The Charyn Canyon is long, cutting through a red sandstone plateau and stretching along the Charyn River gorge in northern Tian Shan ("Heavenly Mountains", east of Almaty) at . The steep canyon slopes, columns and arches rise to heights of between . The inaccessibility of the canyon provided a safe haven for a rare ash tree, "Fraxinus sogdiana", which survived the Ice Age there and has now also grown in some other areas. Bigach crater, at , is a Pliocene or Miocene asteroid impact crater, in diameter and estimated to be 5±3 million years old.