Excursion on Kok-Tobe.

“For those who are lost, there will always be cities that feel like home” 

Simon Van Booy.

Travel Almaty Guide.

The mountain the Kok-Tobe is at height of 1070 meters above sea level. During old times the mountain had and has some names - the Blue hill, mountain Verigina. The name to a hill was given by Russian immigrants in XIX century, she was called, the mountain Verigina, among the townspeople it was the most known place.
Mountain Veriginu have put on maps in XIX century and recommended in tourist prospectuses for visiting. Here local residents often had a rest, arranged picnics, collected snowdrops, in the winter sledge and skis.
Local artists, drew the small masterpieces - «At top » (Nikolay Hludov, 1886), «The Kind on the Small village» (Abylkhan Kasteev, 1937), «The Valley of Ala-Tau » (Aubakir Ismailov, 1942), «Turn on a cable car» (Evgenie Sidorkin, 1970).
Here documentary tapes of the remarkable operator and director Vladimir Tatenko «City apple», "Alma-Ata", «Fires of evening Alma-Ata» were removed. Poetic lines here were born D.Abilev and A.Lukashenko.
Per 1972 this mountain «under the request of workers» have renamed uphill the Kok-Tobe. Here have established a television tower in height in 372 meters. From the top point of mountain opens, especially at clear morning o'clock, an excellent panorama not only Alma-Ata, in the south - the tops of majestic Ala-Tau topped by snows.
On mountain the Kok-Tobe fashion-maker Karden dreamed to establish on a background of Ala-Tau the highest in the world a podium rotating on a needle of a television tower. Local architects seriously projected at top of mountain the Palace of the Supreme body of republic, and on slopes - public private residences, having them along a granite ladder up to square Abay.
City legends tell, that the mountain is obliged by the name to Soviet pilot Veriginu which plane ran uphill into 30th years in XX century. As if on a place of tragedy there was a tomb, now a grass.
Others believe, that the mountain is named in Nikolay Verigin memory. It he has mastered foothills behind gorge Anuchin, that at the Wet key, has grown up gardens with fragrant apples and pears.
We shall add to a legend, that mountain, really family park cossacks of the Small village, were known in XIX century. Already then it was known gardens Landrat Verigin, its son Athanasius, passed by right of succession to grandson Nikolay.

Authority: 
The small part of the information is used from the book «City Vernyi and Semirechye» 2009, Author A.G.Luhtanov. Other part of the information is collected from different sources by A.Petrov the Encyclopedia "Kazakhstan", 4 volumes, 1989. A sketch "Verigin mountain". Vladimir Proskurin. «The Alma-Ata court yard» 2009.

Photos
Alexander Petrov.