Interesting Facts About the Altai Mountains

There are a large number of lakes, about three thousand. The most interesting and remarkable of them is the Teletskoye Lake with an area of ​​223 km², located at an altitude of 434 meters and reaching a depth of 335 meters. It is one of the top 5 deepest lakes in Russia.
There is not a single active volcano in the Altai Mountains , but many peaks here were actually once volcanoes, they just went out in time immemorial. True, volcanoes have one feature - sometimes they suddenly wake up.
Some parts of the Altai Mountains still remain unexplored. The reason is simple: they are absolutely impassable, so the researchers had to limit themselves to shooting from the air. In some of these places, no human foot has yet set foot.
The Altai Mountains cover an area of ​​741.5 thousand km², which is about 2 times the size of Germany, 4 times the size of Uruguay, 8 times the size of the Czech Republic and 25 times the size of Belgium. At the same time, 741.5 thousand km² is only about 4% of the total area of ​​Russia.
Tigers are still found in the vicinity of the Altai Mountains, but there are vanishingly few of them left here. Some two or three hundred years ago there were many of them here, they were also found in the mountains themselves, but they were all exterminated by man.

In the past, the Altai Mountains were much higher than they are now. They are very old, though not as old as the Ural Mountains. However, around 200 million years ago they began to collapse, and have since become much lower.
Despite the fact that the process of their formation ended a long time ago, the southern spurs of the Altai Mountains continue to grow due to the collision of two lithospheric plates, the Eurasian and Hindustan. They grow, however, slowly, a couple of centimeters a year, give or take.
Earthquakes periodically occur here , and sometimes quite strong. In 2003, the Chuya earthquake that occurred in these parts became the third strongest of all that occurred in Russia from 1991 to 2020. Its magnitude was 7.3 points, and after it followed as many as 140 aftershocks, that is, aftershocks.
The air in the Altai Mountains is still one of the cleanest not only in Russia, but throughout the world. This is largely due to the fact that this remote region has not yet been mastered by industry.
The Altai Mountains are located on the territory of four countries at once - Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan and China. The largest parts of them belong to Russia and China, and the Russian-Kazakh border runs along the aforementioned Belukha mountain.

Most likely, the name of the Altai Mountains comes from the Mongolian word "alt", that is, "gold". The Mongols called them “Altaun oola”, that is, “golden mountain”, and the Chinese - Jinshan”, which means the same in translation.
Their highest point is Mount Belukha, rising to 4509 meters. It was so named because it is completely covered with snow, from the sole to the very top. It is very cold here, the temperature at the top in winter sometimes approaches -50 °C.
There are quite a lot of glaciers in the Altai Mountains , and some of them are tens of thousands of years old. From the aforementioned Belukha alone, the highest peak in these parts, 169 glaciers flow down.
There are several reserves on the territory of this mountain system. Three of them - Katunsky, Altai and the Ukok Plateau - together form the Golden Mountains of Altai, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. A unique ecosystem has developed here, which, unfortunately, is threatened by the activity of poachers.
Altai mountains are much older than dinosaurs! Geologists have established that the process of their formation began 400-500 million years ago, and it continued long enough for this mountain system to grow to an impressive height.