#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. The Norilsk Development Agency (NDA), the Taimyr Stories excursion bureau and the PanArctic-Star tour operator presented the tour as a highly specialized one, dedicated to the “soft gold” extraction two centuries ago and the cryptocurrencies of our time. The tour is called From Furs to Crypts, implying different ways of earning income in the harsh Arctic conditions.
Talking about the historical facts of the Taimyr development and the industrial Norilsk formation, the guides went through several main points of the excursion route, in each of them they talked about a specific time with the main characters of the era.
Starting with the main interest of merchants in the still deserted Taimyr territory – the extraction of valuable fur, the guides called that period of history the time of “soft gold”, which attracted fishermen to the Arctic and was the primary interest of the state in matters of tax collection. Subsequently, it was the fishing people who told visiting merchants about the signs of minerals.
A stop with a view of the Norilsk mountains, mount Schmidt and neighboring ones, where in the 16th century the merchants Sotnikovs – grandfather, father and son – explored the first deposits of minerals, just mentions the stories of local residents about shining stones on the surface. Most of them seemed to be deposits of precious metals, although they were not. It was those “glitters” that at that time were called “fool’s gold”, but few people were aware of how much wealth those non-ferrous metals would later bring.
The final point of the tour was the object of modern processing of digital space – a mining farm. A computer power hub is also a kind of digital gold mining method.
In Norilsk, a cryptocurrency mining computer farm has found its place thanks to the cold climate needed to cool the equipment, and relatively inexpensive electricity with a stable supply. On the farm, high-tech machines solve complex cryptographic problems in minutes while for a person it would take decades.
“Industrial tourism in Norilsk began with a mining farm. But in general, we are launching a whole cycle of excursions to industrial enterprises, for which a working group has been created in the NDA.
It will be possible to get to meat production, to a dairy plant, where children can see how their favorite delicacy – Norilsk ice cream – is prepared, to the training ground of the Anhydrite mine, where you can see the work of underground equipment with your own eyes, to the open pit Bear Creek and many other interesting places”, said Ekaterina Boltacheva, specialist in the direction of tourism development of the NDA.
Earlier, the This Is Taimyr wrote that the longest tourist staircase in Russia would be built on Schmidtiha mount.
Follow us on Telegram, VKontakte.
Text: Denis Kozhevnikov, photo: Nikolay Shchipko
