Tag Archives: roads

When the temperature drops below -50°C, the world turns into something else. It doesn’t just freeze; it visually transforms. Everything gets wrapped up head to toe in hoarfrost and grows a thick layer of fluffy white crystals. It’s kind of like the inside of a freezer, only way more intense. Trees, road signs, poles and the wires on the poles are all coated in white hoarfrost:

This year that kind of a deep-deepest freeze in the Russian Far East only took place in December and January, while February turned out to be unseasonably warm. In fact, I’d say it was hot for February in Yakutia. If the thermometer shows -20°C at that time of year – yes, that’s hot! The thermometer only crept lower than -40°C a couple of times early in the morning, but it’d almost immediately warm up to -30°C or even higher. It got to the point where, for most of the trip, I wasn’t even wearing thermal ski pants – just jeans. I had some thermal leggings on underneath the jeans – but that was it. And I only wore my fur-lined boots once (when we spent the night in our cars on the ice of the Kolyma River to enjoy the northern lights and a total lunar eclipse).

At such higher-than-usual temperatures, all the white beauty melts away quickly, and the world turns gray and boring again. But at least a few times we got lucky and drove right into “proper” bleached scenery:

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…*But were afraid to ask

Being somehow drawn to the deep-frozen (sometimes down to -60°C!) North in winter, obsessed with brutal Siberian winter roads, having to put up with equally brutal overnight stays, and thousands of kilometers of rough roads tracks… – let’s be honest, it’s a mental anomaly. Most people would only venture into such a world against their will. Suggest a winter trip to Oymyakon instead of, say, the Maldives, and any normal person would twirl their index finger around one of their temples and roll their eyes. At the other extreme – there are some folks who can’t get enough of such extremely frigid locations like the Arctic or Antarctic. I’m not quite that far gone, but every couple of years I do try and tackle a new winter driving route. I simply mad for it!…

Up north in the winter, it’s a completely surreal world of whiteness!

The scenery in places is simply stunning:

You zone out watching these views roll by, driving as if hypnotized – for hundreds and hundreds of kilometers…

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People sometimes ask me: “Eugene, why are you so drawn to the North? What is it about deep-frozen Siberian cities likes Yakutsk, or just-as-cold Far-Eastern ones like Magadan, and the treacherous winter roads that connect them?

It’s like this. In the Arctic and near-Arctic it’s always winter – even when it’s summer. But the “real” winter – December to February – is just so much colder. Still, there are no gnats, mosquitoes, or other bloodsuckers, and that, to me, more than makes up for the cold. (And anyway – a Russian afraid of the cold? That would be like… a burger patty being afraid of buns.) Curiously, southern/central Yakutia (the Sakha Republic) is well away from (well south of) the Arctic, but in winter it can get much colder there. If you don’t believe me, look at the temperature data by region. For example, compare the climate of Tiksi (on the north coast of Russia – inside the Arctic Circle) with that of Yakutsk. Who knew?! So yes, the climate is a harsh one, and not to many folks’ taste. Not to mine in and of itself, but there’s something else – besides the lack of hungry insects – that makes up for the intense (-60°C and below!) cold in winter: central Yakutia – for example along the Kolyma highway – only gets prettier. It becomes a deep-frozen, absolutely white, winter-wonderland scene that’s simply unique. I’ve enthused and raptured about it plenty before (see my MYM (2021) and MYB (2022) expedition series of posts). Unfortunately (!), this year the winter was extremely warm, with average temperatures around just (!) -20/-30°C (which is very unusual for late winter), so the views, alas, weren’t so magical.

Nevertheless, extremely cold or no, when you head out early in the morning for another day’s drive, you’re immediately overcome by some kind of special northern hypnosis. And sunrises only intensify the feeling:

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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!…

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Longtime inhabitants of this cozy corner of the internet will remember that if ever one of my posts begins with a photo of the Magadan restaurant in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport (SVO), it’s done for a reason, and also means that that and upcoming posts sure won’t be boring…

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The next day (after visiting Chaka Salt Lake) of our China-2024 trip was packed with tourisms. We were set to explore and admire a full three… and a half attractions. They may not be 5K-rated, but all together they were to make this section of our route a real treat…

As we ventured deeper into rocky desert, the scenery became increasingly striking:

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After Oymyakon, we decided we needed to check out the local disused airport – in the village called… Airport (in Russian – Aeroport)! ->

In WWII it was used as a back-up airport for ALSIB Lend-Lease aircraft. After the war it became a civilian airport, and now – as you can see – it’s well and truly abandoned:

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I left you in the previous post with our leaving Oymyakon heading in the direction of the original Kolyma highway. All righty – let’s go!…

The Old Kolymsky Tract is the highway road the R504 replaced. You might think it’d be abandoned by now, but you’d be wrong – kinda. A long stretch of it is fully serviced and regularly cleared of snow and has the odd small village alongside it. In places – near Tomtor – it even has street lighting ->

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Still with plenty of time to spare on the return leg of our Yakutsk-Tiksi-Yakutsk expedition, what else could we check out along the way? Answering that was easy: Oymyakon – for the third time in as many years!…

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Intro

Luck was on our side when heading back south on our Yakutsk-Tiksi-Yakutsk expedition: we’d narrowly missed being stranded for several days in Tiksi, and were way ahead of schedule. And it was this latter spot of luck that permitted us to spend plenty of time examining and enjoying a very special feature of the North – which I’ll be writing a lot about and showing a great many photos of in this here mega-long post. And as the title to the post indicates – the special feature is… the Indigirka Tube ->

So, what is the Indigirka Tube?…

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