Kachkanar Mountain

Kachkanar is a mountain massif with a ridge about three kilometres long between the Is and Vya rivers. The northern summit rises to 878.7 metres — the highest point of the Middle Urals within Sverdlovsk Oblast; the southern Kachkanar is slightly lower at 866.2 metres. The northern ridge carries fancifully shaped rocks with their own names; the best known is the Camel, which, by one version, gave the mountain its name (Turkic for 'bald camel'). Since the 1950s the mountain has coexisted with heavy industry: its depths hold titanomagnetite ores with 52–59 percent iron, mined since 1957 by the Kachkanar GOK. The mining reshaped the surroundings: the town of Kachkanar grew at the foot, and part of the massif entered the quarry's mining allotment. For several years a Tibetan Buddhist monastery, Shedrub Ling, founded in 1995, operated on the north-eastern slope — one of the most unusual pages of the mountain's recent history. After a conflict with the GOK, the community agreed in 2019 to relocate to the settlement of Kosya, and in March 2022 the buildings on the slope were dismantled. Despite the industrial neighbourhood, the ascent to the ridge remains the main attraction of the northern Middle Urals: the summits open panoramas to Nizhny Tagil, Belaya Gora and endless Ural forests, and a ski resort with a 2,300-metre run operates on the slope.