Lena Pillars

The Lenskie Stolby run for about forty kilometres along the right bank of the Lena south of Yakutsk: Cambrian limestone, laid down in a shallow sea around five hundred and forty million years ago, uplifted and then cut by frost into a wall of separate vertical columns up to two hundred metres high standing directly above the river. The permafrost is central to how they formed - water freezing in the joints splits the rock and keeps the pillars separate rather than letting them erode into slopes. UNESCO listed them in 2012, citing both the formations and the Cambrian fossil record in them, which includes early skeletal animals from the period when hard body parts first appeared. The park also holds the Tukulan dunes and Diring-Yuryakh, an archaeological site whose disputed early dating has been argued over for decades. Boats run from Yakutsk in about ten hours; in winter an ice road crosses the Lena.

What you actually see

• The pillar wall - limestone columns to two hundred metres along forty kilometres of river.
• The frost mechanism - permafrost splitting joints and keeping the columns separate.
• The Cambrian fossils - early skeletal animals in the rock, part of the UNESCO citation.
• The approach - a ten-hour boat from Yakutsk, or the winter ice road.

When to go

June to September for boat trips; March for the ice road and frozen river. Two days, most of it travelling.

Honest expectations

Ten hours by boat each way from Yakutsk, usually as an overnight cruise. Climbing to the viewpoint is a steep stair from the landing. Mosquitoes in summer are extreme. Yakutsk itself is expensive and remote, and winter temperatures reach minus fifty.

Nearby

The Tukulan dunes are in the same park; Yakutsk is downriver.