The Russian expedition of Arctic travelers “Northern landing”, which started on March 15 from Nizhnevartovsk, reached the northernmost point of Eurasia – Cape Chelyuskin at the 78th latitude. It took two weeks for the Arctic travelers to snowmobile in the conditions of a severe storm and an evil blizzard to follow the planned route the village of Tazovsky-Antipayut-Gyda-Dixon-Cape Sterligov-Cape Chelyuskin. On the road, the birthday of his permanent operator Sergei Radaev was celebrated, and on March 29, the leader of the expedition, the veteran paratrooper, the head of the Slavtech corporation Alexander Peterman was congratulated on the edge of the mainland.
Hobby in the service of the country
“The Northern Airborne” has gone to the Russian Arctic zone for the eighth time, and every year these expeditions are less like the extraordinary leisure of successful businessmen, but more and more – a serious contribution to the study of the Arctic. In each hike, travelers monitor the contamination of the northern regions, test the GLONASS system, clothes, equipment and equipment, specify the routes and maps of the Russian Far North, in which the land is still confused with the land, and the flat terrain is with canyons.
A month before the start of the expedition, they held a one-week seminar on the specifics of actions in the Far North for the Airborne Troops officers and the Spetsnaz of the Main Intelligence Agency, sharing an invaluable experience of survival and life in the conditions of the Far North with the defenders of the Arctic. Special Russian Arctic troops (United Strategic Command “North”) appeared officially on December 1, 2014.
Two Arctic motorized rifle brigades, reinforced by special forces, coastal artillery, aviation and air defense units, must defend Russian Arctic possessions from Murmansk to Anadyr, but this service has yet to be prepared in a qualitative way. Meanwhile, Western “partners” have been preparing for a long time. The training center of mountain-Arctic training in Bridgeport has been operating since 1951. Every year more than 10,000 people prepare here, and now any of the three American Marines can operate in the north. This is not counting the two infantry brigades in Alaska and the contingents of other NATO countries, primarily Canada and Norway.
At the week-long seminar of the “Northern Assault” near Nizhnevartovsk it was found out that even very experienced, specially prepared and passed more than one hot spot officers do not represent the harsh reality of service in the Arctic. To remedy the situation, a working officer of the Center for Special Operations of the Ministry of Defense joined the trusted team of Alexander Peterman, who along with the travelers goes the whole route, trying on details of the Arctic transition to military service.
The following year, a second group of military personnel can join the march, which will carry out their tasks. True, the route for such an expedition will have to be halved, to 3000 km in both directions. So far, the expedition has been successful, without serious breakdowns and incidents.
Sweets for polar explorers
On the bank of the Yenisei snowmobiles stood up: the icebreaker passed here more than a day and a half ago, but the fairway is still not frozen. Global warming in the Arctic is not a bare scientific term, but a visible reality: the Peterman team observes year after year how the huts of the Peter the Great’s expeditions built once at a safe distance from the water are washed away completely or washed up.
Nevertheless, the ferry was found quite quickly, and by the evening of the travelers the chief of the local polar station had already met in Sopochnaya Karg. Old friends, waiting for news from the caravan of snowmobiles, have a “Northern landing” along the entire route. In the North, such meetings are a long-awaited reward for loneliness in the polar stations lost in the vast Russian Arctic expanses.
Realizing that many expeditions will not take you to the expedition (every kilogram, including your own weight, is counted before the hike), in some requests to the northern comrades the “northern paratroopers” are still not denied. For example, drugs for the first aid kit, flag of the Russian Federation and … a little candy are taken to the weather station of Sterligov Cape.
“When we first met people at polar stations, at outposts, there was not even a real connection, we gave them telephones to call home,” Peterman told us before the start. – Border guards are walking about in such clothes, in which the breadth of Moscow is walking, well, is it possible? Then, after some incident on Moscow’s decree, from all the polar stations, they were taken away with a service weapon. Imagine, young guys, girls every 3-4 hours should go to the polar night to the shore, measure the water level, temperature, and around the bears. They go with the rocket launchers against the bears – yes it’s easier to shoot yourself right away! “.
“Robinsons” of polar meteorological stations every three hours go on radio communication with the Main Center and transmit the readings of instruments, the results of visual, optical, hydrometeorological observations, information on the level of sea waves, assessment of the “ice”, the degree of compression of drift ice and the thickness of the snow cover. Thanks to the information from the weather stations the Northern Sea Route operates, Yamal gas workers are working, the air communication in the far north is coordinated. Every year on station stations, guests from Nizhnevartovsk note progress: where the connection will appear, where the repairs will be made, but to the level of American or British colleagues in the Antarctic would still grow.
Another joyful meeting – in the private capital of the Arctic, the village of Dixon. Three years ago, Peterman brought Nikolai the Wonderworker to the local church – the northernmost in the world – the icon of the Holy Trinity, and this year he did not spare a part of the precious place on the sled for children’s gifts. In the eyes of the children, travelers are true conquerors of the North and heroes who came from the “big earth” with amazing stories and stories. Long-awaited guests are greeted here with lunches, and all the participants of the Northern landing party are happy to switch from expeditionary rations to hot homemade food. Contrary to the imaginative representation of many (even veteran military), vodka with bacon in the arctic cold can not be saved. For long-distance expeditions, travelers developed special food.
Individual sleds carry 200 kilograms of food for eight people per month of travel. In Nizhnevartovsk, at the Gurmel factory and in the Slavtek restaurant chain, quick-frozen borscht, homemade noodles, pickle, chicken rolls and chops are prepared and packed – without a hot, nutritious lunch in the cold, you can not go far, and you need to go thousands of kilometers away “The big earth”. To a standard dinner, it happens, a ptarmigan is killed, and on the sweet – bars of chocolate, nuts and dried fruits. The chef of the Northern landing party Vitaly Beregovoi thought of a special pot in which the food warms up in minutes. If you need a snack on the road without making a serious halt, travelers are eaten from a container placed at the snowmobile engine, where food is always hot.
Features of modernization of snowmobiles
In Dixon, travelers take two days to rest after a hard transition to bad weather, refueling and inspection of equipment. They are happy to receive calls from the cities, because they have already become bored by communication. Alexander Peterman is always cheerful and fresh, for this indomitable inner engine he is fond of, this irrepressible energy and are fond of the rest. “The weather was not very good, all the time, but alive and well, we’ll take a rest, let’s go further,” the expedition leader happily reports. It is still unclear whether his team will be able to get to Cape Arctic – even at the beginning of the expedition from the northern latitudes it was reported that ice had already ripped off at the crossings between the islands of the Northern Land.
But you will not reach – you do not know, so two days after refueling, “Desant” moves on. Worn out in the first campaigns with disgusting local fuel (black liquid, which is not helped even by the numerous filtration), Peterman now, in advance, in the autumn months, delivers quality fuel in the required quantity to the expedition’s expedition points.
Good gasoline allows you to save from unnecessary overloads (you can think, they are not enough in the Arctic!) Canadian snowmobiles Rosan, which before the trips across Russian expanses are almost reassembled in the Nizhnevartovsk workshop of the Desant. Serial equipment must be modernized for itself: they put reinforced bumpers to protect against ice hummocks in front and from the sides, foot plates and windbreakers from the oncoming wind, additional lights, additional fuel filters, cargo sled fasteners, towing hook and other details about the need Canadians did not even guess. For detailed reports and honest feedback, Rosan thanks the “paratroopers” with constant cooperation, discounts on new models of cars and spare parts.
At each parking, the expedition mechanic Dmitry Fadeev checks the condition of each snowmobile in order not to miss an unexpected breakdown. In the current campaign came on a new snowmobile, and have already found that the fuel they are asking for is significantly more models of the previous generation. But the technics behaves while faultlessly: from all cars only experimental sleighs for a while have brought, but on that they and experimental. The very first iron sleds, made in hothouse conditions, did not withstand the tests of the Arctic – they burst as soon as they stopped at the area of the northern colds. Russian craftsmen replaced iron with Karelian birch, so hard that the steel drill burns while it passes through a piece of wood.
“Boeing” blew away – “Desant” resisted
The phrase “cruel storm” in the travel reports of the expedition is not an expression for a red word, but a meteorological estimate of the 11-point wind on a 12-point Beaufort scale. In Norilsk the other day a strong wind in the parking lot at the airport of Alykel literally blew down the passenger Boeing 737 weighing under 40 tons. “The Northern Troopers” by the time the element raged, passed its first thousand kilometers in the extreme North on open snowmobiles, under an icy gust of wind and snowstorm. About 170 km had to move along fast ice – fixed ice along the coast – and stop at Makarov Bay in the Pyasina Gulf of the Kara Sea. The blizzard that followed travelers all this time, ceasing only for the time of parking, it was played out so much that, without the need for a safe haven, they decided not to leave again.
A bright yellow tent of the Northern Airborne, visible in Arctic whiteness and capable of withstanding the bad weather typical for these severe edges, was developed specially for Arctic explorers by the Russian company “Basque”, and then not immediately, but gradually bringing it to the maximum possible perfection, taking into account experience previous expeditions. The same company has made clothes for the Arctic crosses on order: all the polar explorers prepared from the stores rejected after the first frostbite. After numerous experiments, we stopped on a filler made from artificial swan’s down and a wolverine on the rim of an inflated hood of a jacket. In this trip, a special multifunctional rescue suit is also tested at the request of Neatech: operator Serey Radaev drove in it from Dixon to Cape Sterligov.
“We found that you can not listen to hothouse locksmiths and other specialists,” said Alexander Peterman. – For example, it’s one thing in a warm garage to fasten a button on a jacket, and it’s quite another thing to do it in the frost of 40 degrees with wind and humidity. In such conditions, even speech is changing, hallucinations begin. You leave in the morning, you go 10-15-20 hours, you stop, you put a tent again, you collect all the iron with your bare hands … “. Yes, despite all the improvements, it is necessary to put the tent without gloves, pulling the edges of the temporary dwelling with the help of snowmobiles. Recall that at this moment somewhere in the northern airport, under the gust of wind, it’s rolling along the runway of Boeing …
Forced stop only provoked the travelers, so to catch up, the way was decided to continue at night when the wind died down. On the territory of the Great Arctic Reserve the weather is already favorable – clear and practically windless, but the temperature is quite consistent with the extreme North: – 28 ° C. On the way there are herds of wild reindeer and wolves following them, in the morning in 100 meters from the tent fresh tracks of a bear and a bear cub are found out. “It’s impossible to get used to the beauty of the Arctic,” the expedition members say. “In the year of preparation you manage to miss passionately about its expanses, in the rumbling of hummocks, in the northern lights.” Alexander Peterman says that he feels himself in the Arctic as a phone that was included in the network for recharging. Last year, the expedition was canceled to celebrate his anniversary, but now he will meet his birthday somewhere in the 78th latitude.
From the polar station of Cape Chelyuskin, the expedition will have to pass another 3000 kilometers. The way home! As the “paratroopers” say, there are two most pleasant moments in their journey: finally to leave, and then finally to return.
Dmitry Vaninsky, Free Press
http://svpressa.ru/travel/article/146067/