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Siberian Cauldrons

Human_84

Somewhat human
Joined
Mar 30, 2005
Messages
1,330
Posting here because theorists believe there is a link to Aliens, not to mention the cauldrons are supposedly disk shaped.

The Siberian Cauldrons are thought by some to be weapons created by ancient aliens, either for fending off other races, or to destroy asteroids. This short clip from the 'Ancient Aliens' TV series wraps it up pretty well.

http://www.realufos.net/2011/10/close-look-at-valley-of-death-yakutian.html said:
A closer look at the 'Cauldrons' in the Valley of Death Siberia
This weeks Ancient Aliens episode on evil places was highly interesting, particularly the feature on 'cauldrons' in the Valley of Death Yakutian Siberia. The cauldrons have a long history with reports on them going back hundreds of years.

Russian ufologists have proposed that these ‘cauldrons’ are the remains of UFOs, wrecked in an accident or an ancient aerial battle. Russian researcher Dr Valerey Uvarov argues that they are connected to a power plant located deep inside the Earth, a weapon to protect our planet from dangers in outer space.

Extraterrestrials built them in ancient times
, he says, and now they operate automatically, having shot down the Tunguska meteorite in 1908, the Chulym meteorite in 1984, and the Vitim meteorite in 2002 and possibly in 2011 the Irkutsk meteorite. More from his Nexus Article.

The location of cauldrons seems to co-incide with large meteorites crashes nearby - if you look at the Google map below, numerous large meteorites that hit Earth have occurred in the vicinity.

Both expeditons in the past and recent (see ancient aliens expedition below) have resulted in some form of strange radiation illness to people visiting the area. Many assume that this is due to the surrounding state being a nuclear test site during the soviet era. Although 12 tests were performed in Sakha Republic this does not explain the pre-nuclear reports of sickness to those visiting the Valley of death dating back in the 1930's and 1800's.

Picture from recent expeditions to the area:
Brief History of the region:

1853. Russian Siberian explorer R.K. Maak writes in his book Viliuysky okrug (The Viliuy Region) that the side of a giant, submerged metal cauldron protrudes from the ground near the Vilyuy tributary, but only the rim is visible and there are trees growing out of it.
1908. A yet-to-be-explained fiery ball known as the Tunguzs Meteorite exploded over Siberia .'The so-called Chulym Bolid followed in 1984, copying the path of the Tunguzs Meteorite with surprising precision.
1930 An aged merchant and his granddaughter stay in a Kheldyu ("iron house" in the local language) a slightly flattened reddish arch where, beyond a spiral passageway, there turned out to be a number of metal chambers in which they then spent the night.
1936 alongside the Olguidakh ("place with a cauldron") River, a geologist directed by elderly natives came upon a smooth metal hemisphere, reddish in colour, protruding from the ground with such a sharp edge that it "cut a fingernail". Its walls were about two centimetres thick and it stuck out of the ground roughly a fifth of its diameter. It stood leaning over so that it was possible to ride under it on a reindeer . His drawn images at the bottom of this post.
1989..D.Arkhipov, a researcher into ancient cultures of Yakutia writes in his book Drevnaya Yakutia (Ancient Yakutia) that among the population of the Viliuy basin there is a legend from ancient times about the existence in the upper reaches of that river of bronze cauldrons or olguis.
1996. A small Russian magazine publishes an article by ufologist A. Gutenev about the mystery of the cauldrons and the Valley of Death , which he attributed to extraterrestrials.
2004. Dr. Valerij Uvarov published a longer, more in-depth English version of the article on the internet, making the mystery known to the rest of the world.
2010 Report from recent expedition to the area - featured on ancient aliens ...
http://realufos.net/2011/10/close-look-at-valley-of-death-yakutian.html

66c282adfdc8.jpg


Then what I believe could possibly be an air-brushed cauldron that I found just a moment ago on Google maps. It's almost exactly where the cauldrons are supposed to be located, give or take a few kilometers. Detail seems to have been removed from the circular area, and from the foliage surrounding the supposed cauldron, which is just a small dot in the center: CLICK HERE

Thoughts?
 
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Fascinating stuff. As I research, most of the information is second hand but if it is to be believed, it seems there are double-digit or even triple-digit numbers of these 'cauldrons' out there. Seems like it would be fairly easy to debunk or prove this one if you had a months time in the area and spoke the local dialect. There's quite a few sizable towns in the area where you could use your 'ask the locals' life-line if all else failed.
 
Very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

I dunno... maybe someone should dig these things up?
 
No idea how much this is based in fact but i found a PDF which supposedly contains an interview with a ranking Russian security person, and was published in UFO magazine back in 2003. The claim is that they know where the installations are, who built them, etc.

click here for the pdf
 
Good stuff Human84.
An issue of FT featured a report of an expedition to Siberia by the intrepid Ivan Mackerle, who thinks he found a submerged cauldron and fell ill shortly afterwards, something which has occurred with other witnesses.
I'm not sure if Valery Uvarov is to be taken seriously, he has conflated the cauldrons with various regional legends and Tunguska, even though the cauldrons, legends and Tunguska are all from different locations.
Somebody was launching another expedition last year, wonder what happened to that.
These things might well exist but tragically they are in Russia, from which nothing reliable ever emerges.
 
Human_84 said:
Posting here because theorists believe there is a link to Aliens, not to mention the cauldrons are supposedly disk shaped.

...

Then what I believe could possibly be an air-brushed cauldron that I found just a moment ago on Google maps. It's almost exactly where the cauldrons are supposed to be located, give or take a few kilometers. Detail seems to have been removed from the circular area, and from the foliage surrounding the supposed cauldron, which is just a small dot in the center: CLICK HERE

Thoughts?
Clicking that link brought me this:
There is a problem with this website's security certificate.

The security certificate presented by this website was issued for a different website's address.

Security certificate problems may indicate an attempt to fool you or intercept any data you send to the server.

We recommend that you close this webpage and do not continue to this website.
 
rynner it's just a google maps page. If it's not working just head to google maps and paste this in. And go to satellite view: 62.31985,117.933555 This might be an air-brushed cauldron. The blurred area is unnatural and has a rounded spiral shape, making me think that the artist made a counter-clockwise spiral toward the cauldron, starting from about 20 meters out.

bigfoot, Yes that one seems to be the only voyage which was somewhat documented. I couldn't find information for the more recent expedition, only a news article that said scientists would venture into one of the cauldrons this time. Haven't found the source for this one yet.

Also the more I research, the more the 'Valley of Death' seems to refer to the vast area north of the Vilyuy river, rather than an actual valley. However, much of his is in high-resolution, and if the cauldrons really do exist and are really 6-9 meters in width, they will show up on the satellite image (at zoom level 200ft/50m - if not airbrushed). Anyone want to help me scan? It would be pretty neat if we could section off plots of land and each person scans their plot in detail, recording the coordinates for any possible cauldrons.
 
Hmm - first off, why do you say that there has been some 'airbrushing' going on? Secondly, it seems that (if these things actually exist), the whole 'earth defence'/aliens thing has been tacked on by Russian 'ufologists'...
 
rynner2 said:
Human_84 said:
Posting here because theorists believe there is a link to Aliens, not to mention the cauldrons are supposedly disk shaped.

...

Then what I believe could possibly be an air-brushed cauldron that I found just a moment ago on Google maps. It's almost exactly where the cauldrons are supposed to be located, give or take a few kilometers. Detail seems to have been removed from the circular area, and from the foliage surrounding the supposed cauldron, which is just a small dot in the center: CLICK HERE

Thoughts?
Clicking that link brought me this:
There is a problem with this website's security certificate.

The security certificate presented by this website was issued for a different website's address.

Security certificate problems may indicate an attempt to fool you or intercept any data you send to the server.

We recommend that you close this webpage and do not continue to this website.

Rynner - the maps page human is pointing is the Thai localised version of google maps. If you are using Chrome as a browser it shows as "safe" in it's opinion so it is legit.

As it is being hosted in the far east, it might be some what unfairly being listed as having an issue. This is due to the amount of malware knocking about in that region. Even some reputable company websites in e.g. Hong Kong get flagged as suspect if it is hosted on the "wrong" server.

As ever your mileage may vary and you should take whatever online security measures deemed necessary.
 
Jerry_B said:
Hmm - first off, why do you say that there has been some 'airbrushing' going on? Secondly, it seems that (if these things actually exist), the whole 'earth defence'/aliens thing has been tacked on by Russian 'ufologists'...

I don't think it is "airbrushing" per-say, more that there is not a higher resolution sweep of the area, thus the maximum zoom we have is a bit indistinct. It's quite common for the imaging providers, in this case GeoEye, to do a "basic" image of a region as remote as this. And sometimes what we call the higher resolution "satellite" imaging is still done the old fashioned way, with cameras bolt onto a aircraft. An expensive business when there isn't something "worth" looking at in detail.

Anyway, back to the thing in question. Looking at the location, there is a clearing with a darker 'thing' present slightly off centre.

To me it suggests there is an object, taller than a bush and smaller than a tree, at the site casting a shadow. Width-wise, I'd estimate two tree widths (that is the foliage part of the tree).

My estimate of the height & width, while vague, is based on looking at the surrounding vegetation.

The shadow, from what we can see is not well defined so I cannot say for sure that I see it as round or hemispherical.

(edited for speling)
 
ginjabadja said:
I don't think it is "airbrushing" per-say, more that there is not a higher resolution sweep of the area, thus the maximum zoom we have is a bit indistinct. It's quite common for the imaging providers, in this case GeoEye, to do a "basic" image of a region as remote as this. And sometimes what we call the higher resolution "satellite" imaging is still done the old fashioned way, with cameras bolt onto a aircraft. An expensive business when there isn't something "worth" looking at in detail.

Yep, that I know - but if there's some suspicion of image manipulation I'd like to know why that is the case ;) The problem is what such indistinct imagery suggests. Add to that some pattern-forming (all too easy to have happen), this thread subject pre-loading the eye and mind to want to see certain shapes, and I imagine the whole thing could go off the rails fairly quickly...
 
A non alien explanation of the illnesses experienced would be gas emissions from the bog. That fits a "valley of death" where people go in but don't come out, better than the stories of alien air defenses.
 
Jerry_B said:
Yep, that I know - but if there's some suspicion of image manipulation I'd like to know why that is the case ;) The problem is what such indistinct imagery suggests. Add to that some pattern-forming (all too easy to have happen), this thread subject pre-loading the eye and mind to want to see certain shapes, and I imagine the whole thing could go off the rails fairly quickly...

Indeed it could. The whole seeing odd things on google earth has always reminded me of the hey day of Richard Hoagland, the Cydonian plateau and machines moving around on the Moon. :)
 
I couldn't find information for the more recent expedition

Neither can I, all I can recall is that the expedition leader had investigated other mysterious phenomena in Russia, and as such is probably a publicity-seeking gobshite.
I have to agree with Jerry B, at that resolution it's impossible to discern anything, even without tampering.
The cauldrons story has been bubbling ( sorry) for years on the strength of the same old accounts and legends without a single shred of evidence, you might think somebody would actually have found one by now.
 
kamalktk said:
A non alien explanation of the illnesses experienced would be gas emissions from the bog. That fits a "valley of death" where people go in but don't come out, better than the stories of alien air defenses.

Good point. I seem to recall that the Siberian region is one of those vast primeval stores of methane. If it is, for want of a better word, venting in that area, it could explain the old legends of fire balls and fiery whirl winds.

In fact if it is sour gas (natural gas mixed with hydrogen sulphide) then it is compound that is known as a broad spectrum poison. See here for info.
 
Yeah sorry about the Thai link. They do things a little differently over here. It does have a counter clockwise, inner-spiraling airbrush effect, no? Thought that was mildly interesting.

I'll post some more anomalies later on for consideration. I'm up to 5. Still nothing that really looks exactly like you'd expect one of the cauldron to look like, though. I guess if we buy into the cauldron theory is to be believed though, these things have mostly sunken back under the earth and might not be totally round looking even if we find one.

Where's all our Fortean Times members living in Tyubyay, Sakha, Siberia when you need them!? ;)
 
Human_84 said:
It does have a counter clockwise, inner-spiraling airbrush effect, no? Thought that was mildly interesting.

Maybe that's the swamp gas rising to the surface, and not airbrushing?
 
I have to admit, to my eye it does look like it's been deliberately obscured
 
The whole idea of buried otherwordly things does have a folkloric resonance. In British folklore, for example, there's a tradition of buried objects said to belong to the fairies (or in some cases, the owners are not given). This includes tables, coffins, pots or cauldrons, etc.. It seems possible that something similar is going on here, just with a local skew and some sci-fi flavouring from ufologists...
 
Ronson8 said:
I have to admit, to my eye it does look like it's been deliberately obscured
Agreed, unless it's some meteorological effect, like a dust devil?
 
Fluttermoth said:
Ronson8 said:
I have to admit, to my eye it does look like it's been deliberately obscured
Agreed, unless it's some meteorological effect, like a dust devil?

Glad I'm not taking crazy pills. BTW, I just noticed 2 further oddities with this location which give corroboration to the stories of people who have supposedly seen these objects first hand.

#1 there is a slight half-moon shape to it, which is what we would see of a disk shaped object which is tilted and half buried. See the drawing from the first page.
#2 there is a slight trail slightly west and south-west of the object, suggesting that at least 1 or 2 locals (hunters perhaps?) know of it. Just as stated in the recounts.

My only problem is that it seems too small. ginjabadja also stated this.
 
I'm kicking myself for having to reconstruct the geographical searches I did years ago but didn't save ... :oops:

The Google Maps location that's been the most recent focus is at least a couple of hundred kilometers too far east.

The name 'Olguidakh' (allegedly meaning 'place of the cauldrons') is the name of a small river and (presumably) that river's basin.

The location referenced above is in the Suntarsky Ulus (Suntar district) of Sakha. A relatively detailed map of this district can be accessed at:

http://www.yakutiatoday.com/images/maps ... tarsky.jpg

The Olguidakh river / area is located in the Mirny district, which lies to the west. To illustrate the difference, the Yakutia overview map (in Russian) accessible at:

http://www.yakutiatoday.com/images/maps ... p_1024.jpg

... shows the Suntar district as number 22 among its included districts. The Mirny district is number 14.

A detailed map of the Mirny district (in Russian) can be accessed at:

http://www.yakutiatoday.com/images/maps ... sky_ul.jpg

Mirny is located in the southeast of this district. Circa 104 km northwest from Mirny is Chernyshevsky. Follow the main road north from Chernyshevsky for circa 79 km and it crosses the Olguidakh river at a point labeled 'Olguidakh'. From that crossing point the Olguidakh River runs roughly northward, to the east of the main road, for what appears to be another 60+ kilometers. The Olguidakh continues downstream (from the crossing) for what appears to be circa 20km before merging into another river, which in turn empties into the Viliyuy reservoir.
 
Human_84 said:
Yeah sorry about the Thai link. They do things a little differently over here. It does have a counter clockwise, inner-spiraling airbrush effect, no? Thought that was mildly interesting. <snip>

I'm not sure I see that Human effect. Sorry :(.

I think if anything the airbrush effect is an artefact of the image being in the lower end of resolution taken from a moving vehicle (satellite) leading to some motion blur. You see that sort of thing in the old photo recon images of Normandy, Peenemünde. Like they used to say, image interpretation was as much art as science. :)
 
Human_84 said:
Fluttermoth said:
Ronson8 said:
I have to admit, to my eye it does look like it's been deliberately obscured
Agreed, unless it's some meteorological effect, like a dust devil?

Glad I'm not taking crazy pills. BTW, I just noticed 2 further oddities with this location which give corroboration to the stories of people who have supposedly seen these objects first hand.

#1 there is a slight half-moon shape to it, which is what we would see of a disk shaped object which is tilted and half buried. See the drawing from the first page.
#2 there is a slight trail slightly west and south-west of the object, suggesting that at least 1 or 2 locals (hunters perhaps?) know of it. Just as stated in the recounts.

My only problem is that it seems too small. ginjabadja also stated this.

Interesting finds. I wonder, at the risk of further enhancing my rep as "thread-killer", is there perhaps a more prosaic explanation for this 'thing'. It's a smallish object that casts a shadow in a clearing that has trails leading to it.
Perhaps a tent? Or 4x4 Jeep or equivalent?
 
EnolaGaia said:
I'm kicking myself for having to reconstruct the geographical searches I did years ago but didn't save ... :oops:

The Google Maps location that's been the most recent focus is at least a couple of hundred kilometers too far east.

The name 'Olguidakh' (allegedly meaning 'place of the cauldrons') is the name of a small river and (presumably) that river's basin.

The location referenced above is in the Suntarsky Ulus (Suntar district) of Sakha. A relatively detailed map of this district can be accessed at:

http://www.yakutiatoday.com/images/maps ... tarsky.jpg

The Olguidakh river / area is located in the Mirny district, which lies to the west. To illustrate the difference, the Yakutia overview map (in Russian) accessible at:

http://www.yakutiatoday.com/images/maps ... p_1024.jpg

... shows the Suntar district as number 22 among its included districts. The Mirny district is number 14.

A detailed map of the Mirny district (in Russian) can be accessed at:

http://www.yakutiatoday.com/images/maps ... sky_ul.jpg

Mirny is located in the southeast of this district. Circa 104 km northwest from Mirny is Chernyshevsky. Follow the main road north from Chernyshevsky for circa 79 km and it crosses the Olguidakh river at a point labeled 'Olguidakh'. From that crossing point the Olguidakh River runs roughly northward, to the east of the main road, for what appears to be another 60+ kilometers. The Olguidakh continues downstream (from the crossing) for what appears to be circa 20km before merging into another river, which in turn empties into the Viliyuy reservoir.

I spent about an hour reading your post and referencing maps to make sure I understood all the places you reference. I haven't compared it with any other sources of information yet, but it seems you're saying that the Valley of Death, aka the valley of the cauldrons, aka the Olguidakh river basin begins at these coordinates. If someone were searching for the cauldrons, they'd want to park the car at this bridge, and start paddling upstream.

Seems like a rough search because not only are there roughly 70 kilometers of river to paddle, there are at least 5 tributaries that pour into the Olguidakh - one of them having a series of its own tributaries!

In all your research, are you convinced that this river basin is the same valley that 'witnesses' are referencing? If so, how many separate accounts seem to reference it? If not, are there 'witnesses' who reference yet a second or third valley different from this one?

The former is much more exciting, but it seems like the latter. I personally was confused by verbiage like "the upper reaches of that river (meaning the Vilyuy river)" so presumably this could mean the Olguidakh river basin. Meanwhile, other sources say they are simply in "the Vilyuy river basin" which is more populated and has the higher-res imagery.


(edit: fixed link)
 
ginjabadja said:
I think if anything the airbrush effect is an artefact of the image being in the lower end of resolution taken from a moving vehicle (satellite) leading to some motion blur. You see that sort of thing in the old photo recon images of Normandy, Peenemünde. Like they used to say, image interpretation was as much art as science. :)

Agreed. Trying to glean anything at such low resolution will probably lead to windmill chasing...
 
Human_84 said:
I spent about an hour reading your post and referencing maps to make sure I understood all the places you reference. I haven't compared it with any other sources of information yet, but it seems you're saying that the Valley of Death, aka the valley of the cauldrons, aka the Olguidakh river basin begins at these coordinates.

Sorta / more or less ... Let me explain in more detail.

The only claim I'm making is that the known testimonials (such as they are ...) provide clues from which a focus on the Olguydakh River area emerges as the most justifiable area to examine.

The documented 'testimony' (at least as far as what's available in English online) is a messy collection of 2nd, 3rd, and n-th party retellings. There are allusions to different places (some specific, some allusive), and a lot of local terminology for which I've yet to find conclusive confirmation. This latter part is not surprising - try to find a workable Evenki / Yakut glossary ...

It doesn't help that the vast majority of accounts found on the Web are in fact literal or slightly glossed rip-offs of a very small set of original reports.

I've tried to discern what commonalities or reasonably apparent coherences I could in the hodgepodge of reports. Here are some of what IMHO are the most stable alleged factoids ...

(1) The cauldron phenomenon has been consistently reported to pertain to the 'upper reaches' of the Viliyuy (aka Viliui; Vilyuy) River basin. This allusion to 'upper reaches' extends back to (e.g.) Richard Maak's mention from his 19th century research in the region. The consistent impression I get from a variety of sources (e.g., tourism, geological, geographical, anthropological, etc., documents) is that by the point one gets to the relatively lower / level areas where Suntar is located (the area of the earlier coordinates cited) one is in the 'middle' if not 'lower' stretch(es) of the Viliyuy. This is consistent with the fact that as one moves upstream to the Mirny area one enters the rougher terrain of the Siberian Plateau - where the Viliyuy watershed fragments into many valley-specific tributaries. For the record - the Viliyuy's ultimate headwaters are even farther west in the Krasnoyarsky (pick your spelling ...) province. In any case, the area I pointed out definitely (IMHO) meets the criterion of being in the Viliyuy's 'upper reaches'.

(2) This may seem a surprising claim, but ... I'm not absolutely certain there's a strict correspondence between references to 'Valley of Death' and 'Olguydakh / Place of the Cauldrons'. I've never found a solid reference to a specific area called the 'Valley of Death' in this region, and in any case the label might refer to any number of ominous things other than anomalous 'cauldrons'. The most specific (albeit sporadic) place name associated with the stories is 'place of the cauldrons' and / or the term 'olguydakh' (pick your spelling ...). This term is specific to the 'cauldrons', and multiple authors claim the term 'olgui' literally means 'cauldron' in some local dialect. This is the only local site / feature I've ever been able to find in the 'upper reaches' area that includes 'olguy-' in its name. One of the stories (the 1936 geologist's account related in Mackerie's and others' articles) specifically refers to the Olguydakh River. In other words - the only cited place name I've ever been able to demonstrably correlate with anything in the area is Olguydakh. I'm not claiming it's *the* place - only that it's the only 'solid lead' I've ever been able to find.

(3) I have found no reason to believe the 'anti-UFO energy weapon' allusions date back any farther than a decade or two. Furthermore, IMHO they should be set aside as very speculative proposals drawing upon the cauldrons stories, but not appropriate components of whatever the reliable evidentiary base (for the cauldrons) may be. In any case, I haven't seen anything in the UFO-related accounts concerning the cauldrons that didn't derive directly from earlier accounts of the cauldrons per se.

(4) For what it's worth, some accounts claim at least some of the known cauldron sites / areas were inundated by the Chernyshevsky hydroelectric project (1960's). That reservoir lies circa 70km south of the Olguydakh crossing I cited - i.e., lending further (if marginal) credence to the notion that the stories refer to what is now the Mirny district.

(5) Some of the cloned reports mention a trader who once (circa 1920's or 1930's) stayed inside a subterranean 'iron house' with his granddaugher:

"In ancient times, the Valley of Death was part of a nomadic route used by the Evenk people, from Bodaibo to Annybar and on to the coast of the Laptev Sea.

Right up until 1936, a merchant named Savvinov traded on the route; when he gave up the business, the inhabitants gradually abandoned those places. Finally, the aged merchant and his granddaughter Zina decided to move to Siuldiukar."

A line from Bodaibo to Annybar (river / region Anabar / Anabara) would essentially run through the Mirnyi district area. Siuldiukar (where Savvinov retired) is in the Mirnyi district, somewhat northeast of Chernyshevsky and southeast of the Olguydakh crossing (forming a roughly equilateral triangle with the other two places).


Human_84 said:
If someone were searching for the cauldrons, they'd want to park the car at this bridge, and start paddling upstream.

This is precisely what the Ivan Mackerie group did a few years ago. Mackerie's (sadly fuzzy) account of the trip has been reprinted (or pirate-copied) in many places around the 'Net, and it's the account that appeared in _FT_ and is available here at the FT site:

forteantimes.com/features/fb ... death.html
Link is dead. The MIA article can be accessed via the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/2010061...es.com/features/fbi/2800/valley_of_death.html


Even though I can't say I found his results all that impressive, I do have to admit that his is the only account I've seen from anyone who's explored a reasonable (if not compelling) candidate for one of the (if not *the*) actual area from which the stories appear to have originated.

Human_84 said:
In all your research, are you convinced that this river basin is the same valley that 'witnesses' are referencing? If so, how many separate accounts seem to reference it? If not, are there 'witnesses' who reference yet a second or third valley different from this one?

The former is much more exciting, but it seems like the latter. I personally was confused by verbiage like "the upper reaches of that river (meaning the Vilyuy river)" so presumably this could mean the Olguidakh river basin. Meanwhile, other sources say they are simply in "the Vilyuy river basin" which is more populated and has the higher-res imagery.
)

*THE* valley? No - I can't say I'd go that far. I have to leave it at saying that the Olguydakh River basin (broadly construed) is the one location I've identified so far to which most of the apparently more tangible clues consistently seem to point.

Multiple summaries out there (including many among the obviously cloned ones ...) vaguely claim there are multiple 'Valleys of Death' and / or the area so cited is an aggregate of Viliyuy tributaries' valleys and not a single one. To be fair, there is one of these reports (one of the glossed 'clones') that says the same thing about Olguydakh / 'place of the cauldrons' - and with reference to these labels alone. I tend to discount that particular report because it appears the pirating author simply switched names in the process of slightly modifying the 'borrowed' text.

It is not clear that all other purported witnesses uniformly referred to the Olguydakh River basin area. There's the case of Mikhail Koretsky from Vladivostok - who claimed (decades later) to have visited the Valley of Death 3 times (1933; 1937; 1947) and to have seen multiple cauldrons. Koretsky claimed the Valley extended along a 'right-hand tributary' of the Viliyuy. The formal protocol for such attributions is that 'right / left' is attributed with reference to the direction of flow (i.e., looking downstream). The Olguydakh is a left-hand tributary under the formal protocol. Did Koretsky get it backwards? Did he mean 'right hand' when looking / traveling upstream (as he had to have done)? I don't know ...

The evidentiary corpus is a fuzzy mess - that should be obvious. As I said - I can only go so far as to claim the Olguydakh River basin (and / or the surrounding area) is the most justifiable candidate based on what I 'trust' in the accounts I've seen.

NOTES:

- I had zeroed in on the Olguydakh River area years ago - before seeing the Mackerie article. I'm not simply parroting - nor simply adopting and promoting - his claims.

- There are many reasons to consider the upper Viliyuy basin a 'Valley of Death'. These range from unbelievable levels of toxic runoff from the mines (Mirnyi district especially), botched a-bomb test fallout resulting in soil contamination levels worse than those around Chernobyl (Mirnyi district), the use of that area as the landing spot for spent 2nd stage Soviet space vehicle debris, and wholesale disruption of the original taiga ecosystem leading to diminished reindeer and other populations. If you're interested in this angle, I strongly recommend tracking down articles from a Dr. Susan Crate, who has specifically studied these problems in the Viliyuy region.
 
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EnolaGaia, phenomenal post! I want to get to some of it soon, but need to post something else first.

Since the details of these expeditions are so fuzzy about locations, and since this is a major pet peeve of mine (people not knowing/remembering locations) I took on a little project to pin down exactly where the latest group had traveled. Rather than paddling up-river like I originally mentioned (it wouldn't make sense - even if they did have a motorized boat), they must have made their way downstream starting at point A, and ending up at point C.

[Google maps coordinates showing these points]

If you open the link above, you'll notice that point B is located somewhere near the center of this image, which is a fade from Mackerle's aerial reconnaissance photo and Google maps which I over-layed in a graphics program. My point is that this conclusively proves that Mackerle's expedition took place on the SAME stretch of the Olguydakh river that everyone assumes it took place on (remember, several rivers go by this name depending who you ask or which map you use), and that my link above most likely is the exact route that they took.

788f0599039326dc891a_1.gif


But how well did they search? Was the motorized parachute used to scan the total length of the river that the boat traveled? Unlikely. We still have more questions than answers.
 
(1) I apologize for a typo I made multiple times ... I referred to 'Mackerie', and it should have been 'Mackerle'. Sorry ...

(2) I strongly doubt they obtained comprehensive 'search area coverage' with the motorized paraglider. Indeed, I can't figure out from his written account how far the paraglider flew or even how many times they used it.

(3) I agree that it isn't clear from the written account whether Mackerle's party went upstream or downstream (or, for that matter, both ...). However, it turns out they went upstream.

In Ivan Mackerle's PicasaWeb photo account, within the "Valley of Death" album, there's a map of the Olguidakh River area that clearly indicates the 'anomalies' he reported lie upstream of the road crossing from which they started.

WARNING: The map file is large (1967 X 2619; 2.6 Mb).

It's accessible at:

picasaweb.google.com/1100586554 ... 7596678770
Link is dead. No archived version found.


If you back up from the map page to the overall album, you'll find additional photos of their expedition. I've never figured out why these photos don't / didn't appear in Mackerle's writings about the trip.
 
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Good set of photos there.

I wonder if they tested radiation levels in the area?
 
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