Mountain Shoria

Mountain Shoria is a mountain taiga region in the south-east of Kuznetsk Basin in Kemerovo Oblast. The territory is located at the offsets of Abakan ridge and Kuznetsk Alatau on the juncture of Altai and West-Sayan mountain systems. Because of its location and unique tectonics Mountain Shoria is known as skiing “Mecca”.  There are no high giddy peaks and dangerous sluicy rivers. Shoria’s nature fascinates by mountains covered with taiga, on top of which there are white barrens. There are clear mountain rivers, names of which sound like echo of ancient legends – Kondoma, Mundybash, Mras-Sum Pyzas, Kabyrza. There are mysterious caves with picturesque halls, galleries and wandering paths.

The region was named after local people who have been living there for centuries – their name is Shorians. There are no many shorians left there are only 15,000 of them live on this territory. But this Turkic nation is famous by their iron manufacrutes. Russian pioneers called them “kuznetsk tatars”. Not only numerous villages and cities in this region were named after blacksmith’s and steelmaking industry (because “blacksmith” translates into Russian as “kuznetsky”), like for example the first stokaded town ‘Kuznetsky” and present city of Novokuznetsk, but it also defined the leading branch of activities for all who live in Kuznetsk basin – ore mining, extraction of commercial minerals, metal fabrication.

A trademark of Mountain Shoria is its unique touristic-recreational potential, in particular – mountain skiing tourism. Zelenaya (Mustag) mountain is the most popular one among tourists. It is located near the village Sheregesh. This mountain-range is the highest point of Shorsky ridge (1570 meters above the sea level) and represents a huge mountain group, stretched for more than 25 kilometers from south-west to north-east.

Recreational area is able to receive about 50 thousand tourist annually. There all necessary conditions created to develop tourism and mountain skiing. There are developed slopes with the total length of 10 kilometers equipped with ropeways, a lot of hotel facilities of different class. Slopes inclination angle varies from 8 to 45 degrees, snow cover lies from November to May. All these make Mountain Shoria a very good place for amateur skiing and holding skiing and snowboarding contests on federal or international level.

Apart from wonderful slopes for skiing another trademark of Mountain Shoria is Yeti, which presumably lives near Azas cave. Local people who have seen it describe Yeti as: “That creature has a massive body, from a distance it looks like a kind of brown bear, it footprints have 5 toes, and its height is approximately 1,5 – 2 meters. It has fur of red-black color all over it’s body. it also can easily climb a tree”. The image of Yeti became so popular, that in Sheregesh village a monument to it has been established. In Tashtagol it is planned to open a special exhibition in local museum completely devoted to this amazing creature. It is true or not, but mysterious legend about relict humanoid successfully overlaps the tourist context of this amazing region.