3D survey of hard-to-reach halls of Shulgan-Tash Сave was conducted in Bashkiria

Within a week, a high-precision laser scanner captured the halls of the Rainbow, the White Giant, the Hermit, the Underworld, the Big Well, the Abyss, the Lake Passage and the Storm District.

As noted by the Shulgan-Tash Cave Historical and Cultural Museum-Reserve, digitalization of the cave is necessary, first of all, to document the monument. Now the specialists of the museum-reserve will have a complete digital model of the cave with all its labyrinths and abysses. Also, the collected material will be a good basis for further research in terms of geomorphology, geology, karstology and mapping of the site.

The specialists of the Shulgan-Tash Cave conducted a survey of the far part of the cave together with the Arkhtamga Expert Design Bureau. The work took place in difficult conditions of limited space, in semi-darkness. The specialists had to descend into the Abyss, the Great Well and the Hermit's Hall with the help of climbing equipment.

Depending on the volume of the hall and the relief of the walls of the cave, the devices were installed in different places, then scanning started. The laser captures about a million points on the surfaces of the cave in a few minutes, so that later a three-dimensional model of the object can be formed from the point cloud. The footage will be processed within two weeks as Arkhtamga assured.

This is the second stage of the 3D scan. The first one was carried out by the Moscow RSSDA laboratory in 2017. Then the collected data made it possible to form a three-dimensional digital model of the cave from the Portal to the Ryumin passage and to document the walls of the halls with unique rock carvings with high detail.