Iset River

Iset River (Russian: Исеть) is a river in Sverdlovsk, Kurgan, and Tyumen Oblasts in Russia. It rises in the Ural Mountains 25km northwest of Yekaterinburg and flows east into the Tobol River. To the north of its basin is that of Tura River and to the south, the Uy River. The length of the Iset River is 606 km. The area of its basin is 58,900 km². Yekaterinburg is at the northwest corner of its basin and Chelyabinsk near the southwest corner. The river freezes up in November and stays under the ice until April. Its main tributaries are the Miass, the still-radioactive Techa, and the Sinara Rivers. The cities of Sredneuralsk (at the head of the river), Yekaterinburg, Kamensk-Uralsky, Kataysk, Dalmatovo and Shadrinsk are located on the Iset River.

An odd feature of the Iset is that some of its waters come from the other side of the Urals. The Chusovaya River flows into the Kama, which flows into the Volga. On a branch of the upper Chusovaya, just east of Revda, Sverdlovsk Oblast is the Volchikha dam and reservoir. A six kilometer non-navigable canal runs from this east to the Reshotka branch of the Iset. The canal was built to increase the water supply of Yekaterinburg. If the canal were navigable, it would be possible to sail from the Caspian Sea, up the Volga, across the Ural Mountains and down the Tobol and Ob Rivers to the Arctic Ocean.