The natural complex of the Great Balkhan ridge is of great interest to biologists, local historians, geologists and tourists. This is a grandiose combination of many large and small canyons and long talus, gently sloping and steeply falling, up to vertical cliffs of a linear and stepped nature a hundred or more metres high, open “circuses” at the beginning of some gorges, sharp ridges, rocky “glasses” – vertical multi-metre cylindrical gullies created by relict water flows, karst caves and holes.
Among such a variety of forms of mountain formation are amazing monuments of nature. So, in the chain of the western spur of the central ridge at the beginning of the Duz Mergen tract, there is a mountain, which the people aptly call iron. This is a limestone layer steeply “falling” to the south with an angle of incidence of up to 40°, stretching for almost a kilometre. From a distance, the blade-like ridge resembles an iron standing on the ground. But there is a second correspondence, which more vividly meets the name.
