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23-kilometer hike from Vilnohirsk to Verkhivtseve

Good morning, afternoon, and evening, everyone. In this article, I will tell you about a joint hike from Vilnohirsk to Verkhivtseve. Our journey began at platform 104 km and the local fields.

Our first destination was the Ukrainian Maldives, an unusual sandy area east of Vilnohirsk, a fairly popular tourist attraction. Previously, in the 1960s and 1980s, there was a quarry with settling ponds in its place.

Technical information about this excavator: Length – 70 meters, height 55 meters, weight 3,500 tons. The rotor diameter is 11 meters, it has 15 buckets, rotates at a speed of 7 revolutions per minute and is capable of “swallowing” 4500-5500 cubic meters per hour. It is powered by a 35 kilovolt power line and develops a power of up to 1600 kilowatts.

The quarry also employs a range of other equipment, including dump trucks, conventional and walking excavators, transport and pumping systems.

Technical information about this excavator: length – 130 meters, height 50-60 meters, weight 4000 tons. The rotor diameter is 16 meters, it has 10 buckets. Productivity is 1600 cubic meters per hour. It is powered by a 6 kilovolt power line. Unfortunately, no further information could be found.

The quarry itself is located in the Malyshevsky (Samotkansky) deposit of complex titanium-zirconium placers. This deposit was discovered in 1954, and the first developments began in 1961 using open-pit mining methods. Ilmenite-rutile-zirconium sands containing rare earth metals are mined here. If you look at satellite images from 1980 to 2021, you can see how the quarry is gradually moving from Vilnohirsk to Verkhivtseve, with the already mined areas being recultivated, i.e., there used to be a quarry and its dumps there, and now there are ordinary fields, as if nothing had ever been dug there.