Sleds, lipstick, a bed and shards of vinyl left the Krasnoyarsk Pillars in garbage bags

In the Krasnoyarsk Pillars National Park, work has begun to eliminate a source of environmental damage that has accumulated over decades, recently discovered by state inspectors. Volunteer students from the Krasnoyarsk Technical School of Industrial Services provided direct assistance in this regard. The national park reported this on its website.

Volunteers collected bags of garbage that the so-called stolbists left behind long ago.

Stolbism is a sociocultural phenomenon that originated on the Krasnoyarsk pillars about 150 years ago. This is an informal social movement associated with active recreation and rock climbing in these parts.

People lived in the taiga for several days in whole groups, each of which had its own name and home - a hut.

As noted in the national park, there were once about a hundred such huts here, and almost three hundred parking lots (sheds, shelters, half-dugouts).

“From the very beginning of stolbism as a truly unique folk subculture of Krasnoyarsk, some of this community did not particularly bother with basic environmental decency. And this manifested itself primarily in the form of the inevitability of garbage heaps. Somewhere - a little further from the hut, and sometimes - almost “at the threshold,” the message says.

Specialists from Krasnoyarsk Pillars told students about such a hotbed of rubbish recently discovered by state inspectors during a traditional eco-school.

“Talking to the children about the history of stolbism and, accordingly, about the once numerous huts, we noted that despite the fact that it was the stolbists who initiated the creation of the reserve, for the most part they themselves were not once too burdened with environmental consciousness. And as evidence they cited the example of an area with accumulated environmental damage discovered on a steep slope where the Perushka hut once stood. And they added that in Russia (especially in the North and Far East) a special program has been working for many years to eliminate such places,” the message quotes the words of the national park methodologist Nadezhda Goncharova.

She noted that the staff invited the students to participate in a similar volunteer event at Stolby, and they happily agreed.

Forty-five volunteers arrived at the site and saw several mounds on a steep slope, which turned out to be landfills of bygone times.

“The guys, at first with caution, but then with unprecedented energy, began to pull out from under the perennial coniferous and deciduous litter and grass debris, objects that testify to how and what the stolbists of other times lived with. They got so carried away that they were able to tear them away from their research only when they ran out of space in the garbage bags,” the national park noted.

In addition to bottles, including antique ones, and cans, volunteers dug up three teapots, several pots and kettles, spoons, forks, forged scissors, decayed shoes of different times and styles, children's sleds, women's lipstick, decayed batteries, fragments of gramophone records, a thick a metal roof ridge with a welded pipe and an iron bed.

“And how many more mysterious, but harmful to the ecosystem, remains! But everything that was extracted had to not only be retrieved, but also carried two kilometers away,” the national park said.

At the end of the event, employees of Krasnoyarsk Pillars presented the students with passports of a reserve volunteer and a prize for the most unusual find. The guys, in turn, said that they now want to completely eliminate the discovered landfill.