Just 40 kilometers from the Kodar Glaciers in Kalar district of
Trans-Baikal region, right next to the snow-capped mountains and the
limitless sea of taiga spotted with blue lakes and huge ice fields, lies
a bright yellow spot – the Chara Sands. This sand dune is approximately
10 kilometers long and 5 kilometers wide; some of the dunes are as high
as 15 – 30 meters. The terrain here is so pronounced it almost looks
like a real desert. Nowhere else in the entire tundra such large volume
of loose shifting sands can be found. Against the backdrop of the cold
mountains, the Chara Sands is an extraordinary sight.
Chara Sands is a truly amazing place. It’s like a real desert, but with
features you won’t see anywhere else except in Trans-Baikal. Cold blue
icing right next to warm yellow sand; instead of camels, a reindeer
caravan treads across the sands, tended by an Evenk driver. You might
stumble upon an oasis among the sand ridges where palms gave way to
northern larches. The desert is surrounded by mountains covered with
snow even during the summer; the dunes run into bogs or lakes.
Despite the sands dune’s small area, the terrain is quite uneven here.
In the central region it’s mostly dunes and dune chains, interspersed
with blown hollows and hilly sands. In the outskirts, it’s sand ridges.
Large dune chains look very impressive – between 150 and 700 meters
long. And the whole chain stretches for 2.5 kilometers, 15-30 meters
high. In the central part of the massif there’s a 40-50-meter high ledge
integrated into the dune chain’s slope. In the south-west the dune
chains get thicker, and are the highest. The windward dune slopes are
gentle (10-15°), while the lee ones are steep (30-35°), covered with
ripples.
Chara Sands was formed during the Muruktin (Zyrian) glaciation period
(about 100 – 55 thousand years ago) as a lake delta at the front zone of
the Sakukan glacier, when Chara hollow was filled with water. Wind
erosion during the Holocene era affected the top 20 meters of the massif
producing the ripples, dunes, blown sands etc., mostly stretched in the
north-western direction.
Source :-http://www.unbelievableinfo.com/2013/12/chara-sands.html
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