Darvaza Gas Crater – The Door To Hell

The origin of the crater is reported as a natural gas drilling accident. 

The Darvaza Gas Crater is reported to have formed in about 1971 while Soviet geologists were exploring for oil and natural gas. They began drilling and quickly realized that they had penetrated an underground cavern. Then the ground beneath their equipment began to subside.

The crew managed to escape, but their equipment was lost in the collapse. (Remains of what is thought to be the drilling rig are present on one side of the crater.) Talus from the walls and rim of the crater began falling into the crater. This produced the current shape of the crater: vertical walls beneath the rim, and piles of talus around the circumference of the crater that slope toward the crater’s center.

Geologists use the name “sinkhole” for this type of feature – formed when the ground surface sinks or collapses into a cavern and the name “crater” for depressions produced by volcanic eruptions or asteroid impacts.

To head off a potential environmental catastrophe, the Soviets set the hole alight, figuring it would stop burning within a few weeks. Decades later, and the fiery pit is still going strong. The Soviet drilling rig is believed to still be down there somewhere, on the other side of the “Gates of Hell.”

Amazingly, despite the crater’s foreboding name and ever-present flames, people still trek into the desert to witness the site in all its blazing glory. The nearby desert has become a popular place for wild camping.