Permit came through in about two weeks. Guide was excellent and let us set up properly rather than herding us. Worth doing it the legitimate way — you get access to the lower level, which the fence-hoppers never see.
The pit, 1.2km across, with the town of Mirny standing on its rim.
Industrial✓ VERIFIED
Mirny Mine
A hole so wide that helicopters are barred from flying over it
Region
Sakha Republic, Russia
Coordinates
62.5292, 113.9930
Access
Restricted
Risk
Severe
148
The record
An open-pit diamond mine 525 metres deep and 1,200 metres across, worked from 1957. Airspace above is restricted; downward air currents over the pit have been cited as a hazard to aircraft. Open-pit operations ceased in 2001.
The oracle
sign in to retell
The road stops being a road about four hundred metres out. Mirny Mine does not announce itself. What registers first is scale — the structure is larger inside than the approach prepares you for, and colder.
Paint has come off the walls in sheets, curled like bark. The known history covers perhaps two thirds of what you are standing in. Beyond that the record thins into municipal paperwork and hearsay, and then into nothing at all.
Nobody who works nearby will name it. They give directions around it instead. At danger level 4 of 5, the honest advice is that the place deserves more caution than curiosity usually allows.
Site reconstruction
Walk inside Mirny Mine
You arrive outside. Orbit the site, fly over it or walk the grounds, then go in — four fragments of this site's record are scattered through the structure, and your torch runs down the whole time.
ENTER THE SITE →orbit · fly · walk, then inside · sign in to keep the record
Generated from this site's record — a industrial of its scale and condition. Its character, not its surveyed floor plan.
Field reports · 1
Written by people who actually went. Where these contradict the oracle, believe these.
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Discussion · 1
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The 1963 date is off by a year in most sources. The municipal record says otherwise, I can dig out the reference.