The Karpinsky Institute starts geological excursions around St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region!

This weekend the first geological excursion took place. Its route passed through the Vyborg district of the Leningrad region. The excursion was dedicated to the geological history of the north of the Karelian Isthmus. The participants courageously walked several km along the rocks, overcame steep ascents and descents, visited old quarries, Belichyi rocks, as well as the unique caves Chuvardinsky and Krasny Sokol.

Geological excursions of the Karpinsky Institute are a unique chance to walk along with a professional geologist guide on steep – literally and figuratively – routes, get acquainted with the geology of the region and, at least for a day, feel like a real geologist, a researcher of our planet!

We are now drawing up the excursion schedule for the near future. One can sign up on our website, and soon we will tell how to do it.

Dmitry Pushka – geologist and guide of geological excursions at the Karpinsky Institute:
"We were incredibly lucky this weekend – the weather was wonderful! The first place we visited was Gvardeisky Island (Finnish: Sorvalisaari), where rock fragments of rapakivi granites for the interior columns decorating the Kazan Cathedral are still preserved. We also admired the sheepback rocks with traces of glacial stria and the Vyborg Bay.

The second destination was Belichy Bay. It is bordered by stunning walls of granite rocks. Here we walked along the very edge, made tea over a fire, and then found crumbling granite blocks, where we understood why it is called that – rapakivi or rotten stone.

The next point was a rock massif with multiple manifestations of tectonics. The most impressive things were the “slipped roofs” of the rocks – huge flattened blocks that slid to the side, one of which formed a rather large tectonic cave.

We finished the route with the Inostrantsev caves – the Sokanlinnamäki rock massif near the village of Krasny Sokol. Here, during the glacier degradation, a complex of evorsion-cavitation tinajas and tectonic caves was formed. The tinajas are peculiar for the entire north-west and their morphology left no one without amazement, and the tectonic faults, which also were eroded, turned out to be the “cherry on the cake” in this excursion.”