Miraculous winter in Taganai National Park

To see the real Taganai you have to go a little further, at least a day's hike with a full rucksack, to where the road runs into a stony river, and the mastheads of pines come up over the hills.

For most people Taganai – the national park in Russia's Chelyabinsk Region – mainly means a walk in the countryside. There are well laid-out walking paths, and ski-tracks of different distances and categories.

To one side of the Taganai Lodge – the Kruglitsa Mountain. The ascent to the twin-peaked mountain begins from the White Key rapids.

In wintertime people come skiing here from Chelyabinsk and Miass.

The Taganai Forest became the training ground for many Urals trekkers, while novice mountaineers have trained, and continue to train on its cliff faces.

The layout of the national park and its tourist huts is set up so that trekkers can leave their heavy rucksacks behind, and set out for the summits unburdened.

To see the real Taganai you have to go a little further, at least a day's hike with a full rucksack, to where the road runs into a stony river, and the mastheads of pines come up over the hills.

Seasoned hikers aren't too bothered with lodges. For them the Taganai means freedom, staying overnight at cliffside plateaus, and starlit evenings around the campfire.

Yet there's one lodge that earned the respect of even the hardiest trekkers – the Taganai-Mountain weather-station.

The Taganai-Mountain weather-station is the most popular lodge, even among the hardiest trekkers. To make it as far as here means a twenty-kilometre hike, of which five kilometres are an uphill climb.

The track peters out on a bare stony fell, buffeted by winds for 250 days of the year. In the middle of this open fell we see the isolated building of the weather-station. It's a crossroads where you might bump into a cave-explorer from Chukotka, a musician from St Petersburg, or a bunch of photographers from Moscow or Yerevan.