Seven stone pillars standing on a bare plateau west of the Urals, 30 to 42 metres tall, with nothing else around them. The rock is about 200 million years old and the shape is straightforward once you know it: the mountain here was layered, the sericite-quartzite schist was harder than everything beside it, and 200 million years of rain, snow, wind, frost and heat took the soft rock away and left the hard cores standing. One of them, 34 metres, stands off on its own and looks like an upended bottle. The Mansi held them sacred and counted climbing them a sin, calling the place Small Idol Mountain; the Komi call them Idol Stone. Voted one of the Seven Wonders of Russia. You get there on foot or ski across the Dyatlov Pass from Sverdlovsk, or by helicopter; the car route was closed in 2004 when the reserve rules tightened. Troitsko-Pechorsky District, Komi Republic.
Komi Republic, Russia
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