A circular mountain block filled with precious metals

"Treasure Mountains" concentrates a lot of platinum, gold and other precious metals, as a result of a billion-year-long geological and erosion campaign.

Kondyor Massif massif in NASA satellite image. (Photo: Siberian Times).

The Kondyor Massif massif is located in the remote Khabarovsk region, 600 km southwest of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk and 570 km southeast of Yakutsk. This geological structure has a diameter of 8 km, protruding 600 m, nearly 7 times larger than the crater of a meteorite in Arizona, USA.

Seen from above, Kondyor Massif looks like an ancient volcano or vestige caused by a collision with asteroid. However, experts say the reason for the special shape of the mass is the magma melting from crystalline volcanic rock below the ground more than a billion years ago, forming the perfect circle.

The massif has undergone soil erosion for a long time. Harder than the surrounding ground, Kondyor Massif is the top surface of the stone pillar slowly dragging deep into the Earth's crust and the ruins of the partially eroded dome. A stream flows from the middle of the massif, replenished with snow from the melt in the rim. Many smaller streams radiate from the rim of the mountain, providing water for the Kondyor River on the north side.

These streams contain platinum deposits in the form of crystals, beads and ingots, along with gold and many other precious minerals. Some crystals are very sharp while many others have rounded edges. In particular, Kondyor Massif is home to many extremely rare and highest quality platinum-coated gold crystals in the world. The massif is also famous for its special mineral called Konderite, composed of copper, platinum, rhodium, lead and sulfur. The amount of platinum mined here is up to 4 tons annually. Therefore, Kondyor Massif is also known as "treasure mountain".