Frozen Siberia road-trip 2026: back onto the Old Kolyma Highway.

I don’t think I mentioned what route we’re taking this year on our road-trip, so here it is: Irkutsk > Yakutsk > Magadan (not necessarily the route shown on the map at that link; that’s just to give you an idea of the where and the how long?!!).

The expedition is going well, but I soon realized I’ve no energy in the evenings for full travel reports. After all, I’m behind the wheel for most of each long day. Accordingly, I won’t be writing often along the way – just occasionally when something “stop the presses” happens. Like it did, 700km east of Yakutsk, for example…

We were on the Old Kolyma Highway (Stariy Kolumskiy Highway), hoping to drive from Tomtor to where the mostly abandoned old road meets the “New” Kolyma Highway (the R-504), here:

Driving on old, mostly abandoned roads in the middle of nowhere is only for the… brave at the best of times; in the middle of winter in Siberia – only for the crazy; in the middle of an especially snowy winter in Siberia – only for… (what comes after crazy?!). But, the crazy crazies that we are, we still went for it!…

Even the locals warned us against the venture, but did we listen? We’d completed similar mental daring escapades before, and our vehicles were deemed capable, so listen we did not…

Later, we took to the frozen-over the Indigirka river…

Oh yes…

But back to the very beginning of the Old Kolyma Highway…

Sure there was a lot more snow than in 2024, but it posed no problem – at first. Here’s a pic from this year:

And here’s one from 2024:

Not much difference, right? That’s what we thought too. But then truck and snowmobile tracks started to peter out, until… ->

Never mind; onward!…

That’s the Great Wall pickup of experienced traveler and pro-driver, Alexander Yelikov, (who came with us to Tiksi in 2024). He was clearing the snow with his vehicle’s portly girth and fat tires, to make things easier for us in a Haval H9 and two Tank 300s. Yes – Chinese cars; Siberian snow!…

Alexander moving briskly through the shallow snow was a magical sight – like a motorboat cutting through waves. Only these waves were made of snow:

But then twists and turns started… The snow got deeper and deeper, knee-deep in places, sometimes deeper…

The going got slower and slower, and finally – you guessed it – came to a halt. Defeated!

We’d driven some 90km, stopping around here:

In about 14 hours we’d covered about 125km, and spent the last 5-6km digging in the snow for a full six hours – at a speed of… 1km/h! We could’ve gone on (we had enough fuel), but it was just too much: the snow had won! So we turned back to Tomtor. We spent the night in the cars, and woke to a nice sunrise at dawn ->

The next day we took to a cleared road…

Of course we had to take a photo with the “101” sign, where we’d once experienced -58°C!!! ->

The Vnimanie River – in English: the Attention River! ->

Approaching the Olchansky Pass…

And – hurray! – everything was completely white: frost/snow/ice covering everything (well, almost). These were the views we’d come for – and here they were! ->

Halo – just like last time! ->

That’s all for Old Kolyma Highway (mis)adventures, but there’s still a lot more ahead!…