Yenisei, also written as Yenisey, is the greatest river system flowing to the Arctic Ocean. Rising in Mongolia, it follows a northerly course to the Yenisei Gulf in the Kara Sea, draining a large part of central Siberia, the longest stream following the Yenisei-Angara-Selenga-Ider.

The upper reaches, subject to rapids and flooding, pass through sparsely populated areas. The middle section is controlled by a series of massive hydroelectric dams fuelling significant Russian primary industry. Partly built by gulag labor in Soviet times, industrial contamination remains a serious problem in an area hard to police. Moving on through sparsely-populated taiga, the Yenisei swells with numerous tributaries and finally reaches the Kara Sea in desolate tundra where it is icebound for more than half the year.

Maximum depth of Yenisei River is 80 feet (24 m) and average depth is 45 feet (14 m). The depth of river goes outflow 106 feet (32 m) and river goes inflow 101 feet (31 m).

The Yenisei River valley is habitat for numerous flora and fauna, with Siberian pine and Siberian larch being notable tree species. In prehistoric times Scots pine, Pinus sylvestris was abundant in the Yenisei River valley circa 6000 BC. There are also numerous bird species present in the watershed, including, for example the Hooded crow, Corvus cornix.

Navigation

The canal was used one last time in 1942, when three steamboats and a cutter managed to make their way from the Yenisei to the Ob, but the passage was extremely difficult.

The canal is now fully abandoned. It is occasionally reached by tourists using canoes, cars, or bicycles, or on foot. The first team to navigate the Yenisey's entire length, including its violent upper tributary in Mongolia, was an Australian-Canadian effort completed in September 2001. Ben Kozel, Tim Cope, Colin Angus and Remy Quinter were on this team. Both Kozel and Angus wrote books detailing this expedition, and a documentary was produced for National Geographic Television.

History

Ancient nomadic tribes such as the Ket people and the Yugh people lived along its banks. The Ket, numbering about 1000, are the only survivors today of those who originally lived throughout central southern Siberia near the river banks. Their extinct relatives included the Kotts, Assans, Arins, Baikots, and Pumpokols who lived further upriver to the south. The modern Ket lived in the eastern middle areas of the river before being assimilated politically into Russia during the 17th through 19th centuries.

Russians first reached the upper Yenisei in 1605, travelling from the Ob River, up the Ket River, portaging and then down the Yenisei as far as the Sym River. In 1607 they went east up the Angara River and in 1608 south towards Krasnoyarsk. Yeniseisk at the Ket-Angara junction was founded in 1619 and Krasnoyarsk upriver in 1628. In 1607 the lower Yenisei was reached from Mangazeya, with the founding Turukhansk at the mouth of the Lower Tunguska. The mouth of the Yenisey was reached in 1610 and the Stony Tunguska some time before 1626.

During World War II, Nazi Germany and the Japanese Empire agreed to divide Asia along a line that followed the Yenisei River to the border of China, and then along the border of China and the Soviet Union, the northern and western borders of Afghanistan, and the border between Iran and India (what is now Pakistan was then part of India). Nazi Germany planned to establish a Reichskommissariat West Siberien between the Ural Mountains and the Yenisei River for housing in concentration camps as slave labor for industrial enterprises those Slavs who were not being worked as slaves on the estates of the German farmers west of the Urals.  Since the Axis lost World War II, this plan was never implemented.