Vishnevye Gory

Vishnevye Gory is a meridional ridge about ten kilometres long in the north of Chelyabinsk Oblast, the northern end of a 136-kilometre belt of igneous and metamorphic rocks that continues south into the Potaniny and Ilmensky mountains. Its highest point is Mount Vishnevaya (Kobelikha), 576 metres, with the Buldym, Karavai and Yeryomikha summits nearby. The mountains' fame is mineralogical: around 130 minerals have been found here, and in Kurochkin Log — itself a nature monument — the mineralogist Vladimir Kryzhanovsky discovered a new mineral and named it vishnevite after the range. Since the 1940s pyrochlore, a niobium ore, has been mined industrially by the Vishnevogorsk mine (today a GOK); feldspar was quarried earlier. Abandoned quarries with rock exposures are the ridge's signature. The name has a simple explanation: the treeless south-eastern slope was covered with wild cherry shrubs. Today forest roads lead along the slopes to the mines and summits, and the ridge opens views onto a chain of lakes — from Arakul in the west to Sungul and Kirety in the east.