Village big cats on baikal attractions. Hike from listvyanka to big cats. Scientific life in the village

But with a share of extreme. We went on a hike from Listvyanka to the village of Bolshie Koty, by the way, we didn’t see cats there at all, especially big ones. We went along the most dangerous path that runs along Lake Baikal. There are three paths in total, two of them are not as scary as the one we walked along. The campaign began quite cheerfully, despite the obstacles that we overcame. We walked along such thin paths, with a slope of probably sixty-five degrees. We climbed the rocks, on which the main thing was to hold on to the stones, and this was almost the entire way to Bolshie Koty. We have not encountered this before, a really difficult and dangerous path. But very interesting and extreme, what we love, although the nerves were naughty in earnest. On the first day, having reached the place where we settled down, we decided to make a bathhouse, with swimming in the icy Baikal. Oh, it was unforgettable! The banya turned out to be excellent, very hot, which flew out from there like bullets and plopped down into the cold Baikal. True, not for long, the legs quickly went numb. The evening spa in nature was a success, and one could go to bed with a pleasant tiredness.

big cats

The next day started with acroyoga, which we haven't practiced for a long time, but still remembered something and even learned a couple of new movements. On this day, we planned to walk to the cave, which is located near Mount Skriper. Having had a bite of homemade dumplings in the store (there is simply no cafe in the village of Bolshiye Koty), we recharged ourselves and set off on our journey in a great mood. But, with such a mood, we did not go long, as giant flies were waiting for us on the way - gadflies. Everything should be as simple as possible even when the path is quite difficult, and when everything becomes so complicated that you simply cannot go forward, the ground under your feet goes into the abyss and giant insects eat you alive - then everything around says: “You chose the wrong path and it's time turn it off before it's too late!" The decision had to be made quickly, and we turned into an absolute “pathless” with a huge slope and everything rolling from under our feet. We had to go down to the shore and be as careful as possible so as not to break, not to roll, not to peel off and not get dirty. Somehow they slipped and Vasya, fleeing from the gadflies, immediately dived into Baikal. The rest of the way to Mount Skriper, we continued along the coast. We found the mountain, the view from it is just bomb! But even the locals didn’t know about the cave, but we didn’t give up and climbing the mountain, we saw a small hole in the rock. We decided it was her.

Hike to the cave

It was very difficult, to put it simply, we thought that it was impossible to get to it at all. After all, the path to it is just a slope from the mountain without the slightest bump to step on or catch on. The slope was such that it was possible to slide down on the bottom, thorny plants and heat, all this gave the trail plus 500 points in difficulty. It’s okay to climb up to the cave, it was still difficult to approach it, again rocks, again stones and a lot of lost strength during the ascent, I wanted to quit this business, having not reached just thirty meters. You feel like in a reality show when one of the characters gives up at the last moment, and you think: “Oh, it can’t be!”. In front of the rock itself, over a hundred-meter cliff, you first walk about ten meters like James Bond from window to window on the fiftieth floor on a ledge, then you generally need to climb the rock without any insurance. But we still got to this cave, and were more impressed by the road to it than by the cave itself. They say primitive people lived in it, and it's hard to believe! Unless of course in their time the cave was not at such a height. It was a small opening in the rock, and it seemed to us that huge birds lived here rather than Neanderthals. Probably the second main feature of this cave is a beautiful and unusual view of Baikal. Satisfied that we had made this way, we went back to the place of our camp, where we immediately collapsed from fatigue.

The way home

We also went back along a dangerous path, because it is the shortest and we did not want to overcome the eternal ups and downs through the forest. This time it seemed much more difficult, apparently from the fact that we were exhausted in two days. The rocks seemed somehow unrealistic, there was a desire to go to another path, but we decided it would be better to go as we were going, because this path had already been tested! The narrow paths seemed even narrower, and these big flies again stuck to us. With them, every step became more difficult and dangerous, the main thing was not to make sudden movements and not stumble, they flew right in the face, and it was difficult to do without sudden movements. During the whole way back, Vasya finished off seventy of them. And although the situation was again at a redistribution, this was a big plus! We walked without rest and reached faster than planned. Our hike ended in the village of Listvyanka, where we swam and rested, and went home under great impressions of the trip to Bolshie Koty.

Not even a few days after Listvyanka, we reached a village with the interesting name Bolshie Koty. There are many coastal villages on Baikal, and this is one of them.
At the mouth of a small river, or rather a stream, on level ground, between the hills, there are several dozen houses.
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There are practically no abandoned houses, and many are a hundred years old or more.
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But abandoned equipment, on the contrary, a lot. The remnants of engines are scattered everywhere, on the shore lies a ship leaning to starboard. Economic activity is in decline.
The locals are mostly fishermen. Here everyone has their own boat, as evidenced by the large number of slipways near the water.
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Some of them are made from ordinary shipping containers, judging by the characters on the wall, of Korean or Japanese origin. The only thing missing is the edges of the roof that are bent to the top for full compliance.
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Behind the fence is something similar to meteorological observation devices.
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By the way, as one local resident told us, the name of the village Bolshie Koty did not come from a pet, but from the shoes of the prisoners. Stress on the first syllable.
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In the distance, in the bay, there is a small pier - for the majority, this is the only full-fledged connection with the outside world.
Judging by the maps, there are no land roads where you can drive by car. There is a winter road, but whether it is used, I don’t know. Maybe there is some kind of road that is not on the balance sheet of the region, but is used with might and main by local residents.
And, given that we generally came here on foot, the isolation from the world is felt more than ever.
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Here we tried the smoked Baikal omul for the first time.
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The local beast, patiently looking at us from afar, also broke off. She greedily pounced on the treat - either really hungry, or she knows a lot about local fish :)
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The weather improved, and when we set off again, the sun finally came out and illuminated the departing cloud with some unusual light.
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I have always been terribly interested, but what is the Great Baikal Trail? The project is large-scale, multinational, and all this splendor is very close to us, you can start right from.

Our plan, as usual, was global - to walk from Listvyanka to, but then we significantly shortened it - the village of Bolshie Koty was chosen as the end point.

Bolshiye Koty can only be reached on foot or by water transport. A private boat from Listvyanka, for example, would cost about three thousand rubles, but you can get from Irkutsk in just 1.5 hours (see the schedule on the website of the East Siberian River Shipping Company).

The trail starts from Gudina Street (if you are facing the nerpinary, then this street is on the right). We go all the way to the forest, where there will be a sign of the Pribaikalsky National Park, do not get lost - there are signs everywhere:

But here we got off on the way back, and our way "There" began from Partizanskaya Street (where the picnic area ends, past the large brick "Gold Hotel").

Leaving the car in the private sector (we just agreed with people who rent housing), we immediately went along the shore of Lake Baikal.

The owner of the house where we left the car warned us that this path was more dangerous than the official path, and recommended that we keep to the left, i.e. higher. Indeed, comparing, I can say that the path from Partizanskaya Street is picturesque, and in principle normal, but there are a couple of places where you can stumble and have to cling close to the rock, and stones are pouring under you. It was there that our dog flew down, which usually copes quite well with such transitions ...

We already thought that we had lost Bull forever, but he appeared from under the rock and hobbled to drink water from Baikal. He tore off his paw a little, scratched his muzzle, limped a few hundred meters - and now our dog is back in the ranks !!!

After such shocks, a smoke break is required:

After 2.5 hours, we came to a fork, from where the BBT went further.

The road goes along Baikal all the time - it's insanely beautiful, especially if the weather is sunny!

I really liked the fact that the path was carefully widened, strengthened, steps were made in difficult places, so in my mind I thanked all these people who did such a great job.

There was one type of dangerous place, a slope with crumbling stones, marked with signs, but, to be honest, it did not even compare with the place where Buhl stumbled, so go boldly along the official path even with children.

We recorded the time - a distance of about 20 km or a little more was covered in 6 hours with stops.

Some more photos of the big Baikal trail to Bolshie Koty:

And now the promised nuances:

1. Choosing the beginning of the trail - beautiful or safe. In principle, I think everything is clearly described above.

2. Before you go here on foot, you MUST obtain permission to visit the Pribaikalsky National Park. It costs 60 rubles a day, and saves a million nerves). You can apply in Irkutsk or in Listvyanka (Gorkogo St., 2a).

I’ll tell you a secret - I’m a criminal now))) The patrol just drove up on a boat to our parking lot, with video cameras, made a protocol - and voila! I got!

In summary: the road is very beautiful, short, if you don’t want to spend the night in a tent, you can stay in hotels or the private sector in Bolshie Koty or find an equipped parking lot on the shore of Lake Baikal.

Accommodation in Bolshiye Koty on Baikal:

Vkontakte community.

Big Cats

Big Cats- a village in the Irkutsk district of the Irkutsk region on the western shore of the lake. It is part of the Listvyansk municipality.

Bolshiye Koty is located 20 km from the village of Listvyanka. The village, located in the middle of the taiga, is very popular with tourists coming here from all over the world. In summer, you can get to Bolshiye Koty either by boat or on foot. There are no roads leading to the village. In winter, after it freezes, a road is laid along the ice along the coast. In the off-season, the residents of Bolshie Koty remain practically cut off from the world.

A biological station of the Irkutsk State University operates here, a monument to the famous Baikal expert prof. MM. Kozhov. There is a regular connection by boat with Irkutsk and Listvyanka. The area is attractive with the Skriper cliff, a picturesque path along the shore a, the Two Brothers rock, abandoned gold mining sites. There is a hotel with 70 beds, a research base of the Limnological Institute of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which receives tourists in the summer (about 30 beds), about 50 tourists can be accommodated by local residents in private houses. 3 km from the village in the picturesque valley of the Black stream, 200 meters from the lake, there is a recreation center for 16 people.

Annex 1. Gold mining in Koty

The name of the Baikal village Bolshie Koty attracts, if we consider it from the point of view of two languages. In the Evenki interpretation, the word "koto" means "knife". A possible Russian interpretation is associated with the concept of cats - a kind of warm footwear used in cold wet weather in marshy places, usually by prospectors of gold mines, but not only by them. As J. Kennan noted in the book “Siberia and Exile”, “the government must be out of economy, in summer and autumn, instead of boots, it gives prisoners low shoes - cats, which are ordered in bulk from the contractor from the cheapest material” (see 168). The fame of the village is associated primarily with old and not so old realities.

Firstly, in the valley of the rivers Big and Small Koty, Bolshaya and Malaya Sennaya, in the territories near Listvyanka and the village of Nikola, as well as at shallow depths of the Baikal coast in these places, somewhere from the middle of the 19th until the 60s 20 th century, official and unofficial gold mining was carried out. For this, dredges were used, excavation of gold-bearing soil from the water with large buckets, panning for gold with trays, etc. In all these places, one can still see stone dumps, overgrown canals, grooves and large pits, and not far from the village on a small lake, a wooden dredge “lives out” its age. In connection with the most difficult conditions of gold mining before the revolution, this hard work was mainly done by convicts. Many of them and others died in these places. There was an unwritten law among the miners: collapsing mines and underground passages, which buried people under their vaults, should never be developed again. When they stumbled upon corpses littered with earth, they immediately abandoned everything and left the development site. It was considered a great sin to disturb the dead. In addition to information about the gold-bearing places in the region, it is worth adding the opinion of Academician V. A. Obruchev, who at the end of the 19th century discovered gold-bearing sands in the basins of the Baikal rivers Sarma, Ilikta, Kugan. But the exploration of deposits at that time turned out to be unprofitable, and the question of their development remained open.

Secondly, it was in Bolshiye Koty that one of the first two research stations on e at Irkutsk University was opened in 1925 (the second was formed in Maritui). According to other sources, the station was opened by V.I. Dorogostaisky in 1917. In this scientific monastery lived, worked and buried the famous Baikal scholar Professor M.M. There is also an aquarium of the Institute of Biology of ISU.

Karnyshev A.D. is mysterious, many-sided and multilingual. 3rd ed. 2010

Appendix 2 Rest in the village of Bolshiye Koty

If you want to relax on e, but don’t want to travel for a long time along a dusty road or in an electric train, don’t want to carry tents, sleeping bags and blankets and buy kilograms of food, then Big Cats are what you need. For example, on Thursday and you wanted to go for the weekend to. You thought about Listvyanka, about sk, the Small Sea, Olkhon. The last two are far and long rides. The first two are already boring. How to be? Go to the village of Bolshie Koty!

Big Cats. Where is it?

Bolshiye Koty is a small village on the coast and surrounded by mountains, 18 km north of Listvyanka. You can only get there by water. Or on foot, but that doesn't suit us.

On the river steamer Voskhod from the pier "Rocket" in Solnechny to the destination is only 1.5 hours by water.

Where to live?

It is best to go to Bolshie Koty on Friday, and back on Sunday. On weekends, transport runs three times a day. By the way, if there are no tickets, the captain of the ship can always be persuaded to leave standing for the same money. And in the ship you can perch on the wide ledges between the two salons or on the bag.

There are many houses in the village in which rooms for a different number of places are rented. In the room - beds, bedside tables, chairs, table, socket. Almost everywhere on the second floors - a balcony overlooking. There are hotels.

It is not necessary to bring food with you. There are kiosks and even mini-cafes in Koty. Almost every house sells hot smoked omul.

What kind of cats?

What the name of the village means, no one knows for sure. Someone will think that we are talking about big cats living here, but this is not so. There is an assumption that the village took its name from the river on which it was founded and on which gold miners washed. Koty is a word of Evenki origin. Koto - literally "palm tree", "knife".

Some believe that the name of the river comes from shoes koty (emphasis on the first syllable) - warm shoes, usually used by prospectors of gold mines in cold wet weather in marshy places.

Entertainment

There is little entertainment in Bolshie Koty. You can take a walk along the ecological path of the National Park. The trail is easy to find. If you look at, then it will be on the left, there are signs on the fences.

The path goes through the mountains. On the one hand there will be high mountains and rocks, on the other - a steep cliff and a lake. You can walk along the path indefinitely.

There is also the Museum of Baikal Studies and the Aquarium of the Institute of Biology in Bolshiye Koty. The museum presents more than 400 different exhibits, a rich collection of insects: bugs, butterflies, dragonflies, lake animals, fish. Here are all the paintings drawn by the founder of the museum, Professor M. M. Kozhov. The museum is already about 90 years old.

There is also a permanently operating scientific station, on the basis of which Irkutsk students undergo summer practice.

If you manage to find a guide or a guide, you can visit a multi-meter rock-cliff called Skriper. However, you can find it on your own if you follow the ecological path. Here, on a steep slope, a cave was found with the remains of hunting tools and utensils from the Iron and Stone Ages.

There is a cave on Skriper: two small halls with an area of ​​​​about 60 square meters, their length is 6 and 8 meters, their width is up to 3.5 and the height is up to 4 meters. In the cultural layer, archaeologists found stone and iron hunting tools, fragments of ornamented dishes.

Weather in Bolshiye Koty

From morning until 19.00, as a rule, the sun is hot and cloudless. After seven in the evening it gets colder and the wind appears. At night, rain and thunderstorms are most common. Sun again in the morning.

Irina Pokoeva. , 2006

Literature

1. Imethenov A.B. Monuments of nature a. - Novosibirsk: Science. Siberian branch, 1991. - 159 p.
2. Evstropeva O.V., Ryashchenko S.V., Snytko V.A. Recreational zoning of the southern Baikal region // Geography and natural resources. 2000. - No. 1. - S. 6772.
3. Catalog of organizations of recreational designation, enterprises of hotel type. Irkutsk. Oblkomstat, 2000.
4. Kotlyarov E.A. Geography of recreation and tourism. Formation and development of territorial recreational complexes. M.: Thought, 1978. - 240 p.
5. Kulakova T.Ya. Recreational assessment of natural complexes of the southwestern Baikal region (methodology, experience, practical research): Dis. .cand. geogr. Sciences. Irkutsk, 1980. - 170 p.
6. Lobanova T.A. Functional differentiation of recreational areas of the southern Baikal region // Geography and Pirodnye Resources. 1987. - No. 4. - S. 164-167.
7. Mikhailov Yu.P., Belov A.V., Ryashin V.Ya., Krotova V.M. Mapping of recreational resources in the south of Eastern Siberia // Estimated maps of nature, population, economy. M.: MGU, 1973. - S. 73-81.
8. Motorin V.V. Climatic-recreational assessment of some regions of Siberia // Resort resources and sanatorium-and-spa treatment in Siberia. -Tomsk, 1982.-S. 64-65.

Links

1. History of Big Cats
2. Photo of the village
3. A unique chapel was consecrated in Bolshiye Koty // CM Number One: newspaper.
4. Weekend on e // Friday: newspaper.
5. Cats vote first // SM Number one: newspaper.
6. Lake, pos. Big Cats // site baikaler.ru
7. Shouldn't we wave to Big Cats? (5:11 min.) // RuTube

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