River
Olyokma
1,436 km from source to mouth · Russia.
RussiaFlows into Lena River
In numbers
Length
1,436km
Average flow
2,000m³/s
Basin
210,000km²
Drop
1,008m
from 1,031 m to 23 m
Country
1
The journey
From source to mouth
1,436 km of river and 9 stops on the way: 0 towns and cities on its banks, dams, bridges and the tributaries that feed it.
- 0 kmYablonoi Mountainsat 1,031 m
- 280 kmSrednyaya Moklatributary
- 375 kmMoklatributary
- 405 kmTungir Rivertributary
- 684 kmNyukzhatributary
- 759 kmKhanitributary
- 790 kmPorog Tumullur
- 843 kmPorog Yurga-Sinyakh
- 1,047 kmKrestyakhtributary
- 1,310 kmCharatributary
- 1,436 kmLena Riverat 23 m
Water level along the river (RiverATLAS; the height is exaggerated). Towns: GeoNames and Wikidata; bridges, dams and tributaries: Wikidata.
River in Siberia, Russia
At the mouth it carries 1,950 m³/s on average: an Olympic pool every 1.3 seconds. It drops from 1,031 m to 23 m, 0.7 m per kilometre on average. Its basin covers 210,000 km², about the size of BY. 37,000 people live in it. Highest water: August; lowest: from January to April. No large dam holds it back: it is one of the world's free-flowing rivers.
Where to start
- OlyokminskLargest city on its banks · 8,813 people
- Olyokminsk Airport (OLZ)Nearest airport with scheduled flights, 4 km from the city
- On the water1 ferry piers, marinas, boat rentals and boat ramps along the river (OpenStreetMap)
- From June to AugustThe best months to visit
Olyokma, month by month
Highest water: August
Lowest water: from January to April. Freezing months (average below −4 °C): from October to March. Best months to visit: from June to August.
From about 130 m³/s in the lowest month to 4,800 m³/s in the highest. An estimate: the monthly flow is modelled from the lowest and highest months of WaterGAP (RiverATLAS, 1971–2000) and the rain and snow along the river (WorldClim). Dams change the real rhythm. The chip is the average air temperature; below it, the month's rain.
Plan the trip
Plan the trip: boat trips, a bed by the river, a car
Some links above are affiliate links: if you book through them we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. It never changes what the data on this page says.
The basin
Olyokma: the basin in numbers
208,376 km² of land send their water to this river. This is what lives on it.
- 37,000people live in the basin
- 0/km²people per km²
- 807maverage altitude of the basin
- 420mmof rain a year (basin average)
- -8.0°Caverage air temperature
- 10%protected areas
- 0.1%covered by lakes
- 79%permafrost
What covers the basin
- 76% Forest
RiverATLAS (HydroATLAS v1.0, CC BY 4.0): land cover, people, protected areas, glaciers and dams over the whole basin upstream of the mouth.
Along the river
Olyokma: what you find on the way
- 1Ferry piers
From OpenStreetMap, within 2.6 km of the river. Not mapped is not the same as not there.
Cross-checked with our atlases
Olyokma in our other atlases
What our sister atlases know about the waterfalls on this river, the lakes it flows through, the beaches at its mouth, the mountains where it rises and the islands off its mouth.
2waterfalls on the riverCascadyas
1mountain at the sourcePeakyas
Waterfalls (2)
On the river, by Cascadyas
- Porog Tumullurkm 752
- Porog Yurga-Sinyakhkm 802
Cascadyas is coming soonOpen Cascadyas ↗
From space
The source and the mouth, seen from orbit


Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 by EOX IT Services GmbH (contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2016), CC BY 4.0. The glowing line is the river as drawn by RiverATLAS.
Tributaries
Where it flows, and what flows into it
It flows into
Lena RiverTributaries (9)
Also: Chara, Nyukzha, Tungir River, Mokla, Srednyaya Mokla, Khani, Krestyakh, Verkhnyaya Mokla, Tungurcha
Nearby
Rivers nearby
Where these numbers come from
| Name, length, places | Wikidata (Q26358) · CC0 |
|---|---|
| Course, profile, basin | RiverATLAS v1.0 (HydroATLAS, Linke et al. 2019) · CC BY 4.0 — followed from the source to the mouth given by Wikidata |
| Flow | WaterGAP (RiverATLAS), 1971–2000 · CC BY 4.0 |
| Climate along the river | WorldClim (RiverATLAS), 1970–2000 · CC BY 4.0 |
| Towns, bridges, dams | Wikidata · CC0; GeoNames · CC BY 4.0 |
| Along the river | © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL |
| Images | EOX Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 · CC BY 4.0; Wikimedia Commons |
| Our other atlases | Cascadyas, Peakyas — Wikidata · CC0; © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL; GeoNames · CC BY 4.0; HydroLAKES · CC BY 4.0; NOAA OISST |
Every source and licence is on the data sources page.
The family
Do you prefer beaches, lakes, mountains, waterfalls, islands, rivers or canyons?
Same idea, other landscapes: field atlases built on open data, month by month, in seven languages.