The Bashkaus () is a river in the

Altai Republic The Altai Republic, also known as the Gorno-Altai Republic, is a republic of Russia located in southern Siberia. The republic borders Kemerovo Oblast to the north, Khakassia to the northeast, Tuva to the east, Altai Krai to the west, as well ...

Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

. It is a

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tributary of the Chulyshman, which flows into Lake Teletskoye ( Ob basin). The Bashkaus is long, and its

drainage basin A drainage basin is an area of land in which all flowing surface water converges to a single point, such as a river mouth, or flows into another body of water, such as a lake or ocean. A basin is separated from adjacent basins by a perimeter, ...

covers . It rises from a cirque lake in the eastern part of the Kuraiskii Mountain Range. In its lower reaches, it flows in a narrow valley, which often turns into a rocky canyon. The mean annual flow rate near the village of Ust’-Ulagan measures about .The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979)
/ref> It is widely considered one of the most challenging rivers for white-water rafting in the former

USSR The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

. In Russia, it is known as a Class 5 river meaning that its technical difficulty, i.e. the difficulty in navigating it in a raft or canoe, is high while its remoteness or distance from assistance in the event of things going wrong is Class 6 (on the Russian scale of one to six.) Hence, the Bashkaus is anecdotally ranked as the second most difficult river in the former USSR to raft or canoe, behind the nearby Chulyshman River. The Bashkaus was first recorded as fully kayaked in 1992, by a group from Ireland.

References

External links

{{Commons category, Bashkaus River
Kayaking in Russia

Kayaking on the Baskaus River
Rivers of the Altai Republic