Winter road-trip 2026: the Indigirka Tube, risky naleds, White Nights, and an unexpected “car wash”.

Privyet folks!

With a few thousand kilometers behind us, things were getting somewhat rough and ready – despite the gorgeous bleached-white scenery…

At times, for five (5!) days straight we didn’t have any internet at all. Or a shower with soap and shampoo. Or a warm WC. Nothing at all! And when such comforts of civilization did finally show up, a line quickly formed to get at them!

Anyway, on with my notes from the winter roads…

Another “1111” sign for my collection ->

But where is it?…

The views from the Gavrushka Pass were gorgeous! A white winter world…

And here’s our convoy:

We drove along a stretch of the Old Kolyma Highway, the first ~40km of which are cleared: somewhere along it there’s a working mine (gold?); that’s why they keep the road open:

In some places the road was between a rock and a hard place; more precisely: between a cliff-face on one side and a sheer drop on the other. Sure keeps you on your toes! ->

Once the cleared road ended it was just two deep tracks in the snow left by someone (fishermen?) in a Trekol:

But soon the road became blocked by an avalanche that had come down from the cliffs. We started looking for alternative routes along the river (also following the Trekol tracks)…

And that was going fine until, suddenly…

Trying to ford the water didn’t work out too well either, but we at least we had a fun time!

And here’s a shot of the avalanche that blocked the road. We somehow didn’t fancy attempting to drive over/through it…

As per tradition, we got onto the Indigirka [frozen river] winter road to drive along the Indigirka Tube – a 20‑kilometer gorge that cuts across the Chersky Range from north to south. “Kilometer zero” of the Indigir winter road:

The ice “pimple” we first saw in 2024 is still in place! But this time it’s just cracked instead of exploding and throwing multi‑ton chunks of ice up to 100 meters around… (see pics at the link above).

Onward! It was a solid 180km like this to the Tube:

Sure, we’d done the Tube before, but we still keep coming back for more. One reason being that the views along it are always different…

The river freezes solid to the bottom, the ice is crystal clear – and in some places you can see the riverbed:

And sometimes rocks seems to “float”, suspended in the ice! ->

And it’s all down to super‑heavy water )…

Then we ran into what they call naleds – places where liquid water breaks out onto the surface, floods the river ice, and blocks vehicle traffic along the winter road:

At the same time the water level rises fast, which put our plans at serious risk. After weighing up those risks, we decided to break on though. Result – success!…

Curiously, you can get these here naleds (remember: water, not ice) at ‑50 degree Centigrade! Oh Siberia: so full of mysterious, unique magic!…

A dash off to the side – why? You’ll see in a second:

But this plan was also almost ruined by naleds – like these:

Very pretty! But how do you drive through that!?

Hooray! We had an experienced leader who found a passage – and we made it through!

The idea here was to fly some drones up for some aerial pics of Yakut volcanoes – like the one on the horizon:

Through a white forest:

Through a white valley! ->

The previous two photos were taken on the Arktika winter road, which we raced along to get to the village of Zyryanka:

That night, out on the ice of the Kolyma River (where we slept in the vehicles – there are no hotels or guesthouses in the village!), we got to see a small Northern Lights display, plus a total lunar eclipse! Quite a night…