattress-shaped boulders, is found at the neighboring nature monument, the Kvarken Stone Tents.

The granite contains pegmatite veins up to half a meter thick, usually around 10 centimeters, with large crystals of reddish feldspar and mica. Some veins show zoning, with a central zone made of aplite that contains small almandine garnet crystals. Thin veinlets of gray quartz occasionally occur in both the pegmatites and the granite itself.

History

The Baytuk Stone Tents preserve traces of ancient granite quarrying, presumably dating to the Bronze Age. Slabs of the same Suunduk massif granite were used to face the rampart of the nearby Alandskoye hillfort, a fortified settlement of the Sintashta culture of the Middle Bronze Age (third quarter of the 2nd millennium BC). The Alandskoye hillfort is considered the earliest and southernmost of more than twenty ancient settlements of the so-called Country of Towns, a chain of fortified sites along the eastern slopes of the Southern Urals.

Today the Baytuk Stone Tents are a popular destination for tourists and local history enthusiasts, as well as a site for field practice for students and schoolchildren: the rock outcrops clearly show the structure of the granite massif and the minerals found in it.

Getting there

The Baytuk Stone Tents lie in the steppe Trans-Urals, in the Kvarkensky district, on the left bank of the Suunduk River. Coming from the village of Kvarkeno, turn off the main road onto a field track at around 52.0967° N, 59.7404° E, then head northeast along the riverbed to the tents themselves, located near 52.139° N, 59.798° E. There is no paved road to the nature monument.