Vladimir Dengin

Vladimir Arkadyevich Dengin was born on 14 March 1942 in Krasnoyarsk. He first visited the Krasnoyarsk Pillars at about 15, when he and his friend Lenka Belogolovkin skied across the frozen Yenisei on New Year's Eve, spent the night in a barracks and walked among the rocks the next morning. He later recalled getting into trouble at home for disappearing. After finishing school number 36 in 1959 he graduated from the Krasnoyarsk machine building technical college attached to the Sibtyazhmash plant, and he later completed the Krasnoyarsk Polytechnic Institute while working.

From the age of 18 Dengin took up rock climbing and caving. On 12 May 1963, as part of the Krasnoyarsk team, he took part in the first descent of Kubinskaya Cave in Krasnoyarsk Krai to a depth of 274 metres, a Soviet depth record that stood until 1967. That year he trained in Crimea as a caving instructor, and from 1963 to 1966 he led tourist groups into the Ledyanaya, Karaulnye, Kubinskaya and Torgashinskaya caves. He was on the winning team at the first Abalakov competitions in 1964.

He climbed in mountaineering camps in the Altai, the Tien Shan in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, and the Pamir, earning the Alpinist of the USSR badge and second category mountaineering rank. In 1971 he led a group of 120 workers from the television factory to the top of the Takmak rock. From 1994 to 1998 he worked as a teacher at the Strela children's tourism club, taking children to the Pillars and on river trips. In 2001, with a group of veteran mountaineers, he climbed Belukha, the highest mountain in Siberia. In 2006 he won the over 60 category of the Krasnoyarsk city rock climbing competition, and he later judged climbing events, gaining first category status in 2010 and judging the 2019 Russian championship.

As an engineer he worked at the Krasnoyarsk television factory until 1972, at the Sibtsvetmetavtomatika research and production association from 1978 to 1993, and from 1998 to 2016 as a design engineer for special equipment at Krasnoyarsk large panel housing plant number 3. He was named a Veteran of Labour of Krasnoyarsk Krai in 2002.

In 1961 Dengin and three friends found a cave under the rock called Grif in the Wild Pillars area and built a hut there, the start of the Grify climbing company. His Pillars nickname was Brodyaga-DVA. He described himself as an adventurer by nature and said that without the Pillars he would have found another passion, perhaps cave diving or hang gliding. He wrote for the newspaper Stolbist from 1995 to 2005. In 2025 he and his son Vitaly led guided walks along the old Kashtak trail at a Russian Geographical Society festival, and in 2026 he gave online talks arguing for protected status for the historic trails of the Pillars.

Vladimir Dengin died in Krasnoyarsk on 26 October 2026, aged 84. His death was announced by the Krasnoyarsk regional caving club and on the Krasnoyarsk Pillars community website, which called him one of the pillars of the community. No cause of death was made public. A farewell was held in Krasnoyarsk on 27 October, after which his body was to be taken to Novosibirsk for cremation, with a wake at the Academician's Flat club in Akademgorodok.

Dengin is remembered as one of the oldest and most active members of the stolbist community, a link between the first generation of Krasnoyarsk cavers and climbers and those who came after them. The Grify hut he helped found still stands. His seven books in the Nowhere Else in the World series, along with the collection of Bob Tronin's tales that he published, record the history, people and trails of the Krasnoyarsk Pillars.