Bell cave. Serpievsky cave city: conquer the underworld! Karst arch - Rock-ring

Shouldn't we go to the underground cities? See the unseen halls hidden from outsiders, dip your palms into the icy water of the lakes, admire the fantastic pattern of calcite deposits and bizarre limestone sculptures created over the centuries.

Yes, they are caves! Dark, mysterious, alluring with its unique beauty, ancient secrets and treasures hidden in the depths.

In the coming weekend, frosty and invigorating, you should not sit at home, but rather rush to natural Park"Serpievsky cave city" and become the conqueror of the underworld. Especially the winter best time to visit the caves!

Just a warning, the caves are not for the neat. The stone walls and floor are wet and dirty, but beautiful and... unusual. In them, it is not always possible to move while standing, and often even squat or crawl on bark. Sometimes you have to lie down on your belly and crawl. Crawl, crawl and crawl...

But today the story will be about two caves, where the skills of plastun movement are not needed for new impressions.

cave city

The valley of the Sim River is famous for the abundance of a wide variety of caves. There are over 150 of them! But the most popular and easily accessible are located near the village of Serpievka, Chelyabinsk region. It is these caves that are called "Serpievsky Cave City". underground city stretched along the river bank for 15 kilometers! Karst caves are located here one after another. Among them there are funnels, and failures, and niches, and arches, and grottoes. Underground rivers flow in large caves, forming lakes.

Serpievsky castle is not only famous a tourist route, but also a unique archaeological monument of world importance, as traces of the presence of primitive people and many bones of prehistoric animals were found in many caves and grottoes.

For ordinary, not accustomed to cramped skins and manholes, but very curious tourists, caves are ideal Bell tower, Mayskaya and world famous Ignatievskaya.

Conquer the underworld

The trail to the caves starts from a steep cliff on the banks of the Sim, from where a picturesque view of the pine forest and the river valley opens.

The first cave that you will meet on the way - Mayskaya. The entrance to it is wide, but you need to go bent over. But the kids are just the right size.

Inside, at a distance of about one meter from the floor to the ceiling, there is constantly fog, which settles with moisture on the ceiling and walls and immediately turns into a snow cover, similar to large white moss.

The clay floor of the cave is decorated for the winter with unusual decoration. Water, dripping from the ceiling, gradually creates transparent ice columns that dot the entire floor. Ice stalagmites look like rock crystals that shimmer and shimmer under the rays of lanterns. A very unusual sight! At other times of the year you will not see such beauty!

The whole cave is essentially one big corridor. The exception is the hole at the end, through which you need to go on all fours or crawl. He leads out into another Big hall. The May Cave is easy, it is impossible to get lost in it.

On the way to the next cave Bell tower, we will meet a couple of small grottoes in the rock, unremarkable, but nevertheless you need to look at them with one eye and be surprised at the beauty of your native land.

The second cave is quite spacious, with a high ceiling. It is unrealistic to get lost in it, because the cave has only one main passage.

The entire floor of the cave, as in Maiskaya, is dotted with ice columns. But there are many more calcium deposits and limestone figures, which turned the smooth, torch-smoked walls into incredible paintings.

People with a good imagination see petrified echoes of the distant past of our planet in the rock carvings: the ridges and bones of dinosaurs and prehistoric animals, the trunks and branches of giant trees and ferns, the shells of prehistoric mollusks, and even the imprints of unprecedented paws and claws.

However, who exactly lives in the cave is bats! Small brown creatures hanging from the ceiling can be easily spotted by looking up and lighting up the upper walls. Mice hibernate during the winter, so be careful not to disturb their long sleep.

Once in the Kolokolnaya, in its very bowels, there was an Old Believer church and divine services were held. According to one version, the cave got its name because of the bell that hung in the back room. In order for it to ring, it was necessary to pull the rope hidden at the entrance. Only the initiated could know about it. Thus, the caller warned the others that “one of us” was going into the cave. On one of the rock ledges, a bell was hoisted, which rang during a church service.

There is also a hole in the cave, about eight meters long, which can only be overcome by crawling. The guides say that this tunnel was one of the elements of ritual initiations, through which boys crawled in pitch darkness, symbolically passing through the birth canal, saying goodbye to childhood and already becoming adults.

In our times, the Kolokolnaya cave has not lost its mystical appeal either. And it still serves as a place of worship for higher powers, judging by the candles placed in the hall, and the symbol of the sun-svarog on a stone in the cave.

It is said that scientists have found drawings of primitive people here. Now they are all hidden under a layer of soot and inscriptions of contemporaries.

Near the cave Kolokolnaya there is a small rocky arch, called Ring rock, and under the arch are two stones carved in the shape of hearts, which bring happiness to lovers if a certain ritual is performed.

A lot of legends and legends are connected with caves, mountains and rocks in the Urals. They intertwined and legends about the Old Believers-hermits, and faith in magic stones and wonderful places. In the same Bell there are stones, according to beliefs, that give male strength, treat female problems, help with infertility, cleanse both the body and the heart and soul. Believe it or not, it's a personal matter. But the locals sincerely believe.

And finally

There is a beauty to underground travel. You enjoy an adventure in pitch darkness, (dim lights don't count), from unusual place and atmosphere and go to the surface realizing yourself as a dungeon conqueror, because everything here is REAL. Here, as in the replicated tourist caves (Kungurskaya, for example), there is no foppish concrete path, no electricity that goes out immediately behind the backs of the tourists, no annoying screams of organized groups delivered by Ikarus every 15 minutes - only genuine caves, as they were hundreds of thousands of years ago and you.

By the way, not far from these two caves, there is a very famous Ignatievskaya cave. A whole art gallery of the Paleolithic era was found in it - there are only two similar caves with so many ancient paintings in the world - one is in Spain, the other in France. And, besides, here is the greatest treasure of the Ignatievskaya cave - the miraculous Ignatievskaya Mother of God, created by nature itself. But that story is for the next article.

How to get there?

From Ufa we leave for the Chelyabinsk highway, past the city of Sim, to the fork in Kropacheva. We turn right at the sign Serpievka and drive to the village. We pass it, and right behind the "ancient" ruins of the farm, which cheerful tourists dubbed the local "Stonehenge", there will be an exit from the road to pine forest. We leave the cars and go deeper into the forest. After 200-300 meters there will be a rocky cliff and several equipped pavilions and bonfires. You're at the place.

Immediately after the Small Serpievsky grotto, the Kolokolnaya cave begins. Their entrances are separated by a small wall, perhaps they will someday connect or, on the contrary, were once connected.

The entrance to Kolokolnaya is high, and then there is a high corridor. You can go through almost the entire cave without bending over. Friends went along the main gallery, and my son and I went along a narrow rounded hole, almost all the time we had to crawl. As a result, we met with them in a large hall.

There are many small stalactites and stalagmites in this hall, apparently, the big ones have already been broken off, and traces are visible. From this hall there are a couple of narrow manholes ending in dead ends.

The Bell Cave, like Mayskaya, has one main corridor, it is simply unrealistic to get lost in it. Just like in this cave, almost all the walls of the corridors and manholes are smooth, as if polished by regular visitors.

It also has cave drawings which, unfortunately, we did not find. Apparently, due to the fact that almost everything in it is smoked from torches. But there are many modern inscriptions, ranging from the 50s of the last century, ending with this year. And so throughout the Serpievsky cave city, and not just in the Bell.

The Serpievsky karst site is located in the Katav-Ivanovsky district of the Chelyabinsk region. Our expedition to this most interesting area took place in mid-July. We visited the Mayskaya, Kolokolnaya and Serpievskaya caves, the Big Grotto and saw the Ring Rock located near the village of Serpievka.

Spending the night on the beach Sima we went to, visited the place of Sim's disappearance in the karst voids and the exit of his waters from Essum cave. Walking route(35 km) ended in Sim city, before which we settled down for the night near a small stream.

Bell Cave

Bell Cave is located in the Katav-Ivanovsky district of the Chelyabinsk region near the village of Serpievka (1.5 km southeast of the village), 300 meters downstream of the Sim River (on the right bank) from the bridge on the highway Katav-Ivanovsk - the village of Serpievka and 50 meters from the Maiskaya cave.

The cave is built in dense light gray Devonian limestones. The entrance to the cave is oriented to the South-East, has the shape of an arch 3 m high and 4 m wide. It is located at a height of 11 m above the river level. After 5.5 m after the entrance, the arch of the cave goes down.

A cave of corridor-grotto type, developing in the direction of the North-West, is a gallery from 2 to 5 m wide and from 1 to 6-8 m high (in grottoes). At a distance of 30 m from the entrance and further up to 70 m, there is a passage parallel to the main corridor - "Metro", connected to the main passages. The passage of the "Metro" is rather narrow - 1.2 m wide and 1 m high and has very smooth walls and a semicircular ceiling. The floor is clay and dry. From the "Metro", which is about 40 m long, to the left - three passages go into the main corridor, which are located at a distance of 2 m, 13 m, 10 m from each other. There are several distinct grottoes in the cave with a vault height of 6-8 m and a width of 5 to 10 m. All of them were formed at the intersection of cracks with the main gallery.

In total, there are four halls in the cave:

• 1st from the entrance - "Narrow" - 4.5 X 10 m. and up to 6 m high.
• 2nd from the entrance - "Round"
• 3rd from the entrance - "Stalactite" - 20 X 8 X 4 m.
• 4th from the entrance - "Far" - 9 X 8 X 5 m.

Connecting with the main passage, the "Metro" forms the "Stalactite" hall, which is connected to the "Far" 20-meter gallery. At the entrance to the "Far" there is an organ pipe up to 10 m high. On the right, in the side of the hall, there are small guras, cave pearls, small pebbles. Two narrow walkers up to 0.8 m wide lead from the hall to the left. There are active gours in front of the walkers. Both walkers are connected after 15 m into one corridor 5 m wide, 10 m long and 1.2 m high. There are three lakes in the left walker. There are sinter formations on the walls, many of which have been broken off. In the same passage, 7 m from the hall, an organ pipe 2.5 m high goes up, which also has many chips. The corridor rises by 30o and ends with two cul-de-sacs, two cul-de-sacs that form a rounded grotto. One of the dead ends faces west and the other faces east. In the western dead end, the dimensions of which are 3 X 1.2 X 1.4 m, the walls and ceiling are covered with mondmilch (moon milk). On the left is a stalagmite with inscriptions on the walls. In the eastern dead end, the dimensions of which are 5 X 2 X 1.3 m, there are sinter formations, many chips. On the right is a stalagnate.

In the entire cave, the floor is made of clay, rubble, fragments of bedrock. In the "Far" grotto, the floor is covered with sintered calcite crust. The walls of the cave are smooth, in places corroded by the streams of water that once existed here. In the grottoes "Stalactite" and "Far" in the summer there is dripping, puddles on the floor. In winter, ice sinter formations.

Once the cave had calcite decorations - sintered crusts, stalactites, stalagmites. At present, they have been preserved in the Stalactite grotto, but they have been significantly smoked by torches and chipped.

According to the stories local residents Religious ceremonies were performed in this cave, which is why it was called the Bell Cave.

The cave is mostly horizontal throughout its length. In 1982-1984, the Kolokolnaya Cave, along with other karst cavities in the area, was explored by an expedition of archaeologists from the Novosibirsk Institute of History, Philosophy and Philology of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences, led by Candidate of Historical Sciences V.T. Petrin. In it, as well as in the Ignatievskaya cave, they found several groups of drawings of ancient people of the Paleolithic era. One of the drawings is an image of a harpoon, while others require further clearing and decoding. In the summer of 1984, two more new images were discovered, made in ocher on the walls of the Krugly and Dalniy grottoes. Thus, the Kolokolnaya cave became the third cave in the Soviet Union (after Kapova and Ignatievskaya), which has Paleolithic drawings of primitive people. Therefore, it is of exceptional value for science and society as a complex monument of history, culture and nature, which has not yet fully revealed all its secrets and mysteries.

• The total length of the passages is 268 m.
• The total depth of the cave is 7 m.
• The average width of the passages is 3.2 m.

Maiskaya Cave

Maiskaya Cave located next to the Bell. Two entrances lead to the cave, located 15 m from each other and connecting into one corridor after 6 m. The main entrance to the cave has an irregular shape and dimensions 5 X 1.2 m and is located at a height of 18 m above the river level. The entrance is oriented to the northwest. The dip angle of the seams is 20o, and the strike azimuth is 120o.

From the entrance to the northwest leads a wide, but low, 100-meter corridor 1-1.5 meters high, the floor of which is covered with small slabs and stones. At 15 m from the entrance there is a small grotto with dimensions of 6 X 5 X 1.5 m. At 55 m from the entrance the corridor narrows slightly, and a low and narrow 60 m manhole begins to the right. After walking 25 m along this path, you can get into a very beautiful "milk hall". The walls and ceiling of this hall are covered with monmilch, in some places very fresh. Rubble on the floor. To the right there is a passage to the main corridor, and to the left this manhole continues and connects with the main corridor 95 meters from the entrance. At 70 meters from the entrance there is a grotto with dimensions of 10 X 6 X 2 m. At the end of this grotto there are stalactites, stalagmites and stalagnates.

At 100 meters from the entrance, the corridor narrows and turns to the north and leads to a large round hall, 22 meters in diameter and up to 8 meters high, decorated with stalactites and stalagmites. Many of them are unfortunately broken. At the entrance to this hall are small guras filled with water. At the end of the hall there is a large blocky scree. Its angle of inclination is about 30o. There are streaks and stalagmites. The cave ends with a dead end, directed from the hall to the northwest, with dimensions of 12 X 4 X 1 m. To the right, at the end of the dead end, there is an impassable gap. There are stones on the floor, there are streaks. The cave is mostly horizontal throughout its length.

• The total depth of the cave is 7.4 m.
• The average width of the passages is 3.5 m.
• The total length of the passages is 378 m.

Cave Serpievskaya

Cave Serpievskaya is located near the village of Serpievka (0.6 km south of the village) on the right bank of the Sim River (30 m from it), 1.25 km. from the bridge down the river.

The entrance to the cave opens at a height of 3.5 m above the river level in a low (approximately 10-15 m) limestone outcrop of thin-slab layering with an azimuth of 20o and an angle of 6o. The entrance to the cave is arched, 3 m wide and 2 m high, oriented to the northeast. 30 m downstream there is a second entrance about 0.5 m in diameter, very narrow and difficult to pass.

The main tunnel-shaped gallery develops in a northeasterly direction and has a length of about 30 m. At the end, the gallery expands to 5 m and rises to 6 m, forming a grotto. There is liquid sucking clay on the floor.

In the middle of the grotto there is a pillar-outlier 2 meters in diameter. The floor of the gallery from the entrance goes down (6-8o) and is made of rubble and earth. In the far part there is a small (2-3 m) and shallow lake. During dry periods of the year, the lake may disappear. The walls of the cave are almost vertical, slightly corroded, covered with small cracks. The walls and the vault are covered with white limestone coating, currently heavily smoked.

To the left, after 6 and 12 meters from the entrance, there are narrow passages perpendicular to the main gallery. Intersecting with passages going in the same direction as the main gallery, they form lattice-type labyrinths. To the left of the main passage and 10 meters from the entrance there is a passage, rather narrow and low at the end. Going to the northwest, after 30 m it turns to the southwest and comes to the surface by entrance No. 2. This move is called "Pioneer" and has a clay floor, and the ceiling and walls are stone. Along its entire length, you can see a lot of insects.

The cave lies in light gray limestone. Of the sinter formations in the cave there are corallites (in the labyrinth), small calcite scallops. In the cold periods of the year, ice formations appear in the inlet part.

The cave is mostly horizontal throughout its length. The floor of the cave is clay, in some places there is sand, there are blocky blockages. The ceiling of the cave is stepped, in some passages there is a capezh. There are no landslides and siphons in the cave.

• The total length of the passages is 185 m.
• The total depth of the cave is 2 m.
• The average width of the passages is 1.3 m.
• The average height of the cave is 2 m.

Karst arch - Rock-ring

Karst arch - Rock-ring. It is located in the Katav-Ivanovsky district, southeast of the village of Serpievka, in a rocky outcrop on the right bank of the Sim River. The karst arch has a complex shape with three holes. The dimensions of the largest of them are three by four meters, the length of the arch is five meters. Its walls and vault are composed of thick layers of limestone. This form of karst relief is a remnant of a rock mass in which an ancient cave was laid earlier. Over the course of many millennia, water and wind gradually destroyed the limestone massif, exposing one of the galleries of the former cave. Thus, she got access to both sides of the rocky outlier.

Ignatievskaya cave

Ignatievskaya cave(also known in the literature as Ignat's Cave, Ignat's Cave, Ignatievskaya, Dalnyaya, Serpievskaya, Yamazy-Tash). It is located in the Katav-Ivanovsky district, on the right bank of the Sim River.

The grand arched entrance to the cave is located at a height of 11 meters from the river level. A corridor-type cave with several grottoes, the main development of the galleries is north-western. The first grotto opens to the south, it is accessible to daylight and therefore warms up well by the sun in winter and summer. There is a thick cultural layer and traces of an archaeological excavation on the floor. It is established that there was a camp of primitive people.

The entrance grotto is followed by a wide but low passage leading to the main gallery of the cave. To the right, in the direction of travel, there is another grotto, from which a system of narrow, labyrinth-type passages begins. They eventually lead back to the main gallery in the area of ​​the Stolba grotto.

The main gallery of the cave is over 130 meters long. Its southern part - the Zubasty duct - is damp, on the floor there are puddles of condensation moisture, clay, calcite formations in the form of gours and sinter crust. The northern part of the high and wide gallery leads to the Stolba grotto and then ends with a narrow impassable gap. In the center of this grandiose hall rises a huge limestone remnant pillar, on which the vaults of the grotto rest.

From the grotto of the Stolba, along a wide gallery, you can get to the last grotto of the cave, the so-called "Cell of Elder Ignatius". There are two steps leading into it. One of them is a narrow hole at the base of the right wall of the gallery, the second is an oval hole in the wall at a height of 2.5 meters. It is very damp in the Cell, water is constantly oozing from the walls and ceiling, there are large blocks of limestone and small gravel with liquid clay on the floor. But it is precisely here that the main mystery of the cave is located.

On one of the walls of the grotto, a figure of a woman is carved from calcite incrustation. According to ancient legends that still exist in the village of Serpievka, this image is an icon of the Mother of God, made by a certain elder Ignatius, who lived here at the end of the 19th century, who is considered Grand Duke Konstantin.

Here is what the Orenburg Diocesan News wrote in 1908: “...According to rumors that spread in the Ignatova cave, a royal person died - Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich (brother of Tsars Alexander I and Nicholas I), who replaced the glory of this world with the heavy cross of wandering. According to existing legends, after his imaginary death, when someone else was buried instead of him, he allegedly hid within the Ufa province and died about 25 years ago (about 1883) in a cave near the village of Serpievka, Ufa district ... "

Primitive people lived in the Ignatievskaya cave for a long time. Recent studies carried out by archaeologists from one of the institutes of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences confirmed this by the discovery of drawings of primitive people in the Ignatievskaya cave. The age of the images is determined at 14 thousand years and refers to the Paleolithic. As noted by the famous archaeologist academician A.P. Okladnikov, "The discovery is fundamentally important for Russian archeology". To date, archaeologists have identified more than 30 different groups of Paleolithic drawings on the walls and ceilings of the cave. Some of them are united by a single compositional concept. Among the drawings there are many still undeciphered geometric symbols. Here are realistic images of a bull, a horse, mammoths.

Cave Ignatievskaya is of particular value as a historical, archaeological and natural object. The presence in it of the site of primitive people and Paleolithic drawings puts this cave in the category of completely unique monuments of our country and the world. The images of the Ignatievskaya Cave lose in perfection to the magnificent murals of the caves. Western Europe. But the paintings of the Ignatievskaya Cave are important to scientists primarily as a fact, as a link between the ancient cultures of primitive society at opposite ends of the vast territory of the Euro-Asian continent - Western Europe and Siberia. In terms of significance, the Ignatievskaya Cave can be compared with such world-famous caves as Lasko in France, Altamira in Spain and Bashkiria.

Essum cave

Essum cave. It is located on the left bank of the river. Sim 100 m downstream from the Ignatievskaya cave, under an overhanging rock. The entrance to the cave is located in the lower part of the rocky outcrop, composed of thick layered limestones of light gray color. From the side of the Sim River, the entrance to the cave is not visible, as it is closed by a large heap of limestone blocks. The fall of these boulders occurred as a result of the collapse of the overhanging cornice of the rocky outcrop. Here, along the foot of Mount Essum, at a distance of 250 meters, the absorbed waters of the Sim River burst to the surface with four powerful springs from the ground. One and a half kilometers up the river bed and 600 meters in a straight line, Sim disappears underground at the foot of a hundred-meter cliff.

The entrance to the cave, in the form of a small hole 0.5 by 0.7 meters, opens between the base of the rocky outcrop and the blocky blockage. It is in this place that the most powerful stream flows out from under the stones. Through a low hole you can get into the first grotto of the cave - the Riviera Hall. It is almost entirely filled with an underground lake. This is the River Sim dammed by a blocky blockage.

In the northeastern part of the grotto, the low ceiling merges with the surface of the underground lake and forms a siphon. It opens only at the lowest low water level in the river in winter or during the driest periods in summer. Behind the siphon, the cave continues with a huge tunnel-like gallery, which is three to four meters high and up to five meters wide. The main feature of the gallery is that it does not change direction at all for 165 meters. At the right wall of the gallery there is a clay slope, and the left wall descends steeply into the water of the underground river. Its depth fluctuates slightly and averages half a meter. 100 meters from the entrance siphon
the underground river at a right angle changes direction and turns right. And the gallery itself rests on a clay slope up to two meters high, which almost merges with the ceiling. Behind the slope, the walls and ceiling of the gallery narrow sharply, and after 10 meters between them there remains an almost impenetrable gap about 15 centimeters high.

20 meters after the turn of the underground river, the cave ends with two narrow passages. One of them is dry and raised above the river level by two meters, the other is completely flooded with water. The depth of the river in this place is about three meters. From under the wall of the passage, from a hole about a meter in diameter, a powerful jet of water escapes. This is a complex, completely closed siphon, beyond which the cave undoubtedly continues to develop towards the point of disappearance on the surface of the Sim River. It still remains more than 400 meters in a straight line.

Secondary formations in the cave are represented mainly by cone-shaped stalactites, as well as calcite sinter crusts, in the form of a loose, tuff-like mass. In winter, in the entrance part of the cave, in the Riviera Hall, various ice formations grow: large, up to 10 centimeters, hexagonal frost crystals, stalagmites up to a meter high. In the coldest years, the entire surface of the underground lake in this hall is covered with ice. Of the other features of the cave, it should be noted that crayfish and fish live underground in complete darkness.

This place has a whole cave city. In some guidebooks, this place is called "Serpievsky Cave Castle".
Most of those who visited this place were shown only two big caves(Mayskaya and Kolokolnaya), a couple of grottoes and the Ring Rock and that's it! And I'll tell you how to find all the other objects. There are at least 2 more caves worth visiting.

The order of the objects here is as follows (from right to left on the map):
Mayskaya Cave (Serpievskaya-1), "Small Serpievskiy Grotto", Kolokolnaya Cave (Serpievskaya-2), Rock-Ring, "Big Serpievskiy Grotto", Water Cave, White Queen Cave (Serpievskaya-3). On the opposite side of the road there is another cave - Solomennaya. I don't recommend even trying to go there. She collapses due to highway. In addition, I heard that in Solomennaya there were cases of the appearance of gas unsuitable for breathing.

2. Map of the location of the caves. Please note that the "White Queen" cave is located at a distance from the main complex. They usually cannot find it precisely because they do not know that they have to go quite far.

From the picture where the caves are marked, it can be seen that a dirt road approaches the caves. Friends, let's not drive into the clearing by car! There is convenient parking next to the highway. Everyone has alarms, no one will touch your car without you noticing.

3. Forest on a rock, in the depths of which there are caves.

4. 200 meters from the road, and you are standing on a rock, located in the middle of the ridges overgrown with taiga.

5. View of the Sim River in early spring. The ridge that runs on the other side of the river is called the Comb.

6. If you look to the left while standing on a rock, you can see a straight line of the highway.

In the middle of the rocks, there is a steep descent to the river. From the descent to the right there will be Mayskaya and Kolokolnaya caves. Don't confuse them with others. Below I will give photographs of the entrances to all the caves.

7. Entrance to the Maiskaya Cave (Serpievskaya-1).

8. View from the cave.

9. Immediately after entering Mayskaya, a long and rather low move begins. It is more convenient to move here the way chimpanzees move. Speleologists call this way of moving "crustacean".

10. Until April, stalagmites of ice remain in the entrance part of the cave.

11. In the far part of the passage leading from the beginning of the cave, the ceilings are covered with mondmilch. This is a special state of calcium - crystals in the form of plates. To the touch, the substance is similar to cottage cheese and water can be squeezed out of it. Unfortunately, the visitors spoiled everything.

After a small, but unpleasant skinning, we find ourselves in a huge hall covered with white streaks.
This is the only place in the cave where you can stand up to your full height!

12. Great Hall.

In the hall there is a huge mountain of stone blocks. Over the centuries, they have become numb with a calcite crust, making them slippery. The most convenient way to climb to the top is on the right side of the mountain.

13. View from the top of the mountain. See how much the blocks are overgrown with streaks.

14. Ceiling slabs hang overhead. They are so even that it is hard to believe that this is a creation of nature, and not of man. There are many white stains on the walls.

15. In the wall of the grotto opposite from the skinner, a piece of wall fell out. The destruction in this place continues. Every time I see fresh stones and clay under the hole. One day, a second entrance to the cave will open here.

Between the Mayskaya and Kolokolnaya caves there is a recess in the rock, the vault of which is covered with soot from fires. This is the "Small Serpievsky Grotto". Primitive people lived here and burned fires, and modern savages are not averse to smoking ancient stones.

16. "Small Serpievsky Grotto".

Cave Kolokolnaya (or Serpievskaya-2) is famous for the fact that divine services were held here and the cave was used as a temple. They say that scientists have found drawings of primitive people here. Now they are all hidden under a layer of soot and inscriptions of contemporaries. There is a lot of soot in the cave. The soot is left by torches that travelers used to light their way.

17. Entrance to the Kolokolnaya cave.

There is a legend that a large bell used to hang in the cave. Allegedly, that's why it was called the Bell. Personally, I think this is not true. The entrance to the cave, if you look from the inside, is very much like a bell. Look at the next photo.

18. View from the Kolokolnaya cave.

Not far from the entrance, the cave is divided into two passages. You can go for anyone. They connect in 15..20 meters. At the junction is a large hall.
In the right wall of this hall there is a passage leading to the second floor.

19. Move to the second floor.

Nothing to see on the second floor. It's dangerous to climb there. You can easily fall down from a decent height. But if you climb to the level of the second floor, then you get good photos from below.

20. Moves.

The floors of the cave are covered with dense clay. She was pressed down over many years of intensive visitation. There are many fragments of bottles and cigarette butts in the clay. The villains are not appeased, unfortunately.

21. In the place shown in the photo, there are mysterious artificial notches on the ceiling slab. They say that in the grotto where this plate is located, there used to be an altar.

By the way, modern people also walk with torches, which puts me in a state of complete misunderstanding! Flashlights cost a penny. But people stubbornly continue to breathe fumes and smoke the walls of the caves.
Nature does not give up. In places, on top of the soot, fresh sinter formations began to appear. The cave hides injuries received from people.

23. White stains on the wall.

A narrow smoky passage leads to a small crack, from which we get into the ruined gur baths.

24. Once upon a time, water overflowed from one snow-white bathroom to another. At the bottom of the baths lay cave pearls. Now everything is smoked and broken.

25. Those who did not give up and climbed through a narrow hole to the very end, waiting for a huge swelling, similar to a woman's breasts.

26. Plan of the cave.

In the second part I will talk about the caves Vodyanaya and "White Queen". And also, about the Rock-Ring and the "Big Serpievsky Grotto".

Continuation

Bell tower, Serpievskaya 2, Simskaya 1, cave. A complex natural-historical and geological-geomorphological monument of regional significance (1985). Horizontal karst cavity of a corridor-grotto type with a system of ring passages.

The cave is laid in an array of light gray limestones of the Upper Devonian. It is located in the Katav-Ivanovsky district, on the right bank of the Sim River, 1.5 km southeast of the village of Serpievka, 50 m south of the karst arch Rock Ring.

The main entrance to the cave is oriented to the south, has the shape of a regular arch 3 m high and 4 m wide. A few meters east of it, at the base of the rocky outcrop, there is another entrance opening up to 0.5 m in diameter. 30 m from the entrance from the main corridor begins a narrow passage that runs parallel; for 40 m, it connects to the main gallery with 3 short through passages (a system of 4 annular passages is formed; a similar system of 2 annular passages is found in another grotto).

In total, there are 4 grottoes in the cave: the first (Narrow) is the largest: dl. 10 m, 4.5 m wide and 6 m high. It is followed by the Krugly grotto. Adjacent to it is the Stalactite Grotto, connected to the last grotto (Far) by the 20th gallery. The far one ends with a narrow opening (0.7x1 m), behind which the floor of the cave goes down steeply. At the right wall there is a ledge with 2 holes 3 m deep. The cave ends with 2 dead-end passages, at the intersection of which a small rounded hall was formed. There is a siphon in the floor of one of these passages, blocking further advancement deep into the massif.

Calcite formations (sinter crust, corallites and scallops on the walls, cover crust on the floor) are present in small quantities in the 2nd and 3rd grottoes, in the far part of the cave they are much more numerous. In hard-to-reach places, individual specimens of stalactites and stalagmites have been preserved. In the entrance part of the cave, within the limits of illumination, mosses, lichens, and ferns grow. Bats live in the depths of the cavity.

In the main corridor and the Round Grotto in the winter-spring period, ice stalactites and stalagmites of considerable size are formed in large numbers. During periods of high spring-summer floods, water from the Sim River enters the cave through cracks and karst channels and floods its far part; then on the floor of the Far and Stalactite grottoes an extensive underground lake up to 1.5 m deep.

The total length of the cave passages is 213 m, the average height is 2.2 m, the floor area is 939 m2, the volume of the cavity is 2066 m3.

According to the testimony of local residents, religious rites were performed in the cave in the 2nd half of the 19th century (hence the name).

In the 1950s-1960s. the cave was explored by karst scientists from ChSPI (A.D. Sysoev, V.N. Dubovik and others); in 1975, a group of speleologists from the Chelyabinsk club "Pluton" (headed by E. A. Saburenkov) compiled a topographic plan and description. In 1982-1984 the cave was explored by members of an archaeological expedition led by V. T. Petrin. In loose deposits on the floor, traces of the stay of ancient animals and people were recorded. The main discovery is 8 groups of Paleolithic drawings on the walls of the main corridor of the cave (see Serpievskaya 2 for details). The cave has a great scientific and practical, historical and memorial, cultural and educational and tourist and excursion value.