Ural Mountains

The Ural mountain range stretching for 2500 kilometres, runs along the meridian from cold tundra in the north to the arid semi-desert in the south, separating the European part of Russia from the Asian one.

These are not mountains like you find in the Caucasus or the Crimea where there is a brilliant sunshine and luxuriant and exotic vegetation. These mountains are just part and parcel of that same Central Russia, those same fir groves, but with hillocks, those same meadows carpeted with dandelions and clover, but undulating.

The Urals ridge adhered in a long narrow bundle to the so-called Russian platform, forming its eastern edge. The range took shape some 300.000.000 years ago, and, although it survived it was eroded. The Urals were lifted again by a fresh upsurge of the earth’s forces, reaching a height of 1.895 metres above sea level in the north (Mount Narodnaya) and 1.640 metres (Mount Yamantay) in the south.

Over millions of years water, wind, heat, frost and creatures have eaten away and eroded the Ural mountains and laid bare the wealth concealed in them. We can count as many as a thousand minerals there, about half of all known minerals on our planet. There are more than 12 000 places in the Urals where minerals have been prospected. Among these minerals there are the platinum, nickel, chromium, copper. A streak of grey Ural granites stretches along the mountain sides. The granites brought with them gold and precious stones from lesser depths. Gems of rare beauty have been crystallized in the veins in the granite. Boron is responsible for the formation of tourmaline of different colors (red, black, green). There are also jaspers, emeralds, rubies, sapphires, aquamarines and amethysts, beautiful stones with beautiful names.

Where the magma has serged upwards from the depths and come into contact with the ancient limestone rich deposits of iron ores have been formed like that of the well-known Mount Magnitnaya in the South. There are also great deposits of coal, oil and other mineral resources.