Guide
Karagöl lies twenty-five to twenty-seven kilometres from the Borçka district of Artvin, within the nature park established there on 14 August 2002. On average some ten thousand people visit the lake each year.
The lake sits in hilly ground between the peaks of Karaşalvar, at 2,333 metres, and Verketil, at 2,429, to the south. It is fed by the Heba and Savgule streams, which together form the head of the Klaskuri stream. Material that slid down the slope blocked the mouth of the Savgule valley and a lake formed behind it.
Water gathering on the Savgule side of that landslide barrier formed two lakes, one large and one small. The small one covers about seven dönüm and is roughly circular; the large one covers fifty dönüm and recalls a triangle. The two are joined by an outflow, and the surface of the large lake stands a metre to a metre and a half above that of the small one.
It has been suggested that the lake formed in the 1800s, though this is not certain. Alluvium carried down by the same stream has filled it over time, so that the depth has fallen from thirty metres to eight and the area from fifty-six dönüm to fifty. In work carried out jointly by the regional directorate of nature conservation and national parks and the state hydraulic works, the alluvium that had filled the lake was cleared and the shore was fitted with walkways supported on timber.
Although Karagöl is a landslide lake, it is argued that it is not a landslide barrier lake: most of the water appears to have gathered on top of the landslide debris rather than behind it. It has been pointed out that a lake as small as this is unlikely to have formed behind a barrier left by so large a landslide, and that the water instead collected in the two hollows between the ridges of the slipped material. The ground between the two lakes is itself made up of that material, and the shallowness of the lake, together with the steepness of the slope in front of the barrier, strengthens the case that Karagöl lies on the debris.
- Designated
- 14.08.2002
Entry fee
- Black Sea group 1 · category 1 · Per person
- 75 ₺
