About Brave Lady-stolbists

Do you know that in the end of the 19^th and in the beginning of the 20^th century it was a shameful thing for women of the Yenisey Province to go in for stolbism? The first lady-stolbists were regularly offended in the streets, sometimes it came to shove. And this is because the townsmen couldn’t resigned themselves to the fact, that ladies go to conquer the rocks wearing the same outfit as the men’s one - baggy trousers.

So, in 1910 the photographer Roganov decided to take a picture of the wonderful rocks conquerors wearing their original costumes (wide baggy trousers, galoshes and a belt about 10 meters long) at the backdrop of the amazing landscapes of Stolby. This caused a grandiose scandal – the publicity found such photos of the students of gymnasium from good families to be indecent. But even this didn’t make the brave Siberian ladies to give up their favourite hobby. Perhaps, they were inspired by the exploit of the first lady climber Alexandra Kachalova, who could climb rock Slonik (Elephant) during her first visit to Stolby in 1894, wearing the bast lapti, which were so disliked by the Siberians. And during the following 6 years the lady made several brilliant first climbings on First Stolb and Second Stolb, she was among the first climbers on Per’ya (Feathers) rock and the very first one on Takmak.

Anastasia gave start to the epoch of clean climbing or, as they say now, free climbing, with the “invention” of the first rock footwear and her personal achievements. Later on free climbing made impact on mountaineering, sports climbing, mountain tourism and other kinds of sport, and the Krasnoyarsk Academy of climbing and mountaineering, developed in Stolby, got worldwide recognition.