#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. The lake resembles a Scandinavian fjord stretched among the mountains: its length is about 100 kilometers, the width varies from 14 kilometers to 300 meters at the end.
But the depth of the Lama is a very interesting question. Most often, figures of 250-300 meters are given, somewhere you can see a modest “up to 20”, and some sources carefully indicate: “in some places, it’s perhaps up to 600 meters”.
The geologist Nikolay Urvantsev was the first to try to measure Lama back in the 1920s. The researchers tied together a lot, a lasso, all the available ropes – 203 meters in total – and yet they did not get the bottom.
Scientists estimate the age of Lama at about 100 million years. And the lake got its name from the Evenks: Lama means “sea, big water”. By the way, the Evenks called Lama all large reservoirs, including Baikal.
Once upon a time, our Lama and neighboring large lakes bore Russian names. On the map of the last but one century, they can be found under the names Bystrovskoye, Davydovo, Matushkino.
Esoteric lovers consider Lama almost a Taimyr Shambhala with the release of otherworldly energies, and ufologists even set up a base on the lake to observe a possible alien airfield.
And it turns out there is no smoke without fire. Nikolay Urvantsev described unusual finds on Lama:
“At the very end of the lake, a light seems to flicker. I swam there, took a gun and landed; shouting, I approached cautiously. Nobody answered. A small fire is burning, grayling is being roasted on a twig, but there are no people, no tent. Apparently, they got scared and ran away. I trampled, walked around, shouted, but in vain, so no one came out.
Afterwards, the Dolgans told me that it was a “wild man”. It turns out that in the mountains’ depths, along the lake valleys, in those days there were chums of people living primitively. They did not go out to the Russians, they just exchanged the animals furs for gunpowder and the simplest household items from the Dolgans”.
In the History Spot photo project’s previous publication, we told that in the 1950s the most popular recreation area for Norilsk residents was the village of Valyok: there was a water station, a restaurant and even a yacht club.
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Text: Svetlana Ferapontova, Photo: Nornickel Polar Branch archive