The village White Mountain is a bright place, as if it has been just washed. It is usually quiet here. There are 46 houses and one street – Mramornaya – in the village. The name recalls that the White Mountain is not just an old village but it is also a marble production center in the Russian north.
However, it was in the past. Today, there is no permanent residents in the White Mountain, mostly cottages are here. Along the coast of Hizhozera a number of Russian baths stretches and a smoke is coming from each pipe. The dream of a tired city dweller: in the evening to be whipped by a broom - and to jump into the lake! Slightly higher on the slope there is dilapidated Church of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God (incidentally, by the architect Konstantin Ton, the author of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow). To complete the melancholy idyll a white horse is grazed close to it.
The view from the small mountain is exceptional: to Hizhozera, to its western shore and to the high marble rock. In 1768 here they began to produce the first blocks of pink marble for construction of St. Isaac's Cathedral. However, the mountain does not seem to be white, and it looks as if it darkened by time. In Soviet times, there was a farm with barn in the village and neighboring Tivdiy that was disbanded after optimization because of unprofitability. Now there is even not any shop in the village. In summer, they go by boat for food to Tivdiy, and in winter they walk there.
The tourists go to the White Mountain: by cars from the road and by kayaks – by the Neva river channel from the head of Paleozera. The bridge at the Tivdiyka River is a start point of the route for river transport workers: from here they start on the doorstep by kayaks and catamarans. In spring, there is an active life on the big water in the quiet backwoods.
READ MORE ARTICLES ABOUT KARELIA...
Author: Anna Dorozhkina