Sasyr > Zyryanka on the Arktika winter road.

Overall, the main items on the wish list for our winter Irkutsk-Yakutsk-Magadan-Yakutsk road-trip had either been checked off (the Indigirka Tube, the naleds and volcanoes of the Moma Valley, the Natalka gold deposit), or only unsuccessfully attempted because of an abnormal amount of snow (the Old Kolyma Highway). Incidentally, we canceled our attempt to get to Jack London Lake for the same reason (too much snow).

But with another couple of days still left, we decided to drive back and forth along the Arktika winter road, and it’s probably worth telling you about it – because it’s an especially beautiful winter road, particularly where it crosses mountain ranges:

The next sizable settlement on the Arktika winter road after Sasyr is Zyryanka. Let me tell you a little about the place…

First: With a population (as of 2010) of just 3200, formally it’s an “urban-type settlement” (less formally in English – a village:), and it sits on the bank of the Kolyma River. It was named after Dmitry Mikhailovich Zyryan – a Yenisei Cossack, explorer, one of the first to open up Eastern Siberia (he traveled with the more famous explorer Dezhnyov), and also an Arctic seafarer, among other things. Oh, those passionaries from back then.

Second: Why does the village exist (out here in the middle of nowhere)? Well, there’s a large coal deposit here, which supplies everything located near the Kolyma River. Hence the river port here and what seems to be the head office of the Kolyma Shipping Company.

Third: Where is it? Here. They’re lying when they say those 300km from Sasyr take just five to six hours. Don’t trust the internet! The winter road there is such that, even in a comfortable SUV, the one-way trip (not in any particular hurry) comes out at 11-12 hours on the road!

Why so slow? Well, as usual: the roads are of the expected quality. After all, these aren’t “roads” in the normal sense, but temporary “winter roads” laid across frozen rivers, lakes, bogs, taiga, and tundra. If a stretch goes over land, it gets pretty uncomfortable; in places you can’t go faster than 10-15km/h:

In some places the winter road is laid upon riverbeds, streambeds, or lakes; there it’s more comfortable, and sometimes you can get up to speeds of 80-90km/h:

But on this particular stretch of winter road there are no mighty rivers or boundless lakes, so we crawled along at roughly 15-20-30km/h:

Aha, and here’s the fork. Yesterday we came here from the Khonuu side; today we’re heading for Zyryanka:

After that there’s around 20km of insanely bumpy winter road; most unpleasant and slow:

Eventually we made it through, and there’s the Moma Range ahead; next up: crossing it…

The winter road took to the Taryn-Yuryakh river; therefore: smoothness. Aaaaaah.

In places you can even stop fixating on the road, look around, and take some pics. Though most of these pics belong to my near-constant travel companion, DZ :)

A little farther on the clouds had cleared, and some bright blue sky had been painted in – gorgeous!

Then the mountain passes began:

For us “little guys”, the passes (there are two of them) posed no difficulties whatsoever. If a heavily loaded long-hauler can make it through here, then we, on big studded tires and in new vehicles, will easily get through! And that’s exactly what happened. No incidents whatsoever.

The views in every direction: oh my gorgeous!

Climbing up to the first pass:

We caught up with truck…

Having passed him (he moved over and let us through), we were now catching up with another Arctic truck:

The views – aaaaah!!!

And here we are at the pass. The previous photo was the view from the pass to the south, from where we’d come. This one is the view to the north, where we were heading next:

The view from above:

That’s where we were headed ->

In some spots (on steep descents and climbs) they run parallel winter-road tracks. One lane is for descending (where they fit special wheel locks so braking is guaranteed), and the other is for climbing, which means putting chains on the wheels.

But we’re “little guys”, so we can do without all those professional concerns. We just keep going – that way ->

The driving’s easy and relaxed for us, so we carefully keep our distance when passing or letting oncoming freight traffic through. The trucks have a very hard time of it here.

We came down from the first pass; next up was the second (not as interesting), but the views all around were still oh my grand! ->

We caught up with some other “little guys”. Turned out they weren’t together and didn’t know each other – they’d simply “stuck” to one another out of self-preservation :). Their license plates were especially surprising: Moscow, Tver, and Buryatia. A reminder: we’re deep in northeastern Yakutia, heading toward Chukotka.

Some contemplative/observational notes…

(i) When you look closely at pictures like this:

…the slopes of the hills display completely psychedelic patterns:

(ii) There’s a significant flow of traffic to Baimsky GOK and the Peschanka deposit in Chukotka.

They’re currently building a mining-and-processing plant there, and that’s where most of the traffic on the Arktika was heading. The deposit has copper, gold, silver – all sorts of valuable stuff. The locals in our group said – unreliably – that the plan was to start productino of a fifth of all Russian copper output here. Aha! I thought. But they’ll have to ship the mined copper out of there somehow, won’t they? Which means a railroad toward Magadan and Chukotka isn’t just pie-in-the-sky daydreaming, but may be an entirely realistic prospect?

By the way, the meticulous reader may notice that in this photo the sun is to the south, while we were driving north. And rightly so! I’ve mixed photos here from before Zyryanka (heading north and then east) and from the way back from it.

We crossed both passes over the Moma Range. Next – river section of winter road (hurray!)…

I looked the river up; it’s called the Sredny Sibik. And in February and March, it looks something like this:

Driving along the serpentines of this river in properly prepared vehicles is oh-so-badass!

And the views around are simply beautiful!

That was it for the mountain landscapes; ahead lay dreary lowlands. But not right away…

As I mentioned a little earlier, Zyryanka is all about coal, which provides heat to the whole surrounding area. And here’s the open-pit mine, right next to the road. That’s no coincidence: the road was built specially for the coal pit, and the winter road was connected there too, obviously.

We passed by the old settlement of Verkhnekolymsk. Old – as in, 1930s, surely?…

Actually, the Verkhnekolymsk wintering post was built here by Cossack detachments way back in… 1647! Which reminds me: when Russian explorers… explored, they didn’t wipe out local populations like colonial Europeans often did the world over. But that’s a separate topic. Of course, there were some brutal episodes across Russia, but total extermination of aborigines – that didn’t happen. There was the Shors‘ resistance, wars with the Koryaks and Chukchi, and more, but no total annihiliation.

Why have I veered off into history? Not sure. Let’s get back to simply driving along a Siberian winter road!…

This beast is clearly already retired…

And another (already the third on the route) 1,111^th kilometer sign!

But it was getting dark already; time to get to today’s destination…

Full moon that night!

So here we were in Zyryanka. It’s the main settlement and most important port on the Kolyma River in northeastern Yakutia. If you look into the history of these places… oh, things could get rough here at times. If you don’t fancy a horror show to accompany your blogpost-&-coffee, here are some present-day photos from early March of this year:

Here’s an old monument celebrating 50 years since the Russian Revolution:

Small businesses (not much snow on their roofs):

While clearly no one had cleared the snow from this dacha’s roof for a good while:

It’s a tiny village but… it has its own an airport! And even a monument to Aeroflot. Makes you wonder when it last flew in?

Snowmobiles on the streets here are a perfectly normal sight.

But that’s enough of hum-drum details! Like a pack of hungry devils, we made a beeline straight for the village store! We hadn’t been to one in a week and had gotten out of the habit. That evening we wandered around the village:

The prices here are… Arctic. Pomegranates – 950 rubles (~12 dollars) per kilo; kiwis – ~$1.5 each

Regarding fuel – let’s just say I’d never seen prices that high.

A bit of history: a monument to the Russian pioneering explorers of the Kolyma – Zyryan, Dezhnyov, and Stadukhin (more details on them – here) ->

Alas, the path to the monument honoring those who found, claimed, and established all of this was buried in snow – not cleared one bit. Still, guess they don’t get many tourists around here…

Directly opposite the monument there’s an office building:

And it turns out it’s the office of the Kolyma Shipping Company – and there, everything’s been tidied up and polished to the nines!

I’ve got no complaints – everyone keeps their own patch clear. But if there were a snow-covered historical landmark right across from my office, I’d be ashamed. Very ashamed.

The ancient plane again:

Ooh – another monument. Who is it? Revolutionary / political schemer / German spy / ideological totem… everyone picks their own version – their own reading of this undeniably extraordinary figure:

My take on Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov – let him stand there and freeze!

A few more photos of Zyryanka…

A few other bits and pieces we managed to spot on this morning before heading out:

I ❤️ Zyryanka!

I wouldn’t be surprised if I end up coming back here again…

And that’s despite the fact there are no (zero (0)!) hotels or guesthouses at all in Zyryanka! There are only what they call “company dormitories” for shift workers and people on business trips, but since we’d just turned up here by chance, passing through, we simply had zero places to stay. Accordingly – we spent the night in our vehicles. Curiously, it brought a few verses of the 1930s Soviet satirical poem to mind: Mister Twister by Samuil Marshak. // It tells the story of an arrogant, wealthy American millionaire and former minister who travels to Leningrad with his family, only to find himself hilariously thwarted by his own prejudice ->

Gogol Street,
the third front door.
“No,” they tell us,
“no rooms – no more.”

Pestel Street,
the first front door.
“No,” they tell us,
“no rooms – no more.”

Uprising Square,
the fifth front door.
“No,” they tell us,
“no rooms – no more.”

So, yes: another night in our cars. No shower, the toilet’s… al fresco, meals are instant ramen with boiling water – but it was fine, perfectly survivable! Main thing: nothing unpredictable happens. But we’re optimists, so we park nose into the wind (so the exhaust fumes don’t poison us – we keep the engines running, since it’s so bitterly cold) and facing slightly uphill (so we can sleep more level):