Having an official task to draw up a geological map of the region, a young geologist ended up running into something so unique, outstanding and mysterious that it would still puzzle scientists more than six decades later - the Patomskiy crater.
A host of theories have been put forward in the intervening years: that the crater was created by anancient civilisation, or by prisoners at a top secret Stalin labour camp, or by volcanic activity, or by a meteorite, or by an underground hydrogen explosion, or by a UFO. And even more tantalising: by two UFOs.
Stories have been handed down by native people - who knew about the 'cursed crater' long before Kolpakov revealed it to the outside world. Among these accounts, were warnings that this 'Devil's Place' was dangerous to humans.
Questions remain unanswered about a phenomenon that has been called 'The Most Mysterious Place in Russia'. For example, why don't trees grow on the side of the cone-like structure? Radiation levels are low now, but there is evidence they were once very high: why?
Despite a number of expeditions by eminent scientists, no-one has yet come up with an undisputed answer to what - or who - created this strange structure. A new mission to the remote crater is due in the coming months seeking to finally answer this question.
In August 1949, when Kolpakov reached the very north of Irkutsk region, local Yakut people told him a story about an 'evil' place, hidden in the woods.
They called it the Fire Eagle Nest, and according to them even the deer didn't dare to go close to it. Locals told a lot of legends about it, warning people would suddenly start feeling unwell or even disappear, some to be found dead later, some never to be found.
As recently as 2005, indeed, the head of a mission to the crater died suddenly within several kilometres of it.
Legends didn't scare Kolpakov back in 1949 but what he witnessed in a distance when he climbed up the hill was shocking.
'When I first saw the crater I thought that I'd gone crazy because of the heat,' he noted. 'And indeed a perfectly shaped mount of a size of a 25-storey building with a chopped off top sitting in the middle of the woods was quite an unexpected discovery.
'From a distance it looked like a mine-shaft slagheap, only whitish. I even thought, 'Where are the people?' There were no labour camps in the area. Unless a very, very secret one?
'My second thought was an archaeological artifact. But the local Evenks and Yakuts, with my respect for them, are not the ancient Egyptians. They could not build stone pyramids, and didn't have any human resources nor the necessary scientific knowledge."
He ventured gingerly towards the strange shape, like no other anywhere nearby.
'I got closer and realised that the mysterious hill was not the work of a human', said Kolpakov. 'It rather looked like a perfectly round mouth of a volcano with a height of 70 metres. But volcanoes have not appeared on the border of Yakutia and Irkutsk region for several million years. And the crater was pretty fresh. It is located on the slope of a hill overgrown with larch.
'The trees still did not grow on the slopes and in the crater, the winds had not brought the soil yet. I estimated the age of this anomaly at some 200 to 250 years. And another mystery - a semi-circular dome cavity with a diameter of 15 meters in the centre of a crater. In volcanoes, even extinct, such domes cannot exist.'
Since the discovery of this mysterious place, later named Patomskiy crater, scientists came up with widely differing theories of its origin: among them, an unknown underground explosion to the fall from space of a mysterious super dense substance unknown to man.
Or even the UFO.
But not a single one of these theories could fully explain the anomalies of the crater and the processes that still go on inside it.
The first and the most widespread explanation initially was, unsurprisingly, that ventured by Vadim Kolpakov, the Russian discoverer of the crater. After his expedition, in a scientific article he postulated that the crater was the trace of a meteorite.
Later, other scientists, namely the geologist Alexander Portnov, came to the same conclusion, arguing that it could easily be former by a piece of space rock that sliced off the famous Tunguska meteoroid that exploded over Krasnoyarsk region, to the west of Patomskiy Crater, in 1908.
Another early explanation was that the crater had volcanic origin. The shape superficially suggested this. Amateurs looking at it might see this as a probable theory. They may yet be right.
A host of theories have been put forward in the intervening years: that the crater was created by anancient civilisation, or by prisoners at a top secret Stalin labour camp, or by volcanic activity, or by a meteorite, or by an underground hydrogen explosion, or by a UFO. And even more tantalising: by two UFOs.
Stories have been handed down by native people - who knew about the 'cursed crater' long before Kolpakov revealed it to the outside world. Among these accounts, were warnings that this 'Devil's Place' was dangerous to humans.
Questions remain unanswered about a phenomenon that has been called 'The Most Mysterious Place in Russia'. For example, why don't trees grow on the side of the cone-like structure? Radiation levels are low now, but there is evidence they were once very high: why?
Despite a number of expeditions by eminent scientists, no-one has yet come up with an undisputed answer to what - or who - created this strange structure. A new mission to the remote crater is due in the coming months seeking to finally answer this question.
In August 1949, when Kolpakov reached the very north of Irkutsk region, local Yakut people told him a story about an 'evil' place, hidden in the woods.
They called it the Fire Eagle Nest, and according to them even the deer didn't dare to go close to it. Locals told a lot of legends about it, warning people would suddenly start feeling unwell or even disappear, some to be found dead later, some never to be found.
As recently as 2005, indeed, the head of a mission to the crater died suddenly within several kilometres of it.
Legends didn't scare Kolpakov back in 1949 but what he witnessed in a distance when he climbed up the hill was shocking.
'When I first saw the crater I thought that I'd gone crazy because of the heat,' he noted. 'And indeed a perfectly shaped mount of a size of a 25-storey building with a chopped off top sitting in the middle of the woods was quite an unexpected discovery.
'From a distance it looked like a mine-shaft slagheap, only whitish. I even thought, 'Where are the people?' There were no labour camps in the area. Unless a very, very secret one?
'My second thought was an archaeological artifact. But the local Evenks and Yakuts, with my respect for them, are not the ancient Egyptians. They could not build stone pyramids, and didn't have any human resources nor the necessary scientific knowledge."
He ventured gingerly towards the strange shape, like no other anywhere nearby.
'I got closer and realised that the mysterious hill was not the work of a human', said Kolpakov. 'It rather looked like a perfectly round mouth of a volcano with a height of 70 metres. But volcanoes have not appeared on the border of Yakutia and Irkutsk region for several million years. And the crater was pretty fresh. It is located on the slope of a hill overgrown with larch.
'The trees still did not grow on the slopes and in the crater, the winds had not brought the soil yet. I estimated the age of this anomaly at some 200 to 250 years. And another mystery - a semi-circular dome cavity with a diameter of 15 meters in the centre of a crater. In volcanoes, even extinct, such domes cannot exist.'
Since the discovery of this mysterious place, later named Patomskiy crater, scientists came up with widely differing theories of its origin: among them, an unknown underground explosion to the fall from space of a mysterious super dense substance unknown to man.
Or even the UFO.
But not a single one of these theories could fully explain the anomalies of the crater and the processes that still go on inside it.
The first and the most widespread explanation initially was, unsurprisingly, that ventured by Vadim Kolpakov, the Russian discoverer of the crater. After his expedition, in a scientific article he postulated that the crater was the trace of a meteorite.
Later, other scientists, namely the geologist Alexander Portnov, came to the same conclusion, arguing that it could easily be former by a piece of space rock that sliced off the famous Tunguska meteoroid that exploded over Krasnoyarsk region, to the west of Patomskiy Crater, in 1908.
Another early explanation was that the crater had volcanic origin. The shape superficially suggested this. Amateurs looking at it might see this as a probable theory. They may yet be right.
