A New Hiking Trail in Russia Will Take You Where Cosmonauts Crash-landed After the First Space Walk

On most nature walks, the best one can hope for is an epic view at the end. However, one new trail in Russia is delivering not only an excellent vista but a little mystery and intrigue too.

Over the last view months, volunteers have been hard at work in the remote Perm region of Russia, where they’ve been creating a short nature walk in the wilderness to the famed crash landing site of the Voskhod-2 spacecraft.

For those of you who didn’t study Russian space history, let us fill you in a little. On March 18, 1965, Voskhod 2 launched with cosmonauts Pavel I. Belyayev and Aleksey A. Leonov on board. On this journey Leonov became the first person to complete a space walk. According to NASA, “The spacecraft was equipped with an extendable airlock that permitted Leonov's exit into space without having to evacuate the main cabin air. Leonov was the first man to perform an EVA (ExtraVehicular Activity) in space.”

NASA explained, in total, the flight lasted for 26 hours and made 16 orbits around the Earth. After attempting a manual entry, the spacecraft malfunctioned and crash-landed in a pine forest. It took rescuers a full day to find the craft and the crew, who thankfully survived. Though the crew got to leave, the craft remained. And soon, visitors can take the short walk to go see it for themselves.

According to Lonely Planet, the government-funded eco-trail project, dubbed "Perm Space," is currently under construction thanks to volunteers’ hard work and the charitable organization, Parma. At the end of the trail, visitors will be able to see the crash site and a life-size model of the space capsule. To ensure their comfort, the volunteers are also constructing a gazebo and bathroom, along with a campsite available to overnight guests.

"People, of course, do come here, but there was no straight good route here, so to say, there were terrible bumps here, thick grass growing," Anna Ivanova, one of the volunteers constructing the walkway, shared with EuroNews. "Now anyone would be able to come here, I think, by foot, up to this point, and see in person the site where the cosmonauts landed."