Katu-Yaryk Pass
Interesting facts
- The road drops more than 500 metres, from a viewpoint at about 1,200 metres down to the valley floor at roughly 670 metres.
- Building the descent was the personal initiative of A. V. Sanaa, director of the local state farm, who started the work in 1987.
- Katu-Yaryk is often described as one of the most dangerous road passes in the Altai, and it is usually driven only in high-clearance vehicles.
- In the Chulyshman valley below lies Uchar, a waterfall about 160 metres high, reachable only on foot by a long trail up the Chulcha gorge.
- Also in the valley are the Stone Mushrooms, eroded earth pillars capped with boulders, some of them about 7 metres tall.
- From the viewpoint at the top, the Kurkure waterfall can be seen spilling down the far wall of the canyon.
Why it is worth it
Katu-Yaryk is a single, plunging road in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia: a dirt track that drops from the edge of a high plateau down a near-vertical mountainside into the canyon of the Chulyshman River. Its name in the Altai language means roughly "hard cleft" or "narrow gorge". From the viewpoint at the top, the valley floor opens far below — a flat green ribbon of river meadows hemmed in by bare rock walls — and the road can be seen descending to it in a few tight switchbacks across a slope of around 35 degrees.
For most of its history the Chulyshman valley had no road at all. Villagers came and went along a steep horse trail or by boat across Lake Teletskoye, into which the river flows. In 1987, on the initiative of the director of the local state farm, residents began cutting a route down the canyon wall, and the descent opened in October 1989. It runs about 3.5 kilometres with seven turns and an average gradient of around 18 percent, surfaced with earth and stones, and it remains the main road link between the upper plateau and the valley villages of Koo and Balykcha, continuing all the way to the southern tip of Lake Teletskoye.
The pass belongs to a remote and storied landscape. The road towards it runs from Ulagan through the village of Balyktuyul, close to which lie the Pazyryk burials — the frozen tombs that gave their name to the Scythian-era Pazyryk culture. Below the pass, the Chulyshman flows through one of the most dramatic valleys of the Altai, a 241-kilometre river that is also known for white-water rafting of the highest difficulty grades.
Getting there
Katu-Yaryk lies in Ulagansky District of the Altai Republic, at kilometre 31 of the dirt road from Balyktuyul to Koo and Balykcha. That road branches from the Chuysky Trakt (M-52) at Aktash and passes through Ulagan and Balyktuyul. The nearest airport within Russia is Gorno-Altaysk Airport (RGK), about 200 km away in a straight line and much farther by road; the town of Tashtagol in neighbouring Kemerovo Oblast is about 208 km away in a straight line.
On these lists
50.91361, 88.21528per Wikidata