Cape to Cape Expedition
Cape to Cape Expedition
Crossed the Arctic Circle - Russia
3rd March 2008
12th March 2008 - updated 13th March
Passed over the Arctic Circle today. We only knew because Nikolai has a gps - there was no "You are Crossing the Arctic Circle" sign !! Made slow but good progress without any mishaps. Sent pictures through which are on the Srednekolymsk page.
12th March - as it was!
As the Land Rover has been in a garage while we have been in Syrianka and we need to be outside to send mail I haven't sent much. Today I sent a very long mail through detailing our journey from Ust Nera to here. Nicky will decipher it and add it later today to this page.
We are on our way north to Pevek having offloaded a lot of equipment into the Kamas to mimimise the risk of causing some serious damage to the suspension of the Land Rover.
We left Ust Nearer about 1pm on the 6th March and drove on decent snow tracks until 4am. We stopped and camped before reaching Sasyr and set off at 8am the next morning. As we drove out of the trees and started to climb the track disappeared into 3ft deep snow. This had been churned up by the trucks and had then frozen to -30°C making it solid. We knew there was only one route so so long as we could keep going everything was ok. Inevitably something was going to break as we lurched over and through frozen ruts. The first rear shocker ripped apart and we took it off to avoid putting it through the tyre. We drove back down into the trees as its 5/10°C warmer there. We crawled into Sasyr about 1pm. Our average speed that day had been 13kph.
We visited Sergei's friend Ugene. A nice guy whose wife had gone to Yakutsk for the day as it was "Ladies Day" (March 8th) to visit her mum. We ate fish and horse stew and drank vodka while he lit the banya for us. I went with Sergei to fix the shocker (there will be a picture of the welder!!). Everything fixed, Land Rover refuelled, we had a banya, more food and then left. We drove until 2am and slept like logs on the zimmer (winter road/frozen river).
Next morning we set off at 6am leaving the truck to catch us up (I think they all went straight back to sleep). It was a beautiful morning, climbing up out of the valley into some quite serious mountains. A pathway had been cleared through by a snowplough otherwise it would have been impossible even for the trucks as in places it was very steep. We reached a summit pass with some prayer flags and a road sign that translated to "Hill" . Stopped for some tea and to take photos only to notice some coolant dripping from the heater tank area. Our hearts sank and we hoped we hadn't fractured a pipe on a lump of ice. Jacked the Land Rover up and took the guard off only to find no sign. Further investigation revealed that the plastic container in the back had cracked in the cold and was leaking a bit. Panic over !! Came off down the hill into the trees and some very deep snow but amazingly a pathway had been cleared one truck wide so meeting another vehicle was interesting. Usually the Ural trucks just drive off the trail for us straight into 3ft snow and straight over any trees that happen to be in the way. I think word has gone down the line, so to speak, that we are on the road because they all hoot and wave now which is nice. Previously they just looked gob smacked. Speed still only 15kpm.
Somewhere here we broke the first shocker, then the second and decided radical weight loss was needed. We crawled onto a place called something like "Ohmygod" about 60km from Syrianka. Sergei caught us up and we continued driving to arrive in Syrianka at 2am. As Sergei was sleeping in his truck I decided to do the same and slept in the Land Rover while Simon and Nikolai booked into the hotel.
Syrianka is a nice little town on the Kolyma river (another milestone!) so its quite well stocked with food and stuff. All the river barges and tugs etc are frozen in here. Its quite surreal. Michael who came in Sergei's truck from Yakutsk is a river boat captain here and has been showing us round. We had lunch with him and his family - he was very proud.
We found a heated garage to work on the Land Rover. Radical weight loss - the roof-tent off and everything else into Sergei's truck. We repaired the shockers and have strapped the axel to the chassis to limit travel. The idea of getting spares sent out is unrealistic as Simon's visa would expire before we got them, its so far from anywhere. I'm not worried about the Land Rover - we can keep fixing it and we have enough spares and bodge bits to keep going.
Simon has walked back to the Land Rover while I type this to get some food as we are going to invite Sergei to the hotel for some expedition food and vodka.
Tomorrow we are setting off north and heading for Pevek where we are hoping there is a truck to carry the equipment to Uelen.
