Adults and children,
No way
Don't go to these
Halmer-Yu walk!
No one will meet you
He won’t offer you a drink;
They'll send you rockets
Burn from afar...
The combination "Halmer-U" sounds like a curse in an unknown language of the Germanic group. Meanwhile, in terms of sonority, the Nenets language is somewhat similar to German: “Halmer-U” translated means “River in the Valley of the Dead.” They say that the Samoyeds have their dead here. And now here the buildings, pillars and pipes that were born near the dead river are dying a sad death. To honor them, you need to walk along the bare sleepers north of Vorkuta. The former mining town of Halmer-Yu begins behind the bridge over the river of the same name, famous for the corpses of the Nenets. The last train to the regional center left Halmer-Yu in October 1995. Then the rails were slowly taken away for scrap.
There is also an old bridge several miles to the south for cars and travelers, but today it is difficult to use. Although, if you could rewind time 40-50 years ago, you could easily get by train straight here, to the northernmost village of the “camp republic” of Komi, where it is closer to the ocean than to the truth:
The edge of the railway world, the former station Halmer-Yu.
And in the beginning there was a war.
In 1942, Donbass was in German hands, and the Russians decided to look for coal from the Nenets. In the fall, a team came to explore the layers near the river. Khalmer-Yu, the sacred river of the Nenets dead. A little to the south, Vorkuta, a strategic center of coal mining, was rapidly being built, where some seventy thousand prisoners worked. A party of geologists on Halmer-Yu was torn away from the world by the lack of roads, they almost died of hunger. The scientists were saved in winter by skiers from Vorkuta. The war ended, the layers were explored little by little, and a railway was built. And so, after amnesties and revelations, the northernmost mine of the Vorkutaugol trust began operating, and with it the town of the same name, Halmer-Yu, 80 km from Vorkuta, in a word, at the end of the world. In 1957, hard workers and romantics from all the republics of the USSR came here for northern salaries. Mining 250 tons of coal in a day was very good. Production was stable.
The village grew quickly and soon accommodated 7 thousand people. Local coking coal of excellent quality was the best in the world and the most expensive in the Union: unlike prisoners, free miners received salaries with an 80% northern bonus for work in the deepest mines of the Arctic. If a miner in Kuzbass received 900 Soviet rubles a month, then a colleague from Halmerjus received more than 1600. For this money you could buy a tour around Europe and not deny yourself anything.
By the mid-1980s, a village council was formed in Halmer-Yu, residents ate bread from a local bakery and meat from local pig farms, children went to 2 kindergartens, and the older ones even went to a music school. When houses were barricaded with snow, assignments for schoolchildren were dictated by radio. The length of the town's streets was almost 20 km (for lovers to walk half the night).
But everything came to an end with the collapse of the USSR. In 1993, the Russian authorities declared the mine unprofitable and subject to liquidation along with the village. According to the resolution of the Council of Ministers, residents were given the right to compensation for the purchase of new housing and free travel to a new place of residence. But in the era of hyperinflation, compensation rubles quickly lost weight and were eaten away and drunk. New houses hovered in a fog of breakfast promises. So the stubborn citizens of Halmer-Yu, including camp inmates who were not entitled to a bonus from the authorities, somehow survived until the winter of 1995, when the boiler room in the village was turned off and closed. They warmed themselves with “goats” and were in no hurry to leave their houses with furniture and repairs - they had not yet been given new ones. The final eviction of Halmer-Yu was carried out by riot police - with knocking down doors, children crying and unkindly “packing” people onto a train to Vorkuta, where the evictees were given musty rooms in dorms. Many “intermediaries” of the reorganization of the Pechora basin have warmed their hands against the backdrop of inflation. Marauders appeared in the abandoned city, and some of them were caught by riot police. The city became a Mystery.
So that the Secret would not be lost in vain, a secret training ground “Pemboy” was created from it (nearby stands the mountain of the same name, a natural monument). Houses in Halmer-Yu, where the warmth of people and faith in the best reigned for almost 40 years, began to be called “conditional targets” (for example, “a lonely hospital”)...
In 2005, Vladimir Putin deigned to mock the corpse of a working-class town. Controlling a Tu-160 bomber (also known as the White Swan), the president fired three super-precision missiles at the House of Culture in the town of Halmer-Yu from a distance of 3 thousand kilometers to the target. One missed...
This is what this cultural center was like in the old days, under the Soviets:
And this is what its surroundings look like now, after the “bang-bang” from above:
In the exercises of that time, the missile forces had a lot of fun, and the results of the war games are not hidden. Extreme tourists are delighted:
Tall buildings in the middle of the barren tundra are ideal targets for missile strikes. But while the lights of Vorkuta flicker nearby, the growth of atomic “mushrooms” over Death Valley is not predicted. Therefore, we hasten to note that there are beautiful waterfalls on the Halmer-Yu River. Which we recommend you dare to visit :) 
Halmer-U - dead ghost town, former urban settlement in the Komi Republic, Russia.
Origin of the name Halmer-Yu.
“Halmer-Yu” translated from the language of the nomadic Nenets reindeer herders means “River in the Valley of Death.” Another translation option is “Dead River”. The Nenets considered Khalmer-Yu a sacred place where they took their dead for burial. The name “Halmer-Yu” is formed from the Nenets words: “Khal” - Valley, “Mer” - death, “Yu” - river.
Coal seams on the Khalmer-Yu River were discovered in the summer of 1942 by the expedition of geologist G. A. Ivanov. The discovered coal from the new deposit was of the “K” grade, the most valuable for coke production. It was decided to leave a group of workers at the site of the future village to determine the parameters of the field. But bad weather in late autumn and early winter cut off geologists from Vorkuta. Several attempts were made to locate the group and rescue the people. In late autumn, an attempt was made to deliver food by reindeer. Of the hundred reindeer, only fourteen returned to Vorkuta; the rest died on the way. The reindeer moss turned out to be frozen in the ice, and almost all the reindeer died of hunger. It was impossible to detect two small tents from airplanes. In January, a detachment of skiers was sent from Vorkuta to search for the group. A group of workers were found in a state of extreme exhaustion and were transported to Vorkuta.
They decided to continue exploration of the new deposit. Work continued in the spring of 1943 under the leadership of USSR State Prize laureate G. G. Bogdanovich. Over the summer we managed to create the necessary material base. By autumn, about 250 people lived in the village. A radio station, a canteen, a bakery, and a bathhouse operated in the village; the necessary food supply was abandoned for the winter. Eight drilling crews simultaneously drilled three deep holes. To provide the village with fuel, an exploration and exploitation adit was laid on the other bank of the Khalmer-Yu River.
In 1957, the northernmost mine of the Vorkutaugol trust began operating, and with it the town of Halmer-Yu. In 1957, they went to the village of Khalmer-Yu to mine coal from all the republics of the USSR - production was stable and amounted to 250 tons of coal per day.
Halmer-Yu grew quickly and soon 7 thousand people lived in it. Local coking coal was not only of excellent quality and the best in the world, but also the most expensive in the USSR: for work in the deepest mines of the Arctic, miners received salaries with an 80% northern bonus. If a miner in Kuzbass received 900 rubles a month, a mine worker in Halmer-Yu received more than 1,600.
By the mid-1980s, a village council was formed in Halmer-Yu, a bakery was operating, meat came from local pig farms, there were 2 kindergartens and a music school in the village. During snowstorms, when houses were covered in snow, school assignments for schoolchildren were dictated by radio. The length of the town's streets was almost 20 km.
Khalmer-Yu was connected to the outside world by a 60 km long access railway track leading to the city of Vorkuta.
With the collapse of the USSR on December 25, 1993, the government of the Russian Federation (Resolution No. 1351 “On the liquidation of the Khalmer-Yu mine of the Vorkutaugol production association and measures of social protection of the population of the village of Khalmer-Yu of the Komi Republic”), due to the high cost of mined coal, recognized the mine as unprofitable and subject to liquidation along with the village, since the coal mines were a city-forming enterprise. According to the resolution of December 25, 1993 government of the Russian Federation, residents were given the right to compensation for the purchase of new housing and free travel to new housing. But due to hyperinflation, the money quickly depreciated and was eaten up and drunk. In the fall of 1995, it was planned to complete the liquidation of the village, and the government tried to carry out the process according to world standards, which required enormous financial and material resources. In the winter of 1995, the boiler house in the village was turned off and closed. Then the residents began to warm themselves with “goats” and were in no hurry to leave their houses with furniture and repairs - the residents never received the promised housing.
The final eviction of Halmer-Yu was carried out by riot police - doors were knocked down, people were forcibly put on a train to Vorkuta. Not all displaced people were given comfortable housing; some received unfinished apartments, others were moved to hostels and hotels in Vorkuta. In the deceased Khalmer-Yu, looters were announced and caught by riot police.
The village was officially closed in 1996.
The last train to the regional center left Halmer-Yu in October 1995. Then the rails were dismantled and rail traffic ceased.
Currently, the dead city-village of Halmer-Yu has been turned into a military training ground "Pemboy" (named after the mountain of the same name).
On August 17, 2005, during a strategic aviation exercise, a Tu-160 bomber, carrying the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, launched three missiles at the building of the former cultural center in the village of Khalmer-Yu.
In October 2012, during testing of Pantsir-S1 anti-aircraft missile and gun systems (ZRPK) in real conditions of the Arctic at the Pemboy training ground near Vorkuta, a successful interception of air targets - cruise missiles - was carried out.
It is impossible to imagine the Far North of post-Soviet Russia without ghost towns that flourished under the USSR, but could not withstand the clash with capitalism. Following the work, be it a withdrawn garrison, an empty port or a mine that stopped working, the infrastructure collapsed, boiler houses burst, supplies became scarce, and in the end some villages were spontaneously abandoned to the last inhabitant, while others were “closed”, that is, abolished and resettled centrally: the cold Far North then gave no less flow of refugees than the hot spots of the Caucasus... Dozens of dead villages continue to stand in deserted and clean land, gradually being destroyed by winds and frosts, and perhaps the most famous of the northern ghost towns is Halmer-Yu near Vorkuta , the most distant of its mining villages, not even included in . For the first time I thought about going there as a student, about ten years ago, but now it has become the first point of our off-road polar journey on the shown beast-machines.
To begin with, we can remember that it is not in vain that it is located BEHIND the Petsets station on the Pechora highway. In 1931, in the Polar Urals, that is, in the deepest rear of the USSR, geologist Georgy Chernov found a whole pool of extremely high-quality coal, on which a year later the first one appeared within the boundaries of Vorkuta. Then there was “Vorkutlag” - one of the largest and most famous islands of the Gulag, there was the North Pechora Mainline, there were supplies of coal to Moscow and Leningrad, which allowed the capitals to hold out while the Germans occupied the Donbass, and there was, finally, the post-war transformation of Vorkuta from the “capital of prisoners” into “the capital of the world” with a stunning interweaving of destinies: I remember how in 2011 a Belarusian, a Lithuanian, a Russian German and a Ukrainian from Lugansk were traveling with me in a compartment of a Vorkuta train... I nicknamed Vorkuta then Polar Odessa - despite the gloom of its landscapes, it a city of interesting, warm and cheerful people, where every Gopnik promised to protect me from any other Gopnik. And although since the collapse of the USSR the population of Vorkuta has decreased by one and a half times (from 100 to 60 thousand in the city itself, from 180 to 110 thousand in the entire agglomeration), and out of 17 mines only five remain, Vorkuta produces almost a quarter of Russia’s coking coal production, and life this goes on as usual.
The Pechora Mainline ( || || ) for the passenger ends at a station on the southern outskirts of Vorkuta (where this time I spent almost a day in the rest rooms, waiting for the arrival of the expedition), but the railways wind further, and locomotives in Severstal livery scurry along them " - now Vorkuta is essentially a colony of Cherepovets, supplying coal to its giant metallurgical plant.
The Pechora highway now does not break off, but loops around, penetrating the villages of the Vorkuta ring, which was actually opened in the 1990-2000s - all that remains is Severny in the east and Vorgashor in the west, and between them there are now only the ghostly Yurshor and Promyshlenny. We drove out to the ring “to the north”, and the landscapes of the industrial area in the bare, cold and poisoned by industrial emissions tundra cannot be confused with anything:
For us these are ruins, but for others Petrovich lived here:
Here someone first heard that snow and ice are the same water, and for several days he could not believe it, forgetting about toys and putting a glass of snow on the radiator under the stern gaze of the teacher.
Here someone went out to the store and got caught in a snowstorm and wandered around in circles for two hours until he ran into a wall and crawled along it to the nearest entrance, from where only a couple of days later, when the wind died down, he managed to return home:
Here someone was drinking port wine with friends and thinking that he would not go into the mine, but would go to Leningrad and return here on vacation to show off:
And someone left from there on October 30, 1995, finally burning down their empty house in the foreground out of despair:
Actually, don’t be fooled by the deserted appearance of Halmer-Yu: the coils of pipes as in the frame above are nothing more than the communications of the destroyed wooden houses that made up most of the village.
Reindeer herders were also frequent guests here, for whom the nearest store was located in Halmer-Yu, from where they swept away a month's supplies of cereal, tea, sugar, bread and vodka at a time.
The Narts met the bus:
And on the square near the Palace there was an ice town, blackened by the soot of the mines by spring:
We decided to go to the mines, wandering around the village, and I insisted on the larger First, but the headquarters all-terrain vehicle without warning drove off to the Second, and since the drivers of all three cars were going to have lunch there, we just had to follow it past the collapsed Cemetery Bridge rivers:
The ruins of Emergency with a clearly visible mine office building. Basically, the Vorkuta mines were liquidated almost without a trace - the waste heap was dumped back into the shafts, the structures were dismantled. And here at least the buildings of both mines still stand:
There are also waste heaps and snow-covered all-terrain vehicles nearby:
Yes, the beams of geologists, probably not empty in the summer:
There were tracks all around and inside the office, and we realized that the arctic fox had just come here:
I thought of climbing to the top floor and filming from there, but the tilted staircase did not allow me to do so:
View from the window to the mine yard:
Snow, ruins, bright sun... This is how I always imagined nuclear winter:
And our all-terrain vehicles, waiting outside, with their Mad Max-style appearance, completely complete the post-apocalyptic atmosphere... Pay attention to the tracks - there was no ice from the road to the office doors, and we covered these fifty meters in about 15 minutes.
View of Constantinople from the second mine. The sky in the photo, by the way, is not photoshopped - there really is such a not quite earthly light:
Something is driving along the winter road:
With sunset, the wind rose and it became sharply cold - from -30 to -30 even everything we bought before the trip didn’t really help with the wind, and colleagues on the expedition recalled how last year they found themselves in windy -50: “That’s it, I’ll tell you.” I wouldn’t wish it on anyone!” The all-terrain vehicles gathered at the edge of the village and were preparing to move on, and Olga and I went to look at the station - it was still a couple of kilometers from the village, and if from afar it seemed that it was next to a military town, up close we discovered that the military town was even further away village The station itself is a modest Stalinist building, but it is here, and not in Vorkuta, that the real end of the Pechora Mainline:
In the cold wind, the camera's batteries and lens lubrication froze, and with considerable difficulty, getting my hands dirty without gloves, I managed to take only a couple of shots. I popped into the waiting room without a roof, but with walls protecting from the wind, to warm up:
View of the station from the "square" side:
Some other station building is opposite.
A train of 2-3 passenger and 1-2 mail and luggage cars went to Vorkuta twice a day in the morning and in the evening, took 2.5 hours, and was the only way to the outside world - the airfield in Halmer-Yu seemed to have once existed , but the current generation of Khalmeryun residents does not remember him. There was even a video room on the train, where passengers could pass the time on the way, and the location of the station so far from residential areas should not be surprising - the train went like a minibus and stopped where they were waiting for it.
And sometimes a blizzard cut even this thin thread for several days. There is a little less snow near Vorkuta than in Kamchatka, and it’s even interesting what the connection is between the amount of snow and the strength of the bonds of those who left for the mainland.
At the station we were picked up by all-terrain vehicles leaving the village and we drove to the Kara Sea.
In the next part - the polar village of Ust-Kara and the difficult path to it.
Halmer-U- This is one of the ghost towns in the Urals. Here, in a beautiful place in the middle of the tundra, near the Ural mountains, there are apartment buildings, administrative buildings and industrial facilities abandoned forever by people. Urban trip lovers will feel like in paradise here.
67.94424004834782, 64.73661371923828
Khalmer-Yu is located in the Komi Republic, approximately 60-70 kilometers northeast of the city of Vorkuta. The name of the former village is translated from Nenets as “river in the valley of death” or “dead river”. It is curious that in the past the Nenets considered this place sacred. They brought the dead here to bury them.
In 1942, geologists discovered rich coal deposits in this place. An entire novel could be written about that first geological expedition in these places. Due to bad weather, the geologists working here found themselves completely cut off from Vorkuta. Attempts to find and save people one after another ended in failure. So, an attempt was made to at least deliver food for the geologists using deer, but out of hundreds of deer, almost all died. Because of the moss frozen in the ice, they had nothing to eat. Only 14 deer returned alive back to Vorkuta, never reaching the “valley of death.” Only a few months later, in January, were geologists able to find and rescue. All of them were in a state of extreme exhaustion and could no longer move independently.
However, the following year two and a half hundred people already lived here. Exploration of a valuable deposit for the country was carried out. The importance of the K14 grade coal lying here, necessary in coke production, was enormous during the war years. Three deep pits were drilled here, and an exploration and exploitation adit was also laid.
In 1951, construction of a capital mine began in Halmer-Yu. In 1957, the mine was put into operation. The working conditions of the miners were not easy. Great difficulties were created due to the steep bedding of the layers. On average, the mine produced 250 tons of coal per day, which is quite a bit for industry.
The population of Halmer-Yu in the past ranged from 4 to 7.7 thousand people. The village had a developed social sphere. There was a House of Culture, a library, two kindergartens and a nursery, a general education and music school, a school for working youth, a hospital, a dispensary, a hostel, a service center, a bakery, and shops. In addition, the northernmost weather station in Komi was located here.
Halmer-Yu was connected to Vorkuta by a narrow-gauge railway. In the past, a train ran between Halmer-Yu and Vorkuta twice a day. But there was no road here. The embankment of the railway (it serves as a road for people traveling here), a dilapidated station building, and the remains of a locomotive have survived to this day.
After the country's transition to a market economy, difficult times came for the village. At the end of 1993, it was decided to liquidate the mine due to unprofitability and depletion of reserves. By 1996, the village itself was liquidated. People were resettled to Vorkuta and other regions of Russia. However, not everyone wanted to leave their homes. Some people were evicted from Halmer-Yu by force - riot police knocked down apartment doors and led residents out in handcuffs, escorting them to Vorkuta. Since then, formerly residential houses, administrative and industrial buildings have remained in the tundra. Since the 2000s, the village has been used as a military training ground.
Former residents of this settlement still remember their homeland with nostalgia. An excellent proof of this is several sites on the Internet that unite people who lived here. For many former Halmerus residents, this place continues to be the most beautiful and beloved. Some of them come from time to time to the village in which they were born and raised. They visit their native places, find houses and apartments in which they once lived...
Now in the “Valley of Death” there are only dilapidated boxes of houses with hundreds of empty “eye sockets”, abandoned playgrounds, and here and there children’s toys and things that have been left here forever. Now only stone buildings have survived, and all wooden buildings have been burned by looters and the military.
In addition to the ghost town itself, tourists are interested in the beautiful northern nature surrounding it. Picturesque tundra, rich in berries, reading a river with numerous fish. From the village you can clearly see the snow-capped Ural Mountains rising on the horizon.
25 kilometers north of the village there is one of the largest waterfalls in the European part of our country - the Halmer-Yu waterfall. The height of the water fall here reaches 10 meters. This waterfall is a natural monument.
Khalmer-Yu is located 70 km northeast of the city of Vorkuta in the Komi Republic. There is no road as such here. You can only drive all-terrain vehicles or good SUVs along the embankment of the former narrow-gauge railway. Yes, and it’s very blurry in places. Passenger trains run to Vorkuta. There is also an airport in Vorkuta.
Photo by: gromozeka07b9 
Photo by: gromozeka07b9 
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Photo by: gromozeka07b9 
Photo by: gromozeka07b9 
Photo by: gromozeka07b9 
Photo by: gromozeka07b9 
Photo by: gromozeka07b9 
Photo by: gromozeka07b9 
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Photo by: romavredina 
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Photo by: Alexey Divin 
Photo by: Alexey Divin 
Photo by: Alexey Divin 
Photo by: Alexey Divin 
Photo by: Alexey Divin 
Photo by: Alexey Divin 
Photo by: Alexey Divin 
Photo by: Alexey Divin 
Photo by: Alexey Divin
In 1959, the working villages of Khalmer-Yu and Tsementnozavodsky with the adjacent territory of the coal seam: Vorgashorskoye, Syryaginskoye and Khalmer-Yuskoye coal deposits were transferred from the Nenets NO to the Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.
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From January 1, 1958 to October 1, 1959, the regional newspaper of the Bolshezemelsky district of the Nenets national district “Coal Miner of the Arctic” was published in Halmer-Yu.
After the closure of the village, the territory of the village is used as a military training ground under the code name “Pemboy”. On August 17, 2005, during a strategic aviation exercise, a Tu-160 bomber, carrying the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, launched three missiles at the building of the former cultural center in the village of Khalmer-Yu. 
At the end of 2013, near mine No. 2, a camp car was created for the field camp of the PF Tomskgazgeofizika LLC Georesurs (general contractor Shell Oil Gas Development LLC) for the purpose of conducting exploration drilling for hydrocarbons during 2014.
Petya, after receiving a decisive refusal, went to his room and there, locking himself away from everyone, wept bitterly. They did everything as if they had not noticed anything, when he came to tea, silent and gloomy, with tear-stained eyes.
The next day the sovereign arrived. Several of the Rostov courtyards asked to go and see the Tsar. That morning Petya took a long time to get dressed, comb his hair and arrange his collars like the big ones. He frowned in front of the mirror, made gestures, shrugged his shoulders and, finally, without telling anyone, put on his cap and left the house from the back porch, trying not to be noticed. Petya decided to go straight to the place where the sovereign was and directly explain to some chamberlain (it seemed to Petya that the sovereign was always surrounded by chamberlains) that he, Count Rostov, despite his youth, wanted to serve the fatherland, that youth could not be an obstacle for devotion and that he is ready... Petya, while he was getting ready, prepared many wonderful words that he would say to the chamberlain.
Petya counted on the success of his presentation to the sovereign precisely because he was a child (Petya even thought how everyone would be surprised at his youth), and at the same time, in the design of his collars, in his hairstyle and in his sedate, slow gait, he wanted to present himself as an old man. But the further he went, the more he was amused by the people coming and going at the Kremlin, the more he forgot to observe the sedateness and slowness characteristic of adult people. Approaching the Kremlin, he already began to take care that he would not be pushed in, and resolutely, with a threatening look, put his elbows out to his sides. But at the Trinity Gate, despite all his determination, people who probably did not know for what patriotic purpose he was going to the Kremlin, pressed him so hard against the wall that he had to submit and stop until the gate with a buzzing sound under the arches the sound of carriages passing by. Near Petya stood a woman with a footman, two merchants and a retired soldier. After standing at the gate for some time, Petya, without waiting for all the carriages to pass, wanted to move on ahead of the others and began to decisively work with his elbows; but the woman standing opposite him, at whom he first pointed his elbows, angrily shouted at him:
- What, barchuk, you are pushing, you see - everyone is standing. Why climb then!
