Siberia 2004

These are entries from a trip to Siberia in 2004.

We'll we've made it to civilization of a sort. Talovka is a tiny Koryak village where a few people manage a hardscrabble existence. It's pretty amazing that they get by, no roads, boats, or airplanes to connect them to the rest of the world. An occasional helicopter stops by but that's become very rare since the fall of the USSR. The mayor insists that we stay at his house. All the people are warning us that we in for a super-early break up which means that we will run out of ice and snow much earlier than usual. Our high-tech kites and skis won't make very good boats for crossing all of the big rivers that we planned to use as highways. This trip seems to get stranger and stranger. Maybe there really was a bad spell that the baleen didn't fix. Both Misha and I are wondering about making it to the Arctic Ocean. Our five miles a day average isn't really cutting it. All the villagers keep telling me about a guy named Dimitri who vanished for good while traveling under similar conditions. So tomorrow we will head for another reindeer camp 80 kilometers away. The reindeer birthing starts soon, so we can hang out with the herders who stay with the herd 24 hours a day to keep the wolves away. This will give us time to consider our situation from all angles. I don't really know who is driving this journey, it doesn't seem to be me. I guess I'll just see where the force leads me.

Jon called in the middle of the night Friday. they're having fun now. - Chris Struggling toward Talovka. Last week it was so warm that the rivers were breaking up, but this week we've been battling -20 C and swirling blizzards that make it hard to see the black ice at our feet. Just one more of the enigmas of Siberian travel, even though we are in a horrendous blizzard there's hardly any snow so we've been forced to trudge over frozen-solid, hummocky tundra. All of our appropriate technology, like the kites and skis are banging along behind us in our sleds. The gear is getting a terrible thrashing. We are crawling like ants through the Siberian wilderness, lucky to make 5 miles a day. At this rate it will be two more long days until we reach the small village of Talovka. About 4 o'clock this afternoon we spotted a strange boat-like cabin on the horizon. This didn't make sense to me but we pushed on. Turns out that we've reached the Penzinski River. The cabin is on a boat that must have gone aground a while ago, but the stove still works so we've fired it up. Finally the sat phone is warm enough to send out this dispatch. It's going to be a long strange trip and the Arctic Ocean seems impossibly far away. Misha and I decided that we'll just keep on going and see what we find next in this land of extremes. If it warms up I'll keep you posted.

I expected Jon to call last night or the night before but he didn't. I'm not sure what the phone trouble was it could have just been busy on my end, but here's the message. This means that they are now traveling by ski and kite. The Brigada is where we stayed with the reindeer herders the last time I was there with Jon. You might find Talovka on your atlas, it's on ours near latitude 62 north and longitude 164. This stretch is about 65 miles so we will probably hear from them again soon. Martha sent the message so I don't have any other details. - Chris Hello Chris! Nina just called. Jon and Misha called her, they were having trouble with the phone and couldn't get through to you. So the message is... all's well, we are between "Brigada" and "Talovka."

latitude 600 11' longitude 1650 28' Finally the planets that determine the quirky Siberian airplane schedule lined up and we escaped our prison in Petropavlosk. Misha and I had been stuck, waiting for our flight for over a week and I was antsy verging on homocidal. We landed in Tilichiki, a small town on the east coast of Kamchatka, but the real point of take off for this crazy wander is the tiny Koryak village of Vvenka. The only way to get there is a two-hour snowmobile ride south of the airport. Near the runway I spotted Sergei and Oleg dressed in sealskin mukluks, deerskin pants, boxy canvas anoraks, and hats with top corners that stand up like dog's ears. Their faces were grim, they had just barely made it. After a winter of record-breaking cold and snow, it had suddenly turned way warm. Sergei's honking, Russian-made Boran snowmachine had just about sunk through the ice into the Vvenka River. The frozen river is our highway to the village. We hung in Tilichiki until midnight and snowmobiled into Vvenka the next morning. Oleg's wife Lydia met us at the front door. She picked off a bit of lint from each of our coats, and burned them in the shovel full of burning coals. Got to get rid of the evil spirits you know. Maybe it worked, it's down to -6 C so we will head north for Nikolai's reindeer camp in the morning.

It's a beautiful spring day, sunny, about 0 Celsius, and the plane hasn't flown yet and I'm still in Petropavlovsk. Actually the snowplow in Tillichiki isn't crashed but the snowplow operator is. He's gone hunting, or he's drinking vodka, or watching TV, but he's not plowing the runway. The word on the street is that he does this on occasion. There are three flights a week to Tillichiki on three different days on three different airplanes. But it's a bother to open the airport on three different days. It's a lot of work. So when he feels like NOT working, then he shuts the airport for six days. Then he opens the airport one day and lets all three airplanes land. Today is Tuesday. If he keeps this plan going, we'll fly tomorrow. However another big storm is forecast for tonight. So we'll see. Earlier I wrote about the madness of modern Russia. Perhaps you didn't believe me. Well, the country has grown dramatically out of the ashes of the Soviet system and the economic collapse of Perestroika. But now I am face to face with a feudal lord who's fiefdom is the airport in Tillichiki and the planes will fly when he damn well is ready for them to fly.

It's March 22 and I'm still in the city of Petropavlovsk. Yeah, I know that I've been a lot of talk about skiing and kiting across the tundra and I'm just hanging in the city getting fat and lazy. Talk is cheap. Yeah. But the planes aren't flying, what can I do. According to Misha: "The road where the plane comes down in Tillichiki, it is full of ice. They have not a special machine to take this ice away. Actually, they have this special machine but it not working. Crashed. Finished." There's a rumor that this special machine will be not broken tomorrow. Then we can go. Am I waiting to start the trip or am I on the trip. I don't know. You tell me.

Saturday, March 20: I'm in Petropavlovsk Kamchatsky -- and not because I want to be. A huge storm is batterring 1000 miles of the Kamchatka coastline with heavy, wet snow and sporadic high winds. Misha and I are supposed to fly north to the Arctic town of Vvenka, which is the beginning of our ski, but the planes aren't flying. We're bivied up at Misha's house, which is a zillion times more comfortable than a mountain tent on the tundra, yet I'm anxious to be on the trip, not almost on the trip. Unless I am on the trip already, in which case I would be foolish to wish myself uncomfortable rather than comfortable. Or something like that. Anyway....... Misha called Lydia today in Vvenka. Lydia is our good friend who is closely associated with Moolynaut, the old shaman. Lydia asked if it were possible that I was possessed by some trickster spirit that was keeping me away from Vvenka. I said that I didn't think so; to the contrary, I had been having a lot of good fortune lately surrounding the trip and that it seemed to me that the forces were in my favor. Lydia wasn't convinced. Apparently, Moolynaut knows a spell that will exorcise a spirit that inhabits a person and brings bad weather to prevent that person from traveling. However, to activate the spell she needs some baleen and she doesn't have any baleen. Lydia and our friends Oleg and Sergei are racing around looking for baleen, so we can get the show on the road. The airport officials say that the planes will fly on Monday. We'll see.

I'm killing time in an internet cafe in Yelizovo, near Petropavlovsk kamchatsky. We were supposed to fly north today but it's stormy and the plane is grounded. It's been a bit of a sticky eddy here; had a few hassles with my permissions and registration and some stuff, so I'm pretty burnt on being in town. Last night we had a bunch of toasts to our journey. One guy said: "There are many steps. Be careful with every step. Even a simple problem like a sprained ankle can be serious out there." Then the next guy piped in, "But with every step, you will be in a new place, so be sure to look around and appreciate it. Because when you take the next step, you will never be there again." Good words, good thoughts to think about as I walk the long road across the tundra.

I'm in PK, among friends. There's a little bit of a sticky eddy here, a day or two longer than I would chose, but I'm using the time to fine tune things. And calm down. Which is good, after all. On this morning's weather, the temp in Chukotka was -28C, about what I expected. Misha and I have been in endless discussions about snow conditions in continental and marine climate during the transition from winter to summer. Basically neither of us knows what's to be expected. We ask other people, and they too don't know. Our take off weight will be about 50 kg in the sleds, which is minimal if we have hard maritime snow and a lot if we run into continental, Brooks Range type temperature gradient snow. Ok, enough of those kinds of details. I miss you all; I'll be in touch by satellite phone from Vvenka.

Sailing is an old sport. I?ve sailed yachts and kayaks and stuff. People have been windsurfing and kite boarding in the surf for a while now. Recently the sport of snow-kiting has begun to catch on big time: No lift lines, ample air time, no trudging. All you need is wind and an open snowy space with no trees, barbed wire fences, or other kite-catching obstacles. The folks at Ozone Kites (www.windzup.com and www.flyozone.com ) generously agreed to sponsor me, which meant first teaching me to fly a kite, then turning me loose in Siberia with their gear. The learning curve was fairly rapid, and within a few hours I was shuffling along a frozen, snow-covered lake at walking speed. A few days later I was zooming along at 20 miles per hour. Holy cow, with that technology, a person can cover in an hour of fun what it would otherwise take a long tired day of trudging! The pro snow-kiters are leaping in the air, doing sick inverted moves, and speeding across glaciers, flying over crevasses that threaten to swallow them up. I?m a feet on the ground kind of guy. All I want to do is ski across Siberia, following an old-lady?s spirit quest. OK folks, enough preliminary. I?m outta here. I?ve got a four-day plane flight to eastern Siberia. I go ? of the way around the world. If you have to ask, ?Hey, dufus, why don?t you go the other way and only travel ? of the way around the world?? ? then you don?t understand that logic doesn?t always rule in Russia. Next installment is from Russia. Thanks to all my sponsors, good folks who believe in me and my crazy vision. Ozone kites (Power kites) Dakine (Harnesses and packs) Zeal Optics (goggles and glasses) Airtime Hood River (Rugged outdoor outerwear)

Ok, so we decided to wander across the abundant void of Siberia for no good reason with no known destination. Our job was to go out there, stay alive, and come back smiling! In Siberia cold can kill you. But absence of cold can kill you just as dead. The best time to travel is during the frozen spring after the real cold of winter moderates. Once the summer thaw sets in, tundra turns to deep bog, impassible rivers block your path, and you can?t travel any more. So you starve to death. We?re leaving in mid March. I suppose that the old lady will send us off with some sort of ceremony, but you never know for sure. We?re leaving from the east coast of Siberia and heading due north to the Arctic Ocean. There?s an airport in the city of Pevek and we can fly home from there. It?s very much the same distance as starting at the British Columbia/Northwest Territories border and heading to the Arctic coast of Canada, near Inuvik. We considered different ways to travel: Reindeer sled is too slow because the reindeer eat moss, which is such a low-quality food that they spend most of their time eating, and they don?t go very far in a day. Dogsleds are much faster, but then you spend most of your time finding food for the hounds, so you don?t go very far. We even tried bicycles on the windswept frozen tundra, but when the snow softens up you sink and feel real silly, standing around with a bicycle up to its axels in soft snow with all the local folks laughing at you. So, we?re going to ski with assistance from power kites! More about the kites on the next update!

I came back again the following year, and the old lady was waiting with a special mushroom that had spoken to her from the tundra. Yykees. Well I ate it and we proceeded to travel toward the other world. But I got scared and turned back. The next morning, Moolynaut?s stepson, Oleg, asked me: ?Jon, you know why you got scared and turned back?? I said, ?No.? He explained that every person gets a certain amount of power in this world. You can channel that power any way you want, but you don?t get any more than your allocation. I had channeled all my power into traveling well in this world, and I didn?t have enough left to travel into the other world. So, Oleg explained, since I was clearly seeking something, I had to make my spirit journey in this world. It hadn?t dawned on me that I was seeking something, but then I realized that I was. So Misha and I decided to ski across the frozen wasteland of northeast Siberia: Nine time zones from the nearest paved road. No outside support or food drops. No idea of what we will find. And this is the journey that I am going to write about.

In 1997, I got caught in an avalanche in Fish Bowl, just out of bounds from the Fernie ski hill. Deep pow -- Buried surface hoar ? Fifteenth line on the slope. And all that beautiful white crinkled and I was somersaulting way way out of control. Ka..woomph and my left arm was jerked out of the socket. Ka..woomph and the snow pushed me down so hard that it pulled my pelvis apart. Poof, and the snow spit me out at the bottom, head up, breathing. I tried to stand, but my legs wouldn?t move. ?Shit, I?m paralyzed.? And I began to envision the rest of my life in a wheelchair. Not a pretty thought. But something inside said, ?Try wiggling your toes. If your toes can wiggle, you?re hurt, but ok.? I took a deep breath, savoring the moment, afraid of the results. Then I sent a signal down the nerve endings, ?Hey, you, toes, wiggle.? They wiggled. Whew. But I was laid up for a long time and when I got out of the wheelchair, I still had moments when I couldn?t walk very well, and, worse yet, days when I couldn?t ski. I returned to Vvenka and told Moolynaut about my problem. She had me take off all my clothes, stand naked on one leg, put one hand straight out in front of me, and fold the other hand behind my back. Then she spit on my pubic hairs and rubbed them with rabbit fur. She had a soft touch, for an old woman. She asked me if I believed that Kutcha the Raven God could heal me. Well you know, I didn?t really believe it, but I didn?t want to say ?NO?, and I was certainly afraid to lie, so I said, ?Tell Kutcha that I come from a different society and that we don?t usually believe in this sort of medicine. But I came all the way here and I?m trying to learn.? That must have been the right answer, because I got better.

Moolynaut, a 96 year old Koryak shaman, conjured up the storm that brought us to Vvenka. OK, you don?t believe that one. You think that I?m a crystal-watching, ohm-chanting, new-age crackpot. OK, I?m not sure I believe it either?.But then again; I?m not sure what I believe anymore. Anyway, a big storm came up as Misha and I were paddling along the coast ? that?s a fact. We sought shelter in the small Koryak village of Vvenka ? another fact. Does that sit better in your cynical, Western, consumer-oriented, fun-hog brain? The people fed us and gave us a warm house to sleep in and we dried our soggy clothes. We met the old lady, Moolynaut. She didn?t pass on any great mantras to chant into my quartz crystals when I returned to North America. Most of the time she was bent over on the summer tundra cleaning fish. If there was any message that she conveyed, it was, ?Work hard when the salmon are running, cause you gotta eat come winter.? When the storm ended and we prepared to leave, she stood up, all bent over and wrinkled, fixed me with an intense stare, and muttered something in the guttural Koryak tongue. One of the women translated into Russian, and Misha carried the words into English, ?She says you men should come back. It will be good for you. It will be good for the people of Vvenka.? And you know what? We came back. That?s a third fact.

It was 1998. I was 53 years old, and I?d made somewhat of a name for myself as an expedition sea kayaker. They say that if you?ve rounded Cape Horn under sail you?re allowed to toast the Queen with your feet on the table. Well, I rounded the Horn in a kayak and I?ve paddled around in the Arctic sea ice a bit, but deep in my heart I knew that my accomplishments are due more to perseverance and guile than technical prowess. There are sneaky ways through the ice and around the Horn. It?s like skiing a long line rather than a steep gnarly one So, I wanted to cross an ocean in a ridiculously small boat -- not just dabble around the edges. And as long as I was at it, getting older and all, I decided to cross the biggest ocean ? The Pacific ? and then what the hell, I may was well head into the ice choked Arctic reaches of the North Pacific while I was at it. In skiers lingo, it?s a beautiful line, never been done, 3000 miles of uninhabited islands, current shears, hurricane-force winds, rattle your teeth out surf, and one of the wildest coastlines on the face of the earth. Little did I know that I was about to embark on a mental and spiritual journey that seems to have just begun.

When I was on the phone with RuthAnn Brown from Polartec the other day she asked? "How's it going, Jon?" My response was, "Well, I've been shooting my mouth off for a year about this expedition and now it's about time to go out there and get wet." I leave the country June 1, and Franz will follow on June 10. The WindRiders arrive in Osaka, Japan on May 15 and my Japanese sponsors from MTI Adventure Wear will ship them to our starting point in Nemuro on the north Island of Hokkaido. We plan to sail into the Kuril Islands on June 16. The Visa applications with the Russians continues to progress, but I get a little nervous until the Visas are in my hand. I'll be leaving home in three weeks.

Here's the latest email from Martha and Yelena, our expeditors in Kamchatka. We think that you shouldn't count on finding much of any food supplies to buy along the way as many of the villages you'll visit are abandoned or nearly so. The situation in the bush here has gotten very bad regarding supplying them with products because of the high costs of helicopters to bring it in. You may find some products at Ust Kamchatskiy and Korf. I have 2 friends who are geologists at Korf and will try and alert them to your arrival once you've left here. Korf from what they've told me is like the rough Wild West with rampant drunkenness in the streets, and really a pretty crazy place. In the meantime, the Japanese asked us to register our boats and gave us a 287 page form which is the same as if we were to register the Exxon Valdez. YUG!!!