I first read about the Nikitskaya Cleft many years ago on the Internet. They say it’s a very beautiful place, there are new wonders around every corner, and filmmakers manage to film multi-day trips there without leaving the spot. Intrigued by this description, I decided to find this miracle of Crimean nature and study it personally. I must say that I managed to do this only this spring. Before this, Nikita lay away from my routes and the crevasse remained “unopened”.
I came to open it on the Simferopol-Yalta trolleybus. I got off at the “School” stop, which is at the western end of the village of Nikita. I walked another 20 meters along the road and saw a path going up to the right. Nearby there was some kind of sign about the protection of nature, I concluded that the necessary path had been found. And indeed, the crevasse began literally after a couple of minutes of ascent.
The highway roared invisibly just 50 meters below. The crevasse runs parallel to the highway and is completely invisible from there. The Nikitskaya cleft turned out to be a small gorge about 100 meters long, about 15 meters wide and the same depth. The bottom is flat and covered with grass. The rocks on the northern side overhang the crevasse slightly. On one of them hangs a memorial sign notifying that the multiple winner of climbing championships, the legendary tiger of the rocks Mikhail Khergiani, trained on these rocks from 1952 to 1969.
After taking a couple of pictures, I moved along the gorge further to the west. In speed it gradually faded away and now I’m just walking along a path in a pine forest. From time to time there were convenient parking places, with fire pits, but without water. Then the path ended at the Cemetery (also, in principle, a parking lot, only long-term) and here it would be possible to go down to the Yalta highway. However, I wanted adventure and decided to go to Massandra on foot.
