Ivanhrad. An Excursion into the Labyrinths of the Gypsum Adits. What Is There and How to Find It?

Ivanhrad is not a town but a small village with a single unnamed street, two kilometres from Bakhmut. The toponym comes from the name of the miller Ivan, to whose mill people came from all around on carts laden with grain. The huge hill on the south-eastern side of Ivanhrad is one of the worked-out gypsum mines of Bakhmut. The other lies within the city limits; a former alabaster mine houses the Artemivsk Sparkling Wine Factory.

 

Ivanhrad, Donetsk region. The abandoned gypsum adits

Journeys into the abandoned adits enjoy considerable popularity, despite the proximity of the line of contact and the continuous combat action just a few kilometres away. The route to the Ivanhrad industrial monument begins at the southern edge of the village. After the road bridge, you need to keep heading east along an agricultural field on a dirt road that turns into a path.

 

The extreme part of the hike begins already at the foot of the hill. The fence of metal wire should not be taken for the marking of a tourist route, or for the fence of a territory where prisoners worked before the Second World War. An electric current is passed through the wire, and the fence serves as a pain barrier for grazing cows; an accidental touch of the electric fence causes extremely unpleasant sensations. There are no warning signs about the danger.

 

Ivanhrad. The electric fence

Having got through the thickets of blackthorn and reeds in the dried-up bed of a little watercourse, you approach a rise with an outcrop of horizontal stone strata onto the surface.

 

In the ridge there are several portals, left after the working of the cut.

 

At the entrance to the gypsum galleries you feel even greater curiosity and a presentiment of something mysterious.

 

There is no managing here without torches: sunlight penetrates only at the starting positions, and further on, in the stone wilds, you plunge into absolute darkness, and the feeling of having entered an underground kingdom does not leave you throughout the whole wandering in the mine's intricacies.

 

Footwear should be comfortable, not with a slippery sole; you need to move over the stones and wet ground with care. A helmet minimises a blow to the head from the accidental collapse of fragments of the roof — no one has scaled down the overhanging blocks here for a long time.

 

The total length of the underground corridors is about 7 kilometres; several mine levels are connected by workings and create a man-made labyrinth.

 

On the stone vaults one can observe the layered structure of the rock strata, and the crystalline glint of the rock-forming minerals lends the promenade in the artificial grottoes a sense of mystery and singularity.

 

Groundwater has flooded part of the galleries, creating underground lakes in which the monoliths and fissures are reflected. The surface of the water does not become noticeable at once, but if you throw handfuls of pebbles ahead of you, you will hear the splash of water and manage to keep your footwear dry.

 

Precipitation washes away the upper layer of the hill, forming sinkholes through which clay and rock mass pour down.

 

The work of human hands is recalled by the so-called 'cups' and the imprints of blast holes — the recesses into which charges are placed during blasting operations.

 

In a chamber with brickwork there were technical services, possibly a store of explosive materials and the kaibashi — the workshops of the tunnellers.

The extraction of minerals began more than a hundred years ago. The ore was delivered to the alabaster factory by a narrow-gauge railway. The line was dismantled long ago, but traces of the sleepers can still be made out in the adit, and on the Bakhmutka River the supports of the railway bridge over which the single track ran have survived.

 

By the method of crushing and firing to 180 degrees, alabaster was obtained from gypsum stone — the oldest building material, characterised by rapid setting and high adhesiveness. Since the 1960s the gypsum mine has not been in operation.

 

The fascinating walk through the abandoned adit ends with an exit into God's daylight at the middle or the northern portal, leaving vivid emotions and unforgettable impressions. This is not the only abandoned gypsum adit in Ukraine that can be visited.

 

Coordinates: 48°33'17"N 38°2'19"E