meteoblue weather charts are based on 30 years of weather models available for every point on Earth. They provide useful indicators of typical climatic features and expected weather conditions (temperature, precipitation, sunshine or wind). Weather data models have a spatial resolution of about 30 km in diameter and may not reproduce all local weather events such as thunderstorms, local winds or tornadoes.

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Average temperature and precipitation

The "average daily maximum" (solid red line) shows the maximum average temperature for every month for Kotelny Island. Likewise, the "Minimum Average Daily Temperature" (solid blue line) indicates the minimum average temperature. Hot Days and Cold Nights (the dotted red and blue lines indicate the average temperature of the hottest day and coldest night of each month for 30 years. When planning your vacation, you'll be aware of the average temperature and prepared for both the hottest and coldest on cold days.The default settings do not include wind speed indicators, but you can enable this option using the button on the graph.

The rainfall schedule is useful for seasonal variations, such as the monsoon climate in India or the humid period in Africa.

Cloudy, sunny and precipitation days

The graph indicates the number of sunny, partly cloudy, foggy, and precipitation days. Days when the cloud layer does not exceed 20% are considered sunny; 20-80% cover is considered partly cloudy, and more than 80% is considered completely cloudy. While the weather is mostly cloudy in Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland, Sossusvlei in the Namib Desert is one of the sunniest places on earth.

Attention: In countries with a tropical climate, such as Malaysia or Indonesia, the forecast for the number of days of precipitation may be overestimated by a factor of two.

Maximum temperatures

The maximum temperature diagram for Kotelny Island displays how many days per month reach certain temperatures. In Dubai, one of the hottest cities on earth, the temperature almost never drops below 40°C in July. You can also see a chart of cold winters in Moscow, which shows that only a few days a month the maximum temperature barely reaches -10°C.

Precipitation

The precipitation diagram for Kotelny Island shows how many days per month, certain precipitation amounts are reached. In areas with tropical or monsoon climates, rainfall forecasts may be underestimated.

Wind speed

The diagram for Kotelny Island shows the days per month, during which the wind reaches a certain speed. An interesting example is the Tibetan Plateau, where the monsoons produce prolonged strong winds from December to April and calm air flows from June to October.

Wind speed units can be changed in the preferences section (top right corner).

Wind speed rose

The wind rose for Kotelny Island shows how many hours per year the wind blows from a certain direction. Example - southwest wind: The wind blows from southwest (SW) to northeast (NE). Cape Horn, the most southern point V South America, is characterized by a characteristic powerful westerly wind, which significantly impedes passage from east to west, especially for sailing ships.

general information

Since 2007, meteoblue has been collecting model meteorological data in its archive. In 2014, we began comparing weather models with historical data going back to 1985, creating a global archive of 30 years of hourly weather data. Weather charts are the first simulated weather data sets available on the Internet. Our weather data history includes data from all parts of the world covering any time period, regardless of the availability of weather stations.

The data is obtained from our global weather model NEMS over a diameter of approximately 30 km. Consequently, they cannot reproduce minor local weather events such as heat domes, cold blasts, thunderstorms and tornadoes. For locations and events that require a high level of accuracy (such as energy allocation, insurance, etc.), we offer high-resolution models with hourly weather data.

License

This data can be used under the Creative Commons license "Attribution + Non-commercial (BY-NC)". Any is illegal.

Lev Lipkov

Means of transport

On Kotelny Island

Calgary, Canada, 1999-2000

Vadim Litinsky

….Everything I want to tell you about began on an April day in 1972, when the AN-2 turned around, showering us with a cloud of snow, slid to the far end of the runway, roared, and flew past us, gaining altitude. I followed it with my eyes until it melted into the whitish pale blue sky and then looked around. Ahead of me lay a white frozen bay. To the left and right, to the horizon, there are white rounded hills with black strokes of rocky placers. A steady, energetic wind drove the snow along the frozen sand of the coastal spit and was already sweeping up the boxes and bags with our field equipment hastily thrown from the plane, ruffling the tarpaulins and hoods of our jackets. In the distance, the low barracks of the local airport, half-covered with snow, could be seen.

There were six of us then, landed on the shore of Kotelny Island - the first landing of a large expedition, which was supposed to begin geophysical survey of the New Siberian Islands. Six people who have worked a lot in the taiga, but have never been to the Arctic. In the taiga, when you are thrown out somewhere, you don’t have to rush to set up camp. There was time to walk around and, slowly, choose the most the best place where to put the tents - so that it is close to the water, but not too close, so that it does not suddenly flood, so that it is in the shade, and so that there is firewood nearby, and so that it is closed from the wind. Here on Kotelny Island there was no choice and we had to hurry. It was cold here, very cold and, moreover, windy and uncomfortable. It was necessary to quickly put up a tent, at least one, not even according to all the rules, hastily, put a stove in the tent, fill the tank with diesel fuel, light it, fill the kettle with snow, put it on the stove and only then, inside, you can calmly light a cigarette and think about what to do and what to do next.

It turned out that in the cold and wind a person works and thinks more slowly. It turned out that a certain effort of will is required to force oneself to perform a trifling but necessary action - for example, fastening the hood to the jacket. It turned out that the tents given to us from the warehouse were intended for the hot summer taiga and had huge windows on the side walls, covered with mesh for access to fresh air and for protection from mosquitoes, and we immediately had to sew these windows tightly. It turned out that the iron stakes for the guy lines were too short and did not drive deep enough into the frozen pebbles and did not allow the tents to be tensioned well. It turned out that three of us hated all this and were going back to the mainland on the first plane. But despite everything, after two hours we were sitting around the stove and drinking tea. That's how it started. Then there was a lot of stuff...

Kotelny Island

Nobody really knows where this name came from. According to one legend, the Cossacks, landing on it for the first time three hundred odd years ago, found a cauldron on the shore left by someone unknown before them. According to another, no less plausible, the Cossacks, on the contrary, forgot their own cauldron on the shore, in a hurry to leave the island. No one knows how it really happened, but we can say with enough confidence that about two hundred years ago the Cossack Lyakhov looked north from the coast and “saw some land,” crossed the strait on dogs and discovered the island of Bolshoy Lyakhovsky. And one thing after another happened. From this island, someone else had already “seen” Maly Lyakhovsky Island in the north, and from it - Kotelny Island, north of Maly Lyakhovsky. The chain stopped there. But many people believed, as musher Sannikov believed at the beginning of the last century, that there was land further to the north. He said he saw distant blue mountains from the northern end of Kotelny. And he not only said, but also harnessed the dogs and rushed there to the north, but the Great Siberian Polynya strip almost constantly did not allow him there open water along a break in the seabed. Afterwards, planes and airships flew, icebreakers broke the ice and sneaked under it nuclear submarines‚but no one found anything. It’s a pity... But did musher Sannikov see something!? Such people do not lie...

So Kotelny Island remained on the map without a northern neighbor. But what is called Kotelny Island on the map is not an island at all, but only a part larger island. What is called Kotelny Island makes up its western part. East End Faddeevsky Island is called in honor of some unknown Thaddeus, and this Thaddeevsky Island, as you may have guessed, is not an island either. And between them is Bunge Land - a flat, table-like sandy beach a hundred kilometers long and wide, barely rising above sea level, so low that in winter, under the snow, it looks like a frozen sea. Because of this lowland, there was confusion with the islands, because the pioneers decided that this was the strait, and Kotelny and Faddeevsky were real islands. When they figured out what was what, it was already too late, because the names were firmly established on the maps. Fortunately, I was smart enough (this was before the revolution) not to change anything. So everything remained - Kotelny Island, Bunge Land, Fadeevsky Island.

Everyone who lived or worked on the New Siberian Islands will say and will not lie that Kotelny is best island archipelago. And indeed, there was everything you need for a good life in the Arctic. Do you need an airport - please contact us west bank‚in Tempo‚ where planes fly. Not very often, but they fly. And this means letters, newspapers, cinema, vodka and sometimes, but very, very rarely, even the highest delicacy in the Arctic - beer! Are you tired of sitting alone in your smoky hut or tent and want to communicate - there are two permanent polar stations - Sannikova and Temp, go there with a bottle, talk to all-knowing radio operators, exchange books, sleep on clean sheets, watch new films. You need cartridges for hunting - there is an air defense company with a radar, so take a bottle of vodka and visit the commander of this company. You need arctic fox skins - there are local hunters, again take vodka and go to them. You need fish - take a box of vodka and move east to where Kotelny Island ends and Bunge Land begins and where the Balyktakh River flows, where huge salmon are caught. If you run out of meat, get on the all-terrain vehicle, take as much vodka as you can, and go hunting, thank God, there are plenty of deer on the island.

But you’ve probably already noticed that I keep emphasizing that in order to enjoy all the benefits and delights of Kotelny Island, you need to have two things: vodka and a vehicle. And if you could get vodka on the island, at the very least, with some effort, the situation with transport was very bad. This is what I want to talk about.

All more or less permanent settlements in the Soviet Arctic‚ be they polar stations, military posts or airports‚ have several permanent features. These are huge pyramids of empty iron fuel barrels, abandoned windmills with forever frozen blades and gnawed skeletons of cars, tractors and all-terrain vehicles. Kotelny Island Airport was no exception to this rule. A runway on a pebble spit separating a shallow lagoon from a bay, two low barracks, a garage, a workshop, antennas with guy ropes and the signs indicated above - that’s the whole airport. It was called Temp, from the nearby polar station, which in turn took the name from the neighboring Yakut hunting settlement of Temp.

Aeroportik led a quiet life, receiving and dispatching all three types of aircraft operating in the North: AN-2, LI-2 and IL-14, which flew there quite infrequently, maybe twice a month, if the weather was good, so each landing was an event . The planes delivered mail, vodka, rested tanned shift workers, week-old newspapers and films, taking polar explorers and hunters on vacation to the mainland, fish from the Balyktakh River and carcasses of local deer. After the plane departed back to the mainland, the frantic activity caused by the arrival was quickly replaced by the usual calm. Every evening, after dinner, in the dining room, in the wardroom, according to the sacred tradition of polar explorers, a sheet was unrolled and a movie was playing. Bad weather closed the airport for weeks on end, and sometimes airplane crews were stuck there, stupid from idleness and drinking hard.

In those early post-war years in Tempe there was only one tractor, which pulled and hauled cargo on a steel sheet to airplanes and barrels of fuel for refueling. Then a second one appeared, bigger and more powerful. The presence of two cars already made it possible for the airport population, with the approval and on behalf of the boss, to go hunting for deer. These trips required iron health and nerves - try shaking for three days in a cramped iron box with a suspension a little softer than that of a cart, sleeping under the roar of a diesel engine, breathing in its fumes, and in between, crawling on your belly across the damp tundra, creeping up on cautious people. animals. However, a persistent hatred of stewed meat, which any polar explorer developed very quickly, forced them to endure any difficulties.

One day, in early spring, the head of the airport sent two people on a large tractor - a tractor driver and a worker - to scout out whether deer had appeared. The men crossed the lagoon on the ice, climbed the nearby hills and wandered along them for about twelve hours and, not noticing any deer, moved back home. Most shortcut again lay across the lagoon, which they crossed on the way to the hills, but on the way back they were unlucky and, about half a kilometer from the airport, the tractor fell through the ice. The lagoon was shallow, about a meter and a half at most, so the tractor sat on the bottom and peacefully stalled - it was deep enough to flood the engine. The unlucky hunters put the gearbox in neutral so that they could then tow the car, climbed out onto the ice and trudged to the airport, dragging carabiners and sleeping bags. Having reached the barracks, they reported the incident to the chief and proposed their plan for solving the problem - the chief, on the one hand, as an interested party and the official who sent them on reconnaissance, gives them half a box of vodka (six bottles), and they, as executors , on the other hand, undertake to pull out that tractor and bring it back to life. However, negotiations quickly stalled. The boss, on the one hand, was, for some reason, in a foul and stubborn mood and said that he would not give me vodka. The men, on the other hand, were also not in a radiant mood and directly said that they would not pull the tractor out of the lagoon without vodka. And, as sometimes happens in life, both sides stuck to their guns and stuck it out for a long time, throughout the winter. And then spring came and the water rose in the lagoon. And then summer came, the ice melted completely, the tractor sank deeper into the thawed bottom silt and the problem of removing the tractor from the lagoon disappeared by itself.

To make a long story short, a few years later, when we first showed up in Tempe on a windy April day, the tractor was still stuck in the lagoon. It was no longer owned and was written off according to the act and removed from the airport’s records. Our drivers attached a long cable to it, and when the ice melted, they pulled it out onto the spit with all-terrain vehicles, in a week they rebuilt the engine and replaced the electrical wiring, and then, after short negotiations, exchanged it to the airport manager for a box of vodka and the necessary spare parts for our all-terrain vehicles.

For a long time Temp airport as a focal point polar life on the island, there was no competition. However, at the height of the Cold War in the late sixties, military personnel appeared on the island. They chose the most depressing place on the already not very happy island, in a gap between two hills, and built barracks there for an air defense company, installed a radar on the top of one of the hills, and piled up everything on a cliff by the sea. iron and electronic junk and stuck an iron mast into it. This pile was called a “false target,” and it was created to deceive the enemy and throw him into complete confusion. After which, during the navigation, a company of young soldiers was put ashore and locked in these barracks for two years. No vacations. Like in a maximum security prison, only not by sentence, but by the call of the Motherland... The officers' wives also arrived and settled in a barracks next to the barracks, where the lieutenant and his wife were assigned a twelve-square-meter cell with a tiny front room, also known as a storage room, with a common kitchen at one end of the long corridor and a common restroom at the other.

...I often visited this air defense company, which the population of Kotelny began to call only “warriors” (“...Let's go to the warriors...”, or “...The warriors have spare parts..”). And every time I felt painfully sorry for these pale young guys who knew only three hundred meters of tundra from the barracks to the locator, who saw the sun for three months a year and ate only cereals and canned food during these two years of service. They even ate bread half-raw - the company commander forbade giving sugar to the baker, because he was afraid that he, who also had access to yeast, would put in mash. It is possible that the commander did not know that without sugar the yeast would not work and the dough would not be fluffy and spongy and would not be baked in their primitive oven. Possible, but unlikely. But most likely, he knew and still didn’t give it, since bread that was raw inside was less of an evil for military service than mash...

At first, the commander had only a tractor at his disposal as a means of transport, so the military did not have any special advantages over the competing organization - the airport. However, in the year 1970, after numerous reports to the higher command, the warriors got a ZIL-150 truck to transport goods from the airport in winter - in summer no vehicle could walk even five meters across the thawed tundra. Besides, there was another problem. The fact is that, as I already said, the air defense company was located on the northern side of the lagoon, about four kilometers from the airport. Like any normal lagoon, it is separated from the sea by the already mentioned spit. The spit was long, straight, like a dam, and pebble, so that you could drive along it even by car. But, unfortunately, the braid was not continuous. In its northern part there was a “breakthrough”: an opening about twenty meters wide, through which all the excess water from the lagoon flowed into the sea - sleepily and calmly in the summer, with a weak current, and in the spring, during high water, with roars, foam and whirlpools. Because of this “breakthrough”, it was impossible for anyone, neither the soldiers to the airport, nor the airport workers to the soldiers, to travel directly in the summer. And since the warriors needed the airport more often, they built a raft from barrels and boards, pulled a cable across the hole and reached the other shore, moving the cable with their hands. This crossing had interesting feature- almost every year it had to be built anew, because someone, in the late autumn, the last to cross a gap ready to freeze, was always too lazy to pull the raft ashore, it froze into the ice, and in the spring it was carried out to sea by a stormy and unexpected, as always in Arctic, flood.

But in winter there were no problems. As soon as the lagoon froze, and it quickly froze to the very bottom, the warriors, on the one hand, and the airport workers, on the other, quickly rolled out the winter road with tractors and marked it with poles with red flags - in case of a snowstorm. And there were no longer any serious obstacles, except for very bad weather, so as not to go to visit each other and not drink a bottle or two or five tenths.

After long negotiations and writing a lot of papers, it was the airport’s turn to get its own car. During the next navigation, another ZIL-150 was removed from the cargo ship and delivered on a barge to the airport, but now in the form of a gas tanker, that is, with a tank instead of a body. The airport workers were very proud of this car and loved to quickly fly up to a plane that had just landed and, as required by aviation laws, the first thing to do was quickly refuel it. What a relief this machine was for airport workers will be understood by anyone who had to pump a hand pump for hours - and this is in the best case, and in the worst case - handing up a bucket of gasoline, in the cold and with the wind, while, of course, spilling gasoline on themselves. hands and the scruff of the neck and knowing that gasoline spilled on your hand in winter is the surest path to severe frostbite. So the gas station came in very handy and was loved and protected by everyone.

One winter, about a year before us, a radiogram arrived at the airport that a plane had departed for Temp. In the jargon of polar explorers, this simply meant that a plane had taken off for Temp and we must prepare to meet it. The board, that is, the Li-2 aircraft, the Russian version of the immortal DC-3 (the last Li-2 still flew in the Arctic in the early eighties), arrived safely and brought the usual set - mail, old newspapers, films, three soldiers for the company and , of course, vodka. There was a lot of vodka - they were stocking up for the New Year. Therefore, having called the soldiers to send a car to pick up everything they were owed, the head of the airport discussed the situation with the pilots and closed the airport for weather conditions“until twenty-four Moscow,” that is, for a day. And the airport buzzed.

It was mainly the selected, most important people who hummed seriously: the chief, the chief mechanic, the radio operator and the pilots. The rest of the proletarians - drivers, cooks and a couple of workers, were buzzing so-so, with a bottle on their snout and an entry in the fence book (this is a book where everything taken by the worker from the warehouse was entered - boots, overalls, quilted jackets, smokes, etc. subsequent deduction from salary). The elite did not experience restrictions in quantity, and the boss then very cunningly distributed the costs of drinking so that the chief mechanic and radio operator either did not pay anything, or paid little, much less than what was actually drunk. And pilots generally always drank for free. It was so customary in the Arctic that pilots were considered the most important people, on whom so much depended that only an idiot or a green novice could ask them for money for vodka or generally spoil relations with them in any other way. If this did happen, then the planes to such an idiot began to fly poorly, because the crew commander in the Arctic, despite strict rules, ultimately decided for himself when and where to fly. And if the flight plan for the day, drawn up by the commander of his detachment, included a flight to the geologists, from whom he always received fish and deer thighs as a gift, and then to the drillers, where he once spent the night and was not invited to the table, then woe to the drillers - after flight to geologists, or the weather deteriorated, or the co-pilot fell ill, or minor problems were discovered in the plane... But we must pay tribute - “san flights”, when someone became seriously ill, broke bones or began to give birth, these same pilots performed them without fail and immediately took off anywhere, to anyone, anytime and in any weather.

So, everyone was buzzing, and in the midst of the buzz they remembered that they had forgotten to call the company commander. They called, but he said that his car had already left. The chief mechanic said that he would not leave his friend in trouble and would bring him himself in his gas tanker, quickly got dressed, pulled the gas tanker out of the warm garage and rushed along the winter road along the spit to the north, to the warriors.

One of the pilots, not yet staggering, but no longer quite steady on his feet, soon came out of the smoky cabin into the latrine, took a leak, and then decided to look outside and take a breath of fresh air. The night was beautiful and crystal cold, there was a frosty ring around the moon, crossed out by a cross, four false moons were blurry and foggy at the intersection of the cross and the ring. Above the northern hills, ghostly stripes of the northern lights slowly grew and shimmered.

The pilot watched the red tail lights of the gas station jumping towards the bright headlights of the warrior's car coming towards him, and turned, shivering, back into the house. Opening the door, he heard a dull thud from the north, looked back, and no longer saw either headlights or tail lights.

Like this. The two cars, the only ones on the island with a total area of ​​seven thousand square kilometers, collided head-on in clear weather (as pilots in the Arctic said, “visibility is a million per million”). The screaming and swearing that followed the collision was terrible and did not subside for several hours, accusations flew back and forth. But then they decided that the drinking should continue no matter what, and everything else would come later.

A day later, filled with either dead sleep, or waking up from a headache and repeated hangovers, the drinking died down by itself. After drinking milk, which a wise cook, who had gone through this many, many times, had diluted from powder especially for this purpose, the interested parties drew up two acts, one for the airport, the other for the soldiers, and hauled the crippled cars to their respective garages with tractors.

Hot on the heels of this unfortunate incident, the airport manager and the mechanic were still full of good intentions to fix the car as soon as possible. But then, as in the story with the tractor in the lagoon, the enthusiasm for work quickly dried up. Either the damage was too serious, or they didn’t want to arouse the suspicions of the authorities on the mainland with a long list of necessary spare parts, or the problem of vodka overtime pay arose again - the exact reason for the drop in interest in car repair is unknown. Most likely, they simply didn’t care. But one way or another, the crippled gas station stuck around the garage for a long time, gradually losing parts, seats, instruments and other things needed for other purposes.

This incident seemed to mark the end of the automobile period in the history of transport on Kotelny Island and the beginning of another period, which can be called all-terrain.

The name of Gerasim Zharikov or simply Gerki, as he was known on the island, is closely connected with the recent history of Kotelny Island in general, and with the all-terrain period in particular. Actually, this period began with him.

No one really knew under what exact circumstances Gerka appeared on the island around 1968. He told me that he was originally from Baku, grew up there, and from there he joined the army. As is known, units of the Soviet army were never replenished with conscripts from the place where these units were located, but, on the contrary, soldiers in Tajikistan came from Arkhangelsk, and soldiers, for example, in Belarus - from Tyumen region. This was done not because of the army’s desire to better acquaint young people with the geography of their native country, but for purely humanitarian reasons: if there is an uprising or other popular unrest, if possible, save young people from the need to shoot at members of their family or acquaintances - after all, soldiers can and refuse (it was assumed that no one would refuse to shoot at strangers). So it was quite logical that Gerka, originally from Baku, ended up in Tiksi, on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, where he spent all two years in aviation, flying as a gunner-radio operator on strategic bombers.

Then he was demobilized, received all the required papers and money in Tiksi and, as often happens in the north, found drinking buddies and had a blast in the only Tiksi restaurant. So strong that three days later I woke up God knows where, in some barracks, with some whores, in the dirt and, naturally, without a penny of money. There his fate brought him together with some half-drunk Yakut, who was wandering around the barracks and pestering whores. They brushed him off, but he did not let up and tried to interest them in sex, saying: “Dumaes kuy no? Kui is there. Tokko sibko soft onnako...” This Yakut turned out to be a hunter from Kotelny Island. He brought a bunch of arctic foxes to sell. He sold everyone and, as often happens in the north, went wild and ended up in the same position and in the same barracks as Gerka. Yakut had no choice but to drag himself to the airport and fly back to Temp with the first plane. And then Gerka turned up...

...In my youth, I categorically denied the role of providence or predestination and believed that everything in my life depended on myself. Having lived a little more and encountered some things and coincidences that were incomprehensible to me, I was forced to admit to myself that there are still some secret forces, fate, or, generally speaking, some direction of events. But not wanting to completely abandon my own role, I began to believe that all this only works up to a certain moment, up to some point in space and time, and then fate, or whatever it is, seems to say, “That’s it, I brought you before this fork. And where to go next and what to do is your business. Now everything depends on you, and as you decide, so it will be for you.” This is what happened to me on an autumn day twenty years ago, when I had to decide whether to stay in Russia or throw everything to hell and run away without looking back. I realized that the moment had come when fate brought me to a crossroads, patted me on the shoulder, and left me alone. And it was no longer possible to hope that everything would somehow work out by itself or that someone else would decide for me. No, you had to decide for yourself and take matters into your own hands. And I decided and ran without looking back. To Canada...

It was the same with Gerka. When that Yakut invited him to fly to Kotelny Island and become a hunter, Gerka realized that he was at a fork in the road. Half an hour later they were already catching the leftist at the airport, and the next day they flew with a passing An-2 to Temp.

To his surprise, Gerka joined new life very easy and fast. At first he was, as it were, an assistant to that Yakut and gained experience. I had to learn three very important things. First, how to ride dogs. Secondly, how to build traps for arctic foxes (the so-called “mouths”). And thirdly, how not to get lost in the monotonous tundra and not freeze. He learned all these three wisdoms during his first winter. In the summer, he himself signed up in Tiksi as a hunter, received a plot and collected from the local trading post everything necessary for life and hunting - food, traps, tools, carbines with cartridges, fishing nets, medicines, walkie-talkie, etc. He took all this without money, on credit, against future fox skins, which he had to hand over to the same trading post. Everything was recorded in a debt book, and it was clear to any sane person that all this property could not be paid off in a lifetime, even if the hunt was very successful. But Herka didn’t care about this at all, because summing up the results and paying off the debts was still in the very distant future. In addition, all the hunters, both Russians and Yakuts, lived in the same way, deeply in debt, and no one was particularly upset about this, but every year they again collected everything new and expensive.

Gerka decided to hunt alone. The first thing he had to do was build a hut to live. He found dry place at the mouth of a stream flowing into the sea, where a lot of driftwood was deposited - the main building and heating material on the island and worked around the clock, fortunately the sun did not set at all. Gerkina’s finished hut rose slightly above the ground and generally resembled a dugout during the war - rows of logs inclined towards the center, a pitched roof, a plywood door that opened inside the hut (all doors in the Arctic are made this way - less digging from the outside after a blizzard), a palm-sized window and layers of clay and turf to retain heat. Gerka, as a person who served in aviation and was introduced to technical progress, decided to use the acquired knowledge to organize his life. Thus, his stove, although it was made from a cut-off iron barrel, was universal and could consume all types of fuel available on the island: firewood, diesel fuel, old rubber boots, TNT blocks and coal (by the way, there were coal deposits on the island and there were even plans to develop it to support navigation). The stove was placed so low that it barely protruded above the floor, but it quickly heated the hut. The process of lighting this stove was not for the faint of heart. First, half a liter of bezine was poured inside, onto dry firewood prepared in advance. Then a lit newspaper was thrown there. After that, it was necessary to jump away from the stove to the side, because there was a deafening explosion and the flames were shooting into all the cracks. The flame of the explosion, flying into the chimney, also carried away the air from the hut, creating a temporary vacuum there, due to which the door itself opened inward, and then, when the vacuum was filled, it slammed back with a roar. After that, outside, as if on cue, longing for the warmth they couldn’t get, the dogs began howling outside. And only then, under the vibrating hum of the flame, warmth quickly began to spread throughout the hut, and it was possible to put a kettle with snow, throw back the hood and light a cigarette...

In addition, Gerka set up a walkie-talkie and installed a high antenna on ropes, so that he had at least some connection with the outside world and could make himself known if something happened to him. On top of this, he hung a red flashlight on top of the antenna, quietly removed from the runway in Tempe, soldered a primitive flasher, connected it to a battery and connected it to the flashlight. The lantern blinked and showed Gerka the way home in the darkness and cold of the polar night.

In addition to the hut, Gerka had to scatter traps and build a dozen arctic fox traps. The trap, or mouth, as it was known throughout Siberia, was always placed on hillocks, because lemmings, the main food of arctic foxes, dug their minks only there, and arctic foxes, running across the tundra in search of food, did not miss a single hillock. Hunters invented mouths even before the advent of steel traps, so they were made entirely of wood. It was possible to build a mouth in the Arctic only in the summer, when the ground thaws. In addition, the entire building must be cleared of the slightest human smell over the summer - otherwise the arctic fox, a curious but very cautious animal, will not go into the mouth.

First, a narrow blind groove with walls inclined inward was dug on the tubercle. The walls were strengthened with sticks or planks, and on top along the groove a heavy log was unbalancedly placed with one end on a transverse stick outside the groove so that, without being supported at the other end, it would fall inside the groove. Therefore, when the hunter “loaded” his mouth, he supported the other end of the log with a peg, and tied a bait of frozen meat to the peg.

The mouths were charged in January, when the arctic fox's skin became thick and white, and the hunter had to do everything possible so as not to leave behind a smell - he wore a special robe and gloves, which always hung outside, in the wind. The arctic fox sensed the bait, and to get it, he put his head inside his mouth, tugged at the bait, pulled the peg out of the nest, and a heavy log fell on him. Since the groove along the bottom was barely wider than the log, the animal could not crawl out from under the log and, after half an hour of frantic but hopeless struggle, it got tired and froze. The dog hunter went around the mouths, took out the dead arctic foxes and charged the mouths again. That's all the wisdom.

Trap hunting was less troublesome - in the summer you threw a trap into the tundra, tied it with a chain to a peg driven nearby, remembered the place, in the winter loaded the bait - and collect arctic foxes for yourself. However, arctic foxes, as a rule, performed worse in traps than in mouths. In addition, traps spoiled the skin.

Summer in the Arctic is a short burst of light, water and life when the sun doesn't set and when no one sleeps. In six to eight weeks, a new generation of birds should learn to fly, fawns should gain strength on their legs, wolf cubs should learn to kill, lemmings should give birth to two litters of small, furry rodents. And the hunter, if, of course, he is serious about hunting - set up his jaws, scatter storage sheds (as in Siberia they call temporary food warehouses, located so as to carry less with him), stock up on fuel. I didn’t have time - at the end of August the daylight is shortened to five hours, at the beginning of September the tundra freezes to reinforced concrete strength, and in mid-September expect a snowstorm, and winter hunting disappears.

And Gerka did not sleep for days, along with the entire Arctic. He saw how the entire tundra was dotted with thriving colonies of lemmings and knew that, as a result, there would be many arctic foxes. He wasn't wrong. The hunt was successful and by spring he had about a hundred first-class skins, theoretically worth about twenty thousand rubles - at that time, quite a decent amount. At the same time, closer to spring, Gerka, as a practical person, began to ask himself the question: is there an easier way to earn money on Kotelny Island than this horse labor? Unlike his Yakut fellow hunters, Gerka loved to read and often took books from the libraries of polar stations. One day he read a book about the Yukon gold rush - the Klondike, Dawson City, Carmacks, Eldorado - and quickly discovered that many more people then became rich by brewing coffee in the Chilkoot Pass and frying pancakes in Dawson City than by digging holes in the permafrost and washing tons of mud in search of gold. Gerka quickly narrowed the range of possible options to one - he needed transport. Having a means of transportation at his disposal, Gerka would immediately turn into a very important person, a kind of king of the tundra, because he could offer the hunters to do the hardest work for them - delivering logs for their mouths, bringing them food, scattering storage sheds across the tundra, hunts deer all year round and supplies hunters with meat. For all these services, the hunters would pay him with arctic foxes, which he, Gerka, as a real hunter, would hand over to the state as a trading post.

Then in the Soviet Arctic there existed, and continues to exist now, only two main species ground transport– tractor and all-terrain vehicle. . It was in the north of Canada that I was able to see a wide variety of vehicles - from giant Formost or Nodwell trucks to tiny tracked vehicles for one or two people, capable of driving anywhere in the winter (in summer all driving on the tundra in Canada is prohibited). Gerka was not happy with the tractor because of its slow speed and the need to drag a sleigh behind him - otherwise there would have been nowhere to carry the loads intended for the hunters. No, Gerk was only satisfied with an all-terrain vehicle that could provide him with fast and comfortable movement around the island all year round. However, unfortunately, there were no all-terrain vehicles on the island at that time, and the soldiers had tractors in Tempe, at the airport. Therefore, Gerka, who looked at things soberly, decided to deal with what was available, and began to look for approaches to the head of the unit and the head of Temp, proposing complex schemes for joint ventures and division of income. To his disappointment, none of the potential partners entered into an agreement with Gerka. Both bosses, listening to Gerka’s sweet speeches, felt in their gut that, if they agreed with him, their tractors would disappear often and for a long time on Gerka’s mysterious trips throughout the archipelago, and they themselves would have to make up excuses when there was nothing to transport cargo from planes or ships to navigation. Frustrated, Gerka was already getting ready to fly to Tiksi, where he was going to hand over the arctic foxes, have a good walk, and at the same time ask knowledgeable people about some decommissioned all-terrain vehicle, rusting in someone’s backyard, which could be transported to the island for navigation and then, Having repaired it, put it into use. He was already completely packed when he arrived interesting news: an expedition of topographers with their transport arrives on the island and the head of the airport has received instructions to clear the ice in the bay runway two kilometers long to accommodate large An-12 transport aircraft in a ski version. Gerka realized that events were taking an interesting turn and that it was better for him not to fly to Tiksi for now.

He himself took a very active part in clearing and marking the runway and was standing with all the workers at its beginning when a silver plane with four engines, looking like a pot-bellied seagull, broke through the low stratus clouds over the sea, circled over Temp, took aim and smoothly landed on the ice short legs growing from the belly. The plane slid to the far end of the runway, turned around and flew in the opposite direction, where they were waiting for it. Those who arrived introduced themselves to the head of the airport - they had to build a whole network of iron pyramidal towers on the island and accurately determine their coordinates, for which a helicopter would arrive on the island later, but for now they brought with them two all-terrain vehicles. And indeed, the rear doors of the plane opened, an inclined ramp lowered and, one after another, two GAZ-47 all-terrain vehicles, painted in a protective greenish color, rolled out onto the ice...

Now I wouldn’t look at these machines without laughing, which the army abandoned as hopelessly outdated and removed them from service. Small, cramped, with a frail engine of only sixty horsepower, they could accelerate to thirty kilometers per hour on a paved road, and even then downhill, and on the tundra and snow, for which they were intended, with a strained roar crawled at a speed of six or seven. According to the instructions, only eight people could hardly sit in the iron and unheated box on two side benches. But this is now, and then...

And then for the population of Kotelny Island in general, and for Gerka in particular, it was a miracle of technology. In this car you could go anywhere, anytime. There was room for two in the warm cabin. The body, cramped as it was, could have packed more than a ton of stuff, and even more if you removed the canvas roof. In addition, the all-terrain vehicle could float on the water if there were no holes in its hull, and it was possible to cross streams, rivers and lagoons. In short, all the problems of living and working in the Arctic were solved. And Gerka decided that by hook or by crook, one all-terrain vehicle would be his.

His dream was destined to come true sooner than he thought. In May, a helicopter arrived to the topographers and they began to fly around the island, landing construction crews who were building iron pyramids on the tops of the hills. The authorities settled in Tempe and directed all the work from there by radio, as befits the authorities. Gerka, naturally, circled around, establishing the necessary connections and preparing the ground for negotiations about the fate of one of the all-terrain vehicles. At the end of June, it suddenly became warmer, the snow quickly began to melt, the lagoon began to fill with water, and one sunny day and, as always, unpredictably, a “breakthrough” broke through and the water roared into the Laptev Sea, once again taking with it the long-suffering raft and disrupting communication between the air defense company and the airport. And just then the topographers needed something from the warriors, and Gerka offered to drive his services to the warriors on an all-terrain vehicle, assuring that he would cross the gap without any problems. The all-terrain vehicle with the driver and Gerka in the cabin dashingly flew up to the breakthrough along the crippled spit and slid into the water, following Gerka’s commands. Gerka correctly calculated where the strong current would take the car when it crossed the gap. But Gerka could not foresee that a strong current washed away the pebble bank and it became so steep that the all-terrain vehicle, although it managed to cling to the bank with its tracks, was unable to get out onto it. The situation quickly became very bad: a strong current turned the all-terrain vehicle and, rotating clockwise, carried it towards the exit of the lagoon into the sea.

Gearing to the limit and churning the water with madly flying caterpillars, they managed to once again push the all-terrain vehicle to the shore and they realized that if even now they couldn’t get to the shore and the all-terrain vehicle began to drift again, then with the next full turn they would already find themselves in the sea. The all-terrain vehicle roared, but it was all in vain - the bank was too steep. And when the car began its fatal turn, both - the driver and Gerka - without saying a word, jumped ashore. The completely uncontrollable all-terrain vehicle, spinning helplessly, swam out of the lagoon, buried itself in the edge of the ice field, tilted under the pressure of water going under the ice, scooped up water and slowly sank. Gerka realized that his finest hour had come. He quickly noted in his mind the location of the all-terrain vehicle's dive in relation to the coastal signs, and they trudged off to the soldiers to report the incident by phone to Temp and at the same time find a way to get back through the gap.

As in the case of the two colliding vehicles, the conversation on the phone resulted in half an hour of obscene barking, mutual accusations and threats to withhold the cost of the all-terrain vehicle from the salaries of these two unlucky goofballs. But two days later, when Gerka and the all-terrain vehicle built a new raft and moved to the airport side of the breach, Gerka had a long conversation with the head of the topographic party and soon a commission was drawn up to write off the all-terrain vehicle, about which an act was drawn up, which began with the sacramental phrase of all Soviet acts “This act is drawn up in that...” The meaning of the act was that the all-terrain vehicle had drowned and rested on the bottom of the sea, from where it was impossible to get it, and therefore the all-terrain vehicle no longer belonged to the party. And it doesn’t belong to anyone at all. This is what Gerka wanted.

Topographers worked honestly on the island all summer and built about ten pyramids. In early September, a large helicopter came for them and took them all to Tiksi, leaving two hard workers to spend the winter in Tempe to guard what was left there until the next summer. Tempe became quiet again and Gerka began to make his dream come true.

The Laptev Sea in this part is free of ice by mid-August and remains clear until November, after which it gradually freezes again. The water in the sea does not heat above ten degrees at the warmest time, and in September it is somewhere around five or six. Gerka prepared everything very carefully. He and his partner swam up and down on an inflatable rubber boat, saw the outlines of an all-terrain vehicle through the water, marked the place with a buoy, determined the depth, which did not exceed four meters there, and the distance from the shore - thirty meters. Choosing a calm, windless day, Gerka drove a tractor with a long thick rope from the soldiers to the spit, lit two fires on the shore, loaded a bottle of vodka and the end of the rope onto the boat and swam to the buoy, supported by parting cries of spectators on both sides of the gap. There he stripped naked, rubbed himself with lard, put on his underpants and shirt, previously soaked in the same lard, took the end of the rope with a loop and threw himself into the icy water with a scream. He was gone for about thirty seconds, during which time he found the tow hook, opened the latch, put on a loop of rope and slammed the latch back, after which he flew to the surface, was pulled into the boat, treated to a glass of vodka and covered with a blanket. Having reached the shore, Gerka gave the command and the tractor began to move back. The rope tightened and, to the joyful cries of Gerka, who was shaking from the cold, the all-terrain vehicle was pulled onto the spit.

For three months Gerka worked on the all-terrain vehicle, staying in the garage around the clock, changing electrical wiring that was completely corroded by salt water. sea ​​water, going through the engine, gearbox and onboard transmissions. And the day came when Gerka carefully drove out of the garage, roared the engine, turned around in place, testing the operation of the onboard clutches and, clattering with steel tracks, rushed into the tundra to test his own all-terrain vehicle. Thus his dream came true and he became the king of the tundra.

As befits a king, the first thing he did was to get acquainted with the territory under his control beyond the narrow coastal strip to which he was tied, using only dogs as a means of transportation. Now the entire huge island was at his disposal. Gerka was already curious, like a cat, always trying to get into the remote corners of the island in search of something unusual, but here there were no restrictions for him. For the rest of the daylight hours, he rushed around the island like crazy, scattering storage sheds and delivering fuel to those various points on the island that Gerka considered strategically important. And he did know what he was doing. One of his warehouses appeared in the center of the island, not far from the exit of coal seams to the surface, so that if he decided to stay there, he could burn coal in the stove without regret. He threw another storage shed onto the Balykty River, where the hills of the island unexpectedly dropped to the flat sandy desert of Bunge Land, where silver salmon were caught well. The third place was chosen in such a way that not a single herd of deer would pass by. And so on.

And when winter began, our king spent very little time with his dog team, checking his own mouths. He spent much more time driving around hunting huts and concluding contracts with hunters for the delivery of firewood, food and other necessities, accepting snow-white Arctic fox skins as payment for his hard work. And when there was nothing to carry, Gerka simply came to visit the hunters, but not to everyone, but preferring the Yakut hunters.

Guests are always welcome in the Arctic. It’s worth sitting in a cramped and dark hut for two or three months in the polar darkness, seeing no one except your dogs and your wife, if you have one, to appreciate that moment when the dogs suddenly get worried and start squealing, and the hunter comes out of the hut to figure it out “What’s what,” and in the dead frosty silence you will discern the distant, strained howl of an engine, and then the headlights of an all-terrain vehicle will dance on the horizon, so dazzlingly bright in the blackness of the polar night. And the Yakut will shout to his wife to get ready for the guests, and she will rush to light the stove, and then, with an ax, into the cold entryway - chop the frozen venison and take the frozen fish out of the bags. And he himself still stands outside, looking at the hills, ghostly illuminated by the aurora, greedily sipping a cigarette, shouting at the dogs and wondering how long it will take the all-terrain vehicle to get here.

A typical Gerkin’s visit began decorously and nobly. The housewife was bustling around the stove, throwing meat into the pan, planing and running outside with the kettle to get snow. The owner and the guest sedately sat down at the table and exchanged news and plans, with the owner usually emphasizing that arctic foxes are now valuable and that he, the hunter, is not going to give them away for nothing. Then Gerka, as if by chance, took out a bottle of alcohol and diluted it exactly in half with water, so that from one bottle of alcohol with a strength of ninety-six degrees came out two bottles of vodka with a strength of forty-eight degrees. The first glass went decorously under the stroganina until it melted (for everyone knows that there is nothing worse than melted frozen fish), and then the meat ripened, which, according to northern rules, is boiled in boiling water for five minutes and served half-raw, although still hot, and then everything was meat. After the first bottle, the second one was placed on the table, and when it was finished, Gerka pretended that the holiday was over and sat quietly smoking, having a conversation and waiting for the alcohol to be absorbed into the body of the Yakut owner and begin its destructive work there. work.

Gerka knew very well, as everyone in the Arctic knew, that all northern peoples, including the Yakuts, had no protective organisms against “fire water.” And the Evens, and the Chukchi, and the Khanty, and the Nenets, all of them, after taking a sip of vodka, cannot stop until they drink everything that is there, and if there is a lot of vodka, then a lot will be drunk. And when there is no vodka, everything that vaguely smells of alcohol will be drunk, as happened at one trading post in Kolyma, where the Evens drank all the bottles of Czech mosquito repellent, and when we came to this trading post from the taiga, its chief was lying in our feet, begging to share our supplies with him - mosquito season was coming in a week. Because of this throughout north coast In Siberia, Chukotka and Kamchatka, prohibition was declared for the entire summer, when navigation and fishing were in progress - otherwise the whole North would have stood up. Vodka delivered on ships was immediately locked in warehouses under seven locks and it was only possible to get it at that time through very large connections. But when the last caravan left and Prohibition was abolished, absolute hell broke out on the coasts. I remember how we got out of the tundra to a coastal Chukotka village and walked between houses through the mud, in which drunken Chukchi were lying. A disheveled Chukchi woman with drool on her chin crawled out of one house, holding onto the ceiling and staggering, looking at us for a long time as if we were aliens from another world. “...Speedy has arrived...” she muttered. “They brought Ebas...” - and settled down at the threshold....

So Gerka sat and waited. Yakut, of course, could not stand it first and said that he needed to drink a little more, however. To which Gerka objected that he had alcohol, however, but he still needed to go to the hunter Efim, and then to Belkovsky Island to see Nikolai, so he had to calculate it in such a way that there would be enough for everyone, however. But his drinking buddy, already fired up, and knowing that Gerka had vodka, argued that “don’t give him any alcohol at another stall, give him something to eat, don’t give him something to eat.” And Gerka shook his head negatively and hit the bone on the table, shaking out his brain. But the Yakut was already hobbling on crooked legs in the canopy, rummaging through the bags there and returning, throwing the snow-white, lush skin of an arctic fox on the table. Gerka expertly ran the skin through his fingers, assessing the quality of the fur, and climbed into the cabin of the all-terrain vehicle for a bottle. And the half-drunk Yakut wife began to cry quietly in the corner of the hut, knowing in advance what was to come and how the matter would end. And the matter will end, of course, with a long drinking session, during which the Yakut hunter will be tearfully and snot-nosed drunk, will already give two arctic foxes for a bottle, will climb for a rifle to shoot bad people, will hit his wife in the eye who is trying to stop him, will sell Gerka the skin polar bear for a can of gasoline and a bottle of alcohol and, in the end, he will fall asleep in the corner on the floor, both Gerka and the hunter’s wife will fall asleep, the stove will go out, and the hut will become cold and dark, it will smell of alcohol, smoke and vomit...

One way or another, Gerka’s business went uphill. Tens of thousands of rubles appeared in his account in Tiksi, his debt book at the trading post was replenished with many expensive things - batteries, an electric generator for charging them, hunting rifles with optical sights and a fairly powerful radio station. He even managed to bargain with the polar station for a quite decent prefabricated house that belonged to it on the northern side of the lagoon, not far from the warriors, and settled there in European comfort. From here he went on long trips throughout the archipelago and brought back his prey. In addition to the Arctic foxes, in his house one could see a huge mammoth tusk, which Gerka cut out of the permafrost with an ax, which took, according to his stories, two whole days. According to his stories, he also found an old cellar in which, even before the revolution, hunters stored tusks before sending them to the “mainland” - then there were so many tusks on the island that they were taken out by barges and sold for good money - and what is stored in this cellar hundreds of tusks, but the cellar is flooded with water and now there is ice, and you only need a couple of tola checkers to blow up the ice and then you can get rich on the tusks alone. He also claimed that in his house he kept a bottle of Soviet Champagne, filled to the brim with gold sand and nuggets, which he washed in one famous place and he suggested to many to organize a gold mining artel. He abandoned these plans only after it was explained to him that the sand in his bottle was not gold, but unnecessary pyrite - the so-called “fool’s gold.” Gerka was very disappointed, but not for long, and went with his partner to the island of New Siberia, from where he returned a couple of months later, full of stories about miracles on the island, where there were many arctic foxes, underground coal layers were burning, warming the earth so that you could warm your feet and hands in the most terrible cold, how his partner still managed to freeze his toes, gangrene began and he had to chop off a couple of fingers with an ax. Gerka was happy, returning after wanderings and adventures to his house, washing in hot water, listening to the radio and reading books from the airport library under the electric light. This went on for a couple of years.

And then the all-terrain vehicle burned down. At night, when Gerka was drinking with the company commander. Both were so drunk that neither of them remembered or heard anything. Only in the morning, with his eyes wide open, Gerka saw with horror a smoking frame next to the house, on a hillock.

After thrashing about and swearing for half an hour, he realized that the all-terrain vehicle had been set on fire by one of the Russian hunters, who had long harbored a grudge against him, were jealous, beat him a couple of times for drunkenness and, in the end, decided to appease the successful competitor in purely Russian style - fire. Gerka realized that the all-terrain vehicle could no longer be restored and that the reign of the king of the tundra had ended irrevocably. He also realized that every cloud has a silver lining and a couple of days later he drew up a fire report. The commission, consisting of the head of the airport, the chief mechanic and the commander of the air defense company, testified with their signatures that three carbines, a radio station, batteries, a generator, down sleeping bags, tents, and a countless amount of food were burned along with the all-terrain vehicle. The act was sent to Tiksi and the cost of these expensive items, which, in fact, did not even think of burning, but were lying in Gerka’s house, was written off from Gerka’s account. The members of the Commission took what they wanted - some carbine, some sleeping bag. And Gerka himself, like a fisherman by the blue sea, returned again to his dogs and became a simple hunter, as before. And again it became quiet at Kotelny. Until we showed up.

We are geophysicists of the Scientific Research Institute of Arctic Geology, or simply NIIGA, located on Moika, house 120, in St. Petersburg, then still Leningrad. To work on the island, we needed three all-terrain vehicles, but there was no money for a large plane to transport them to Temp, as the topographers did, at the Institute. This meant that the all-terrain vehicles had to be driven to the island under their own power. From the village of Chokurdakh along the tundra, then across the strait to Bolshoi Lyakhovsky Island, past Maly Lyakhovsky, through another strait to the southern end of Kotelny and along Kotelny to Temp. Only 700 kilometers...

Our caravan left Chokurdakh in the middle of May, when it was no longer so cold and there was light around the clock. In the morning it was clear and the snow sparkled in the sun, but as soon as we left behind the last shacks of Chokurdakh and its vast landfill and rolled out into the open tundra, a thick fog fell on us. This was very inopportune, because it is very important to accurately find your place on the map and take the right course at the very beginning of the journey, and I saw only stunted bushes of a dwarf polar birch tree under the very nose of the all-terrain vehicle, and then everything disappeared into the fog. I guided the caravan using the speedometer and compass. This meant that every fifteen to twenty minutes I stopped the all-terrain vehicle, wrote down the speedometer numbers, jumped out of the cab, walked ten meters away from the all-terrain vehicle so that its iron mass did not affect the compass needle, and determined the direction where to go. In clear weather, you just had to look where the compass was pointing and notice some sign in the distance: a mound, a bush, a cloud in the sky, and press on this sign without stopping. I couldn't do this in the fog, so between stops I had to stay on course using all the tricks I knew. It helped that in the Arctic the wind blows for weeks with enviable consistency and drives the snow in the same direction, and I tried to direct the all-terrain vehicle at the desired angle to the drifting snow. Sometimes I was able to see a ghostly faded solar circle through the foggy veil, and then I held it, again, at the right angle, mentally moving the sun fifteen degrees per hour to the west. Sometimes I simply trusted the ability, honed over many years of field life, to feel some kind of discomfort and anxiety when I walked or drove in the wrong direction. Because of the constant looking into the fog and the lack of a clear horizon line, at times it seemed to me that the all-terrain vehicle was turning over on its back and going upside down. Then I poured myself more coffee into the lid of the thermos and lit another uncounted cigarette.

The shadow of something living flashed by, then another. I decided that these were deer, about fifty meters from us, and with a sign I ordered the driver to freeze - no one in the north, unless he was crazy, would miss the opportunity to kill a deer, because this is meat, which means life. Grabbing the carbine, I rolled out of the cabin into the snow and began taking aim from my knee. Something about these deer confused me: they looked somehow abnormal. I looked closely - two partridges, without moving, were sitting on a hummock three meters from me. I spat and climbed back into the cabin, once again amazed at how you can make a mistake with sizes and distances in the fog.

We reached the shore of the Laptev Strait three days after we left Chokurdakh. We stopped at the very edge of the coastal cliff. It was early morning and everything around was shrouded, not in fog, no, but in that special arctic frosty haze when the air is thickly saturated with tiny ice crystals. We had nowhere to rush, and I decided to wait, hoping that the rising sun would disperse the frosty haze and improve visibility. We gladly lit a good fire of driftwood and, sitting around it, according to the holy tradition of every wandering and field people, drank tea, smoked and talked. Two hours passed. Suddenly, the haze parted, turned into low-hanging clouds, and suddenly gaps appeared in it, through which the pale blue sky gulped. The rising sun broke through one of these windows to our right and, by some kind of optical magic, filled everything - the snow of the tundra, the ice of the strait, and the lower edges of the clouds - with a densely saturated pink light. Everyone fell silent. This ghostly pink world lasted about ten minutes, then slowly disappeared along with the melting clouds in the sky.

The pink light went out, but the icy plain of the strait opened up before us, all the way to the horizon, riddled with toothy hummocks.

And there, far in the north, where the ice merged with the sky, we saw our goal - the rounded snowy peak of the high mountain on Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island, ghostly growing out of the trembling mirage air. Probably, somewhere here, or in another, very similar place, two hundred years ago the free Cossack Lyakhov stood with his gang of dashing people and gazed at the same strait and at the same peak, knowing that it was not a mirage, that there unknown new land. Everything was the same as now - the same steep ledge of the tundra plain, the same snow-covered beach with driftwood logs, the same strait, the same hummocks. Only, instead of the restrained purring of all-terrain vehicles, sled dogs squealed nervously next to them. And these people were dressed differently. Better than us. Not in quilted jackets, felt boots with galoshes, or heavy high boots that never dry out, but light and warm furs. And, probably, just like that Cossack then, I waved my hand, and the cars carefully descended onto the ice.

We had to cross a strait about sixty kilometers wide. We were spinning on the ice in search of a passage between the hummocks, but now, in clear weather, it was much easier for me, because I always saw this snowy peak in front of me and I didn’t have to jump out of the all-terrain vehicle with a compass, but simply cross the next ridge ‚ turn the car with its nose in the desired direction. Now the difficulties were different - to find even ice, or at least such a place in the ridges of broken blue ice‚ through which our all-terrain vehicles could get through. But no matter how hard I tried, sometimes on one or another machine the steel tracks came off the guide rollers and they, as they say, “took off their shoes.” Sometimes the steel links of the tracks could not withstand the load and burst, when the all-terrain vehicle hung on the sharp edge of the ice floe, like on the edge of a knife. Sometimes cars got stuck in deep snow drifts between hummocks. But, having escaped onto flat ice, the drivers, with a sigh of relief, stuck into fourth gear and flew forward at a speed of as much as thirty kilometers per hour until they ran into another ridge. Be that as it may, eight hours later we rolled out onto the southern coast of Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island, right next to the houses of the polar station, at the foot of that same snowy mountain.

We spent the whole day at the polar station, sleeping on soft beds with linens, having lunch in the wardroom, playing backgammon (after chess, the most popular game in the North) and looking through old newspapers and magazines. The drivers tinkered with the cars a little, but did not find any serious troubles, so “in the morning” we were on the road again. We rounded the mountain from the east and, crossing the island diagonally to the northwest, literally raced across the tundra, choosing the most swampy places, which, fortunately, were not lacking on the island, and which, almost impassable in the summer, were for us now like concrete highway. Any self-respecting navigator should know at any moment where he is, so despite the excellent visibility, I kept my finger on the map and only managed to write down the speedometer readings at the most noticeable landmarks in a notebook.

A few hours later we stood on the northern shore of the island and again looked at another strait, now named after the musher Sannikov, which separated Bolshoi Lyakhovsky Island from Kotelny Island. This strait looked exactly the same as the one we crossed yesterday - the same bluish-green hummocks, the same snow and pale blue sky above it. Probably all the frozen straits in the Arctic look the same. Another fire, another teapot with strong tea leaves, bread with stewed meat, another look at the compass - from this low-lying shore the Kotelny hills were not visible on the horizon, but I wanted to get exactly to the southernmost tip of the island, where another polar station was located - and we again moved north, just as carefully, but still a little faster than the day before - after all, we learned something, gained some experience and had a better idea of ​​where we could go and where we couldn’t. The clear weather also helped because I could use the sun as a compass. Although the sun no longer sets at this time of year, it still descends very low at night, it becomes clearly colder and the fog almost always thickens. This happened to us too, but very close to the island. The drivers got nervous because of the driver’s innate hatred of driving in the fog, but I was calm - my inner compass told me that we were on the right track, and when the speedometer showed that there were five kilometers left to the coast, I stopped the cars and told everyone about it . The people had fun.

We reached the shore of the island with an error of five hundred meters. But the fog was so thick that I couldn’t decide exactly where we climbed ashore and in which direction the Sannikova polar station was located, where I was going to give everyone, including myself, a rest for a couple of days. In order not to burn gasoline in vain, darting around an unfamiliar island in the fog, I ordered the engines to be turned off and, under the gaze of the men, already guessing what was what, I climbed into the back, where, in terrible cramped conditions, among barrels of gasoline, I managed to open the padlock on the my commander's pack box and took out four bottles of vodka. Bread and stew immediately appeared and vodka bubbled into the mugs. The hardest part - crossing the icy straits - was over.

Then everything was simple. After sleeping on the beds of the polar station and eating properly cooked soups and venison stew, I paid the station chief for his hospitality with the most expensive gift on the island: I allowed him to photograph my five-kilometer topographic map, putting a stupid “Secret” stamp in the upper right corner. We, geophysicists and geologists, were given these maps by the secret department of the institute under the strictest receipts and prohibitions not to show them to anyone, but mere mortals who constantly lived and worked on the islands, in the tundra, never had such maps and how did they manage without them? I still can’t imagine. Then we moved along the coast to the north.

I stopped my all-terrain vehicle on a rocky cliff, near a high black cross on the grave of the expedition doctor Toll, who died at Kotelny.

I stood next to the cross and looked west into the hazy icy eternity frozen sea. As then, at the beginning of the stage south coast Laptev Strait, I thought about those people who were here, in this place, but only seventy years ago, laying stones over the doctor’s body, and then, having placed a cross on the grave, stood, briefly taking off their hats or throwing back their hoods and looking in the same direction in the same darkness. I didn’t know who they were, what they looked like, how they were dressed. I only knew for sure that, just like now, the wind was not strong, but persistently cold. wind. I could be absolutely sure of this because the wind always blows in the Arctic. And if, as in that game of association, when they name something and you need to quickly name the word associated with it in your memory, ask me - “Arctic”, I will answer - “Wind”. Not snow, not ice, not cold - wind. The wind in the Arctic always blows, for days and weeks in the same direction, in summer and winter, sometimes moderately, sometimes strongly, sometimes hurricane-like, but always. As soon as we set up camp, the wind began its whistling, mournful song in the tent ropes, in the antenna masts and in the chimneys, flapping tarpaulins and spreading black-brown smoke along the tundra from the diesel fuel burning in the stoves. The sounds born of the wind and the sounds associated with it became such a familiar accompaniment of polar life that they ceased to be noticed, but when the wind suddenly died down and the sounds died, one became a little uncomfortable with the ensuing silence. But this usually did not last long - maybe an hour or two, then the wind blew with the same force, but from the other side, and the sounds arose again. Such changes in winds, as a rule, did not lead to anything good and ended in either snow or prolonged fog and rain.

And now, on this ordinary polar May day in one thousand nine hundred and seventy-three, the wind whistled in the crossbars of the Orthodox funeral cross and at the same time brought to me the muffled rumbling and warmth of the all-terrain vehicle engine idling. It brought me back to the present. We had to move on. The pace was already close. Relatively close compared to what we have already passed.

Many times I caught myself trying to put a dot on the map and, thereby, mark a place where I need to get to any in an accessible way, whether on foot, on horseback, on reindeer, on an all-terrain vehicle, how did this point acquire mysterious power attraction and I tried to get to this point, knowing full well that it was just a point on the map and there was nothing special there - no hut, no tents, no food. But still, you are already involved in the process of achieving the goal, you look at the map and happily note the decreasing distance. So it is now. I knew perfectly well that nothing like that awaited me in Tempe, except for the hard work of settling into a camp that had been abandoned since the fall, but still, when the hills suddenly parted and I saw in front of me the white plane of a frozen lagoon, outlined by a dark stripe of a pebble spit, barracks buried in the snow , radio towers and the stationary windmill of the airport, I breathed a sigh of relief. In front of me was the very point on the map that I was aiming for. The crossing ended and everything was fine.

Before we had time to dig out the entrances of the tents from two-meter snow drifts and light the stoves, guests rolled into our camp, and not just anyone, but the head of the airport himself and the captain commander of the air defense company, already notified of our transfer by radio operators from Chokurdakh. I was flattered and surprised by such attention to ordinary geophysicists and at first attributed it to the mortal boredom of the polar night and winter, when I am glad to anyone and anything. But after a short acquaintance and exchange of news, two bottles of vodka appeared on the table, and I realized that it was not a matter of joy from the appearance of new people on the island and the contemplation of my person, but about something more serious. And so it turned out.

Spring was coming and the inhabitants of the Arctic were entering the most difficult time, when their nerves were stretched to the limit from the monotony of the polar night, constant contemplation of the same faces, hearing the same stories, watching the same films and eating the same food. And here, at this very time, following the eternal call, hundreds of herds of deer were approaching Temp and everyone was so hungry for bloody chops three fingers thick, quickly fried tenderloin, fresh liver with onions in a sizzling frying pan, and fatty aromatic soup with pieces of tender boiled venison and brain bones. And just get out into the tundra and ride on fresh, untouched, clean snow, not polluted by fuel oil and dogs! But, as follows from everything that has already been said in this story, this required means of transportation, and with them, as already mentioned.... In short, my guests were delighted not with my personal appearance on the island, but with the fact that I I managed to bring all-terrain vehicles here, and they didn’t need me so much as my two best cars with drivers. That's why there was vodka on the table.

It was impossible to refuse, and it would be simply stupid - in the Arctic you cannot neglect connections with people who have access to aviation, fuel and spare parts, and I could not know what situation I would find myself in and what I would need in at least a week. So, after sleeping for a day after the transfer and superficially checking the condition of the cars and the levels of various liquids in them, we picked up at the airport two men appointed by the boss for the hunt and, under their leadership, slipped past a tractor frozen in the ice, crossed the lagoon and climbed to the opposite shore . There we drove past an abandoned house, next to which stood the skeleton of a burnt all-terrain vehicle - the remnants of Gerkina's glory - rolled out onto a well-worn road and after two kilometers stopped at the Checkpoint of the air defense company of Kotelny Island. I have never seen anything more stupid than this checkpoint in my life. In the middle of the hilly tundra on the white snow there stood a striped booth with a long slanted black and white striped stick sticking out obliquely over a bumpy road, and nothing else - no fence, no barbed wire to somehow mark the boundary of the company’s territory, which should have been guarded. Just a booth in the middle of the tundra. But in the booth, as expected at any self-respecting checkpoint, sat a young soldier sentry in a sheepskin coat. He asked us who we were and, checking the piece of paper on the wall of the booth, waved his hand at us. We obediently moved towards the barracks visible in the distance.

At the longest barracks in which all the officers lived, the unit commander, already familiar to me from a recent visit, and two more were waiting for us, one with a mustache, the other with a gold tooth, all dressed in spotted pea coats. Each of them had an SKS sticking out under their armpit - a Simonov self-loading carbine, the object of my dreams. We field workers were given old wartime carbines with broken sights and barrels so worn out that sometimes a bullet could simply be shoved into the barrel. And here, in the hands of the officers, brand new, fresh from the pyramid and licked by conscript soldiers, sparkled with blued steel, trouble-free and convenient machines for shooting and killing. Probably my envy was written on my face, because the commander nodded to the officer, the officer nodded to someone else, he ran off somewhere, and they handed me the SKS.

The men from the airport commanded the hunt as the most knowledgeable ones. They huddled together in the cabin, and I, gladly giving up responsibility, huddled in the back with the rest of the hunters. We smoked, grabbed each other on turns, flew up to the ceiling on potholes and tried not to talk for fear of biting our tongues.

Suddenly the engine roared even louder and the driver made a sharp turn to the right, from which we all fell onto the left side, then rushed steeply upward, sending us to the back wall, and then, with a grinding sound, changing gear, leaned forward and rushed down the slope, throwing us onto the front wall separating the body from the engine. At the end of these bone-crushing maneuvers, the all-terrain vehicle suddenly braked sharply and the appointed horn sounded in the back. Having thrown back the tarpaulin canopy, we fell out of the body into the snow as quickly as we could.

The all-terrain vehicle stood in a gentle valley between two hills, in the floodplain of a small stream, marked by pathetic shoots of a low-growing polar birch tree. Among these bushes, about fifty meters from us, stood a small herd of deer, ten to fifteen heads, motionless, staring at us in complete confusion. The hatch in the cabin roof opened with a clang, from where the first shot rang out, strangely muffled, as if in an undertone - as I later realized, this is how all these carbines sounded - and the firing began. The deer darted first to the left, then to the right. Something in their behavior seemed unusual to me - they did everything too slowly. There was something wrong with them too, they didn’t look quite right... And then it dawned on me that these were all important women, pregnant important women, about to give birth, who had found this clearing with bushes to give birth here - It was time, spring was coming...

I shot along with everyone, like a stunner, without releasing the trigger and moving the barrel from left to right, noting to myself the next hit, when the bullet hit the important woman in the side and deer hair flew up in a gray cloud into the air, until suddenly someone’s hair appeared in the slot of my sight. then a hat with earflaps. By some miracle, my finger froze on the trigger. Another second and I would have blown to pieces the head that was wearing that hat. As it turned out later, I only had one cartridge left out of the entire clip. The important ones rushed from one side of the creek to the other and fell one after another. There was no salvation for them. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that one of the survivors rushed up the slope, trying to jump out of this trap. I moved the barrel and with a shot broke her front left leg. The important woman fell face down into the snow, but immediately jumped up and, on three legs, rushed further, and her broken leg dangled as she ran like a rag. The gold-toothed officer laid her down on the slope from his knee. The shooting stopped. Not a single important woman, and there were only twelve of them, left.

We walked among dead bodies and they finished off those still alive - officers and airport workers - with carbines, and the driver and I, out of habit of saving cartridges, used the old faithful hunting method - with the tip of a knife at the base of the skull where it connected to the neck. Only a slight trembling, then cramps in the thrown back legs, and the animal’s eyes stopped and quickly became covered with a cloudy film. The excitement of the hunt, as always in such an environment, subsided abruptly and we drank tea from thermoses, smoked, and discussed what to do next. I insisted that it was necessary to skin and cut up the carcasses right now, while they were warm and the skin was easily removed, because I knew from experience how difficult it would be to do later, when the frost welded it all into a petrified frozen block. Two carcasses per person - it wouldn't take us more than two hours. But the captain just shrugged:

What is there... soldiers in kitchen outfits will butcher. And we’ll just get the fawns. This is necessary, all the important women with wads are so lucky. –

Genuine joy was written on the captain's face. Then suddenly a cloud seemed to float onto his happy face and he asked if we ourselves needed wads, to which I and the all-terrain vehicle, as participants in the hunt and the owners of the all-terrain vehicle, had full rights. I looked questioningly at the driver. He shook his head negatively.

No, I said, we don’t need wads, but we’ll take the meat. Two carcasses. And one more thing - if we’re going to flog the bellies, then we need to take the tenderloin and liver at the same time. Otherwise, while your soldiers are cutting everything up, my guys will salivate. -

The captain and the other two officers were clearly pleased that we had given up the fawns - they clearly wanted to get them all.

We got down to business. The bellies were quickly cut at the very hind legs, two fingers were inserted into the incision with the back side up, a knife was placed on them with the tip up, so as not to pierce the intestines or stain the meat with droppings, and with a quick movement along the midline the entire belly was ripped open to the solar plexus, then, With effort, the soft breast was cut down to the throat, the esophagus was exposed, the esophagus was cut and tied in a knot, the carcass was turned on its side and the smoking entrails fell out onto the snow. Then, with a quick movement, the uterus ripped open and the already dead, but still warm fawn flew onto the snow - a fawn completely ready for independent life, with neatly folded legs, ready within three hours after birth to stand, awkwardly walk and even run, covered with a thick silky light coat. brown wavy fur, which, if he had been born, would have protected him from frost and wind, and which was now intended for hats - in a word, already completely ready to be born, and born, had we been a day late with the hunt, or had we missed this ravine ‚but instead he was killed along with his mother...

Then, along both sides of the ridge, the most tender and delicious tenderloin was separated from the inside of the carcass, and from the pile of warm intestines a dark maroon liver was removed, from which I immediately cut off a piece and put it in my mouth. Having learned this from the Evens and Chukchi, I did not miss the opportunity to eat raw liver on every hunt, making up for the lack of vitamins in the typical field diet, which consisted of cereals, canned food and dried fruits. I also liked to split the leg bone and suck out the raw bone marrow, but now there was no time for that.

Half an hour later, all the work was finished and all the snow in the ravine was stained with blood and littered with already frozen offal. Deer carcasses, now thin and flat, without round, swollen bellies, with glassy eyes and protruding tongues, were thrown into the all-terrain vehicle, we sat outside on the engine grilles, grabbed onto what we could and rushed back. Shaking across the frozen tundra, I felt for a short time weak pangs of conscience caused by our barbarity and this mass murder of defenseless important women. But all this quickly passed, buried by considerations about the benefits of established contacts with the military and the inevitability of such an outrage, which I still, even if I wanted, could not stop, and which would have happened sooner or later without my participation. Having calmed myself in this way, I concentrated entirely on how to light a cigarette during such a bumpy ride and not fall under the tracks, because both hands were needed to protect the match from the wind.

I, naively, expected that we would quickly unload the carcasses, take our share and return to camp. But I was very mistaken and I got to the camp only a day later. In the officer's barracks everything was ready, the table was already set, the stove was blazing with fire, only us were waiting. The tenderloins and livers flew into the basins, they were picked up by the officers' wives, the frying pans with onions began to squawk, bottles clattered on the table and the first went for a successful hunt, then the second for the geophysicists, then the third for the valiant Soviet Army, then the fourth for the beautiful ladies, then fifth for all-terrain vehicles, then.... I remember that I got drunk catastrophically quickly. It was so unlike me, I was always very drunk. But here, whether the multi-day haul with its constant stress, or the hunt, or all of it took its toll - I just relaxed and, as they say, swam. I remember that the alcohol ran out and a quick-ripening mash was used, which was prepared in a washing machine, into which, several hours before use, water, sugar and yeast were loaded in the required proportions, a button was pressed, the machine began to spin and produced a seemingly weak product, but which combining with what was drunk earlier led to a quick and completely ugly intoxication, which, by the way, was what was required from this product. The drink strongly tasted of unfermented yeast, but this was intended so that the process of fermentation and conversion of sugar into alcohol would occur slowly in the consumer’s stomach. The swill was terrible, but that didn’t stop anyone and we drank him mug after mug. After that, everything went crazy in a drunken disorder - we were screaming songs, proving something to each other, someone was squeezing someone’s giggling wife, someone was trying to kiss me, my driver, during a showdown, suddenly fell silent and slid under the table The captain, holding onto a chair and barely standing on his feet, announced that the enemy was attacking the location of the air defense company, and we were taking up defensive positions, why should everyone go shoot from quadruple anti-aircraft machine guns, and someone actually went with him and I heard short machine gun fire queues and wild laughter in the intervals between them, then something came into my head, and I suddenly got ready to go somewhere on an all-terrain vehicle and they hung on me to hold me, but I was still torn, and carried everyone out into the corridor...

...I woke up in some closet, covered with a sheepskin coat, with a dull headache and strong thirst in my mouth, so strong that my jaw cramped like a cramp. I walked along a dark, icy corridor, bumping into piles of some kind of rubbish and, in search of water, I pushed the doors at random, but they were all locked - family officers probably lived there, whom their wives managed to drag away from the table and lock them in their rooms. The only unlocked door was the door to the smoky room, where three or four people were sleeping on the floor, and my all-terrain vehicle, two from the airport and someone else were sitting at the table, drowning out yesterday’s hasty brew. Seeing me, everyone was terribly happy and handed me a mug of mash, but the fusel spirit alone made my guts turn inside out, and I grabbed onto the liter jar of snow water that was on the table. Quenching my thirst had, in addition to the direct effect, also a side effect - the water diluted the thickened and alcohol-saturated blood, it ran faster, got to my head - and without drinking a drop, I became drunk again. My appetite awoke and I grabbed the cold remains of yesterday's meat feast. Then it thundered Entrance door and the company commander burst into us in an embrace with the head of the airport who had just arrived across the lagoon, who also wanted fried liver and tenderloin, and who brought alcohol, and it all started all over again...

The booze dragged on, as it should be in the Arctic, then dying down, then flaring up with renewed vigor. I realized that if I stayed, I would buzz with everyone to the point of death, which I had not achieved for a long time, since my student years. But my defense mechanisms, which never failed me and separated me from my inevitably drunken friends, worked now, and after waiting until the people turned a little sour and quieted down again, I pushed the driver and we moved back to our camp on the spit . I had to start what I came here for - geophysical survey of Kotelny Island.

Our job looked surprisingly simple. We had to carry gravimeters around the island - very sensitive and expensive devices for measuring gravity, similar to narrow, tall milk cans on three legs. I had to, giving instructions to the driver, drive the all-terrain vehicle strictly in a straight line or, as it was scientifically called, “along the profile.” Every two kilometers I stopped the car and pressed the horn button in the back. Hearing the signal, my two assistant operators jumped out with gravimeters, placed them on stands, turned various screws and looked into the microscope, measuring deviations in gravity. This took about five to ten minutes. Then the guys climbed back into the back and signaled to me in the cabin that everything was ready and we could drive on, to the next stop in two kilometers. Having thus reached the end of the intended profile, I had to turn at a right angle, drive five kilometers, and start drive in the opposite direction along another profile, which ran parallel to the previous one, again strictly in a straight line, and again stopping every two kilometers. That seems to be all the simple work. According to the plan, it was necessary to make 700 measurements, and if you do twenty to twenty-five measurements a day, then there will be only a month of work without drinking and weekends - and home to the mainland, to their wives, women and friends. In reality, everything was not so simple.

Everyone knows that everywhere, and especially in the Arctic, in order to successfully fly from one place to another on an airplane, it is necessary that three necessary and sufficient conditions come together simultaneously, and in the same place - an airplane in operation condition, the pilot is sober and the weather is in minimally acceptable condition. Most often, it turns out as one Yakut hunter told about his return from the mainland to the island: “Sizu in Tiksi. One day, two days, a week - the plane is eating, the cap is eating, the weather is not. It's been a week - the weather is good, the cap is good, the plane is gone. Then suddenly - the weather was good, the plane was eating, the cap was gone - I went to drink some alcohol, I was so drunk, I was really drunk, but... “. And we, too, like this hunter, needed the coincidence of three conditions for successful work.

Firstly, the weather was also important. Not because we were going to fly our all-terrain vehicles, but because I had to, while driving, at any moment, know very precisely where I was, so that when I gave the command to stop, I could put it on the map with accurate to within fifty meters, otherwise all our measurements would be useless. To do this, it was necessary to drive the all-terrain vehicle strictly along a given course, which, in turn, required error-free orientation on the terrain, so even in good weather I kept my eye on the map or the aerial photograph, recorded the speedometer readings all the time, and every now and then jumped out of the cockpit to check the direction with the compass. Thick fogs, slanting rains and snow charges made all this impossible and we were often forced to sit in the camp, waiting out the bad weather.

Secondly, it was necessary for our extremely capricious devices to work properly, which, like people with an unstable psyche who lose their temper at the slightest trifle, reacted strongly to any external changes. For example, because of their sensitivity, they did not like the wind, and the wind, as I already said, always blows in the Arctic. Besides, they didn't like shaking. And if we could somehow protect them from temperature fluctuations or from the wind, then we could not save them from shaking. As a result, every now and then the instruments began to show some kind of nonsense and it was necessary to stop all work and put them in order. To top it all off, during each working day it was necessary to measure the pressure, temperature and humidity of the air every fifteen minutes, otherwise all our work would go down the drain.

And, although thirdly, but most importantly, it was necessary for our all-terrain vehicles to work, because, as you already understood, all our work boiled down to transporting the devices to all the right places, for which we had to wave around everything Kotelny Island, in total, is somewhere around two and a half thousand kilometers. This is where all our problems began, because our machines kept breaking down. As we later calculated, for each working day, on average, there were three days of repairs, checks, waiting for spare parts and other valid reasons, so we quickly, already in the first weeks of work, realized that our field season would be much longer than that theoretically calculated month .

All-terrain vehicles decommissioned from the army due to age, before falling into our hands, had already worked out all conceivable and inconceivable terms and had long been subject to complete destruction. But there was no replacement for them, and therefore, at the beginning of each season, they were patched, leaky hulls were welded, engines were rebuilt and wires that had crumbled from age were replaced. But the cars still broke down, and the further they went, the more often. And at the same time, breakdowns, according to a well-known fundamental law, happened unexpectedly and, of course, in the most inappropriate places.

We were afraid of these breakdowns like fire. And when, amid the hysterical howl of a low-power and constantly overloaded engine, some alien mechanical knocks and crunches were suddenly heard, or when the engine began to sneeze, lose its rhythm and then completely fall silent, and when the driver stuck the neutral gear, turned off the ignition and, spitting in annoyance, said something like: “Everyone, fuck, we’ve arrived! “, - we all immediately understood that we had to walk back to the camp. For one simple reason - none of our all-terrain vehicles had a radio. Therefore, there was no way we could let our other detachment or those who remained in the camp know where we were and what had happened to us. And instead of sitting in an all-terrain vehicle, where we could at least shelter from the wind, fry deer meat in a frying pan, brew strong tea, smoke and tell various field stories while waiting for the arrival of another all-terrain vehicle, we rewound our foot wraps, lightened our clothes, They hung the instruments on their backs (they had to be dragged back to the camp, otherwise all the work done before the breakdown would have been in vain) and dejectedly trudged back along the tracks of their own caterpillars.

It was noticed that both of our all-terrain vehicles rarely broke down closer than ten kilometers from the camp. To walk even these ten kilometers in the tundra, through hummocks or sticky loam, with a constant cold wind, without stopping (there is still nothing to sit on, and it’s dangerous - you can doze off and not wake up), it took at least three hours. The cook and the pressure and temperature monitor sitting in the camp usually knew approximately when to expect us back. And when several hours passed after the designated hour, they already knew that another nasty thing had happened and that they had to wait for the outlines of exhausted geophysicists trailing one after another, who, unlike geologists, were unaccustomed to walking on foot, to appear on the horizon and, seeing them, to inflate stove and brew fresh tea.

One time I was extremely lucky. We climbed to the top of the hill, where topographers had built a steel tripod a year earlier, under which I had to take measurements with our instruments. Getting closer, I saw at the foot of the tower, against the background of the darkening pre-snow sky, a light spot of a tent and a black thread of smoke spreading from the chimney along the frosty tundra. When there was only about a kilometer left to the tent, my all-terrain vehicle suddenly “lost the spark” (emphasis on “y”, if in driver’s terms) and stopped dead in its tracks. But within fifteen minutes we were sitting in the warmth and drinking tea with the guys from Moscow, who were dropped here a couple of weeks ago to determine the coordinates of these pyramids. They, of course, had a radio and we quickly contacted Temp and reported another breakdown to our base. The caretaker, swearing, promised to fall at the Muscovites’ feet and beg them to send a helicopter with a spare “distributor,” which, as the driver found out, had simply crumbled into pieces from old age. Soon there were people who wanted to paint the “bullet”, just for fun. I declined the offer, found a volume by Solovyov about the era of Biron and began to read, lounging on a folding bed, but very soon, exhausted by the warmth and lulled by the monotonous muttering of preferenceists: “... pass... in tambourines....” whist... pass... we open... I’m stuck like a crowbar in the shit..." - slowly floated into oblivion, far, and for a long time... By the way, from this tent to our camp there were twenty kilometers and if there weren’t Muscovites there, we would have to stomp these kilometers along tundra So that's how lucky it is.

I have never had such luck again. Two weeks later, at the very end of August, when it was already clear that autumn was ending and winter would soon come, I moved the camp to the east, to where Kotelny Island ended and Bunge Land began. The all-terrain vehicle, as always when moving, was so packed with our field junk, food and fuel that our unfortunate cook, nicknamed Asthmatic - he smoked without a break, wheezed and could barely walk - could barely fit in the back in a very crooked state. I decided to drive along the passing river, the water in which dropped sharply with the onset of cold weather and it was possible to run forward quite quickly in fourth gear, even along pebble spits and shallow riffles. It was longer this way than directly along the tundra, but it was faster and easier for the car and me, because it was easier to navigate along the river. I relaxed, made myself comfortable in the cramped booth, smoked a cigarette and calmly looked around.

The adventures began shortly after we passed noticeable limestone cliffs, painted pinkish-gray by the low sun, at the foot of which earlier in the summer there were geologists, and now there were tin cans and other rubbish from abandoned camps lying around. I put a point on the map and, out of habit, wrote down the speedometer readings. Looking at the driver Vasya, I noticed that he was somehow unusually pale. After a while the driver turned green and was covered in sweat. Ten minutes passed and he already turned blue, stopped the all-terrain vehicle, rolled out of the cabin and hunched over, opening his mouth and bulging his eyes at me. I looked at him with alarm, turning over my pathetic knowledge of medicine in my mind and remembering what medicines I had in my medicine cabinet.

Then, when the poor fellow was released a little, the following became clear. The day before the move, when I had a day of rest and preparation, Vasya also decided not to waste time and brewed a quick-ripening mash in a can, using his own “stash” of sugar and yeast. He did not sleep almost all night, kept the fire in the stove so that the mash was warm, turned the can from side to side and, to speed up the process, shook it vigorously. But still, the mash was not ripe and by the time we left it was a cloudy sweet liquid with a strong smell of yeast. But my all-terrain vehicle Vasya was not such as to allow such a product with a potential alcohol content to go to waste. Not knowing where else the opportunity would present itself, he drank the entire can. And then we had to hit the road. And the inevitable happened - from the shaking and heat, the process of fermentation and fermentation of alcohol from sugar and yeast began, and very actively, in his belly. It is known that this releases a lot of carbon dioxide (under normal conditions, mash lovers remove these gases through a straw into the water, where they bubble and gurgle, hence the origin - bubbling). But he didn’t have a tube and the gases filled his stomach and intestines and severe pain began. So the diagnosis was established - extinguishing gases. Of the closest medications to such a diagnosis, I had only a laxative - purgen... And since I could not wait much time, I fed poor Vasya a whole handful of this purgen and we sat down to drink tea, which should also ease his suffering.

About twenty minutes later, Vasya, as they say in driver’s jargon, “broke a gasket.” He threw the mug and, on half-bent legs, took small steps into the tundra, where he sat like an eagle with his pants down on a hummock and sat there for half an hour. Then he said that he felt better, but that he was so weak that he could not drive the all-terrain vehicle. The asthmatic rinsed the mugs and, groaning and seething with his lungs, climbed into his cramped nest in the back. Vasya took my place, I sat in the driver’s seat, started the engine, put it in gear and we drove further east.

Two more hours had passed since Vasya’s attack, and we were all cheerfully clattering our tracks along the river valley, and I was pleased to record the speedometer at every noticeable landmark, noting our persistent progress. The engine hummed reliably and evenly. Vasya dozed off in relief. Suddenly the car veered sharply to the left. I pulled the right lever and increased the gas to turn the car to the right. Instead, the rover simply stood up. Vasya woke up and looked at me carefully. I checked the gear - the lever was in third gear. I put the car in first gear and started forward. She was pulled to the left again. I opened the door, and while looking at the left track, I pulled the right lever again. As soon as I did this, the left track froze and did not move. The motor worked, but the caterpillar did not move. “Everyone, fuck, we’ve arrived! “- I said and climbed out of the cabin.

The so-called left final drive flew off - a box with gears that transmit rotation from the motor to a large gear, which pulls a steel track with these teeth. This box, although intact in appearance, was hot to the touch and smelled of scorched metal. As it turned out later, there was not a drop of oil in it. Vasya, busy with the quick brew, forgot to check and top up. So simple. The all-terrain vehicle could now only move in a circle, counterclockwise.

I sat in the cockpit and walked with a compass on the map, measuring distances. There is no radio in my car, so I can't call for help. Need to go. Spare parts are only available at Tempe. There, to the west, one hundred and twenty kilometers. It’s fifty kilometers to our destination, to the east, where we were going and where our seismic surveyors were stationed. There are no spare parts, but there is a radio and you can contact Temp. Decision is made. You have to go alone, in violation of all safety rules, but Asthmatic wouldn’t walk even a kilometer, and Vasya will be needed here to install a new on-board vehicle when they arrive. We need to go lightly - a sleeping bag made of dog fur weighed five kilograms, the smallest tent in our equipment weighed twelve kilograms, and anyway there would be nothing to stretch it on, without carrying wooden frames and stakes with us. Map, compass, matches, knife, carbine, two spare clips, a couple of cans of stew, a can of condensed milk, a loaf of bread, a stick of butter, a pack of tea, two packs of cigarettes. No one has a thermos, mine was broken during the crossing. We pitched a tent on the spit, lit the stove and ate bread and canned food. I rested on the cot for half an hour, then drank some strong tea, put on my backpack, slung my carbine on my back, and walked along the river at a leisurely geological pace to the east, into the thickening twilight. I had to walk at this pace for at least fifteen hours, so there was nowhere to rush.

For the first twenty kilometers I walked along the valley of the same river, gradually approaching its sources. It was easy to walk on the solid floodplain and I covered about four kilometers in an hour. The day was ending and the twilight was becoming grayer. I knew that at the end of August it would not be completely dark yet, but with the sun almost setting, we definitely had to wait for the weather to worsen. And so it turned out. When the sun fell behind the ridge, half an hour later a translucent fog appeared, and then, with a headwind, a drizzling rain began to fall. My quilted jacket with a canvas top and pants began to get wet and noticeably gained weight. But, fortunately, it soon got colder and my clothes were covered with an icy crust and I felt much warmer.

So, crunching my icy clothes, I steadily walked kilometers up the river, which, approaching its sources, gradually turned into a narrow stream. Then he disappeared and I began to climb the watershed. It became more difficult to walk - under our feet there was no longer hard pebbles, but loamy tundra, not yet hardened by frost, and our boots sank in it and became surrounded by a lump of yellowish mud. Seven hours of non-stop walking passed, and I felt it was time to rest, eat and smoke before I was completely tired. In the bare tundra, where it is impossible to light a fire and warm yourself by the fire, you need to try, as far as possible, not to exhaust yourself - an exhausted person no longer has the internal energy to withstand the external cold. There comes drowsiness, then sleep, then death. Ten years ago, in Chukotka, after two days of searching, we found the body of a lost geologist three kilometers from the camp. He was sitting on his backpack near a rock on the slope of a hill, with an extinguished cigarette in his hands. From this place he could clearly see the tents and, most likely, after two days of wandering in the fog, he was happy and sat down to rest. This happened in mid-August and the temperature was just above zero. It was just freezing rain all day...

Half sitting on the carabiner and half standing on my feet (so as not to be too comfortable and relax), I took refuge from the wind behind an earthen mound bulging out of the permafrost, and ate cold stew and bread, thickly sprinkled with condensed milk, and then happily lit a long-awaited cigarette . I was pleased with my progress. Everything went according to plan. The only thing that complicated my further path was that I didn’t have a map for this piece and I only knew approximately where the seismic camp was located. But this did not frighten me - the compass and the sun would lead me to the valley of another river flowing to the east, and this river would lead me to the camp. It began to get lighter. A strong breeze swayed the icy pale yellow polar poppies on an earthen mound and whistled in the barrel of a carbine. An arctic fox, beginning to turn white, jumped out from behind a nearby hillock. Arching his back, he somehow ran sideways towards me to a safe distance, in his opinion, and stared sideways at me, obviously assessing his chances for a hearty meat lunch. I flicked my cigarette butt into him and the Arctic fox jumped and ran over the hill. It was time for me to move on.

Another three hours later, when the sun rose above the horizon and turned the fog into low-hanging clouds, I crossed the gentle watershed and walked along the swampy floodplain of the Precious River that separated Kotelny Island from Bunge Land. The river was named so by local hunters who found on its banks spiral shells of ammonites from the Jurassic period, about one hundred million years old, but so well preserved that craftsmen made beautiful mother-of-pearl jewelry from them. It became much warmer, the ice crust on my padded jacket melted and steam rose from it. I didn’t feel very tired, but after a sleepless night, in the warmth of the coming day and under the measured rhythm of walking, I felt sleepy. I drove it with cigarettes and willpower, knowing that I still had at least four hours of walking ahead of me.

Soon, after a couple of hours, I increasingly began to come across fresh traces of an all-terrain vehicle, which I rejoiced at, as a person rejoices when he steps onto the rails. railway after a long wander in the forest. For me, these tracks were like a sure sign of nearby housing and that I was on the right path. Then I came across a wooden box from dynamite, which was blown up by our seismics to obtain a reflected echo from the deep layers of the Earth. It was a real gift. I settled down in a cozy recess of the coastal slope, smashed the box with the butt of a carbine, took out a matchbox from a condom, lit a neat fire and boiled a mug of water, in which I brewed the long-awaited tea, which was close in strength to the legendary camp “chifir” - (a pack of tea for a mug cold water, and simmer slowly, covered with a hat or mitten, until it boils). At this point I allowed myself to relax, threw a few more planks on the fire, and dozed off under the crackling fire, putting my backpack under my head.

A cold breeze woke me half an hour later. The fire burned out. From somewhere a fog stretched into the valley, through which a yellow, non-heating circle of sunlight shone through. I put the remains of the planks and half-eaten canned food into my backpack, rolled a condom onto a matchbox, hid it in my bag and moved further along the river. Five minutes later, the fog cleared and a kilometer away from me I saw something thin, dark and straight, like a twig, sticking out over a distant hillock. I took a closer look. It was a radio antenna. There was a camp there. I lit a fire, made tea and dozed a kilometer away...

As I later determined, I covered forty kilometers in twelve hours. At the end of August, this was a record for our expedition. A week later, my achievement was almost surpassed by my partners on Bunge Land.

Bunge Land

I have never seen anything stranger and more mystical than this Earth, anywhere on the globe. About ten thousand years ago, the shallow sea between Kotelny Island and Faddeevsky Island retreated and exposed its bottom, which turned into a completely flat sandy desert a hundred kilometers wide from north to south and from west to east. The only noticeable features on it were only pitiful tufts of grass growing on hummocks no higher than the knee, and this desert was so flat that even these hummocks could be seen several kilometers away. Many years later, I worked in the desert in the south of the Arabian Peninsula and even peered out of the corner of my eye into the hellish heat of the famous Rub al-Khali, the most terrible desert on Earth. But I never experienced there such a feeling of complete isolation from the rest of the planet, helplessness and naked defenselessness, as I felt then, sticking out like a louse on a sheet, exposed to all the winds, in the middle of the sands of Bunge Land.

There were four of us in the all-terrain vehicle, except for me and my all-terrain vehicle Vasya Tuzov, when we set off to cross Bunge Land. Vasya Tuzov loved to talk, but he always talked only about two subjects that, to his credit, he knew perfectly: booze and whores. Moreover, the latter, according to him, did not give him any passage or a ride, and because of them he earned so little while working as a truck driver, because he spent more time lying on them than behind the steering wheel. By the way, at one time he worked as a hack, gluing wallpaper at the Pulkovo Observatory and there he charmed the Strugatsky brothers with his stories, who included him, under the name of the driver Tuzik, in one of their novels. Borya, a subtle and educated intellectual, read Pasternak to us and internally suffered from the inconvenience and roughness of field life, which he would have abandoned long ago if it were not for the regional salary ratio and field allowance. The old polar wolf (seven years older than all of us) and the head of our party, the smartest and wittiest Vadim, in addition to geophysics, was also a dissident and told us such things about all sorts of dark Soviet affairs that the hair stood on end on our unwashed heads and backs.

We left the same camp where I had dragged myself on foot a week ago. In addition to the usual field things, our all-terrain vehicle was also filled with cans of water, because on Bunge Land, as befits a real desert, there was no water at all, not even the smallest puddle, especially in its central part. We successfully, although slower than expected (due to the damp sand in which the caterpillars got stuck), crossed Bunge Land from west to east along the pre-marked profile, rested a little and, taking a little to the north, began our return journey to the west, home , To camp.

Suddenly it became sharply colder, the wet sand froze and, literally before our eyes, the Bunge Land was transformed. Instead of a boring yellowish-brown sandy plain, in front of us lay an immense mirror of ice, sparkling under the setting sun in the west. The sand became hard as concrete, and our tracks did not leave any marks on it. It was possible to fly forward, and we flew, with a long-forgotten speed, as much as forty kilometers per hour, towards the dark gray clouds with a gilded border, hanging over the flat, sharply defined horizon of the desert. Looking in the rearview mirror, I found a lone bright star on the darkening eastern horizon and just corrected the driver, waving my palm left and right, trying to keep this star in the same position and irritated by having to stop every two kilometers - the work was still far from finished.

After one of these stops, when Borya finished his measurements and climbed back into the back, I gave a sign to Vasya that he could move on. Vasya started the engine, but before moving off, he suddenly tapped on the instrument indicating the oil pressure, immediately turned off the engine and uttered the sacramental phrase: “That's it, fucked up, we've arrived! “. The oil pressure gauge was at zero. After a minute or two of operation, the engine would become hot from friction and its rotating parts would be jammed in a death grip on each other. Knowing that a worn-out old engine absorbs oil like a cat absorbs sour cream, Vasya prepared a spare canister of oil, but forgot to take it with him. and she remained in the camp. From this place to the camp it was exactly forty-eight kilometers.

The short meeting ended with an obvious decision. Need to go. Vasya cannot be left alone. Borya and Vadim understood perfectly well that now, after I had just covered my forty kilometers, it was their turn to stomp along the desert. It was clear from them that they did not experience much pleasure from this and, being geophysicists clean water and not having the training that I received in geological work, when fifteen to twenty kilometers of walking a day in the taiga mountains was considered commonplace, deep down they expected me to offer my services. But I didn't have the slightest desire to do this.

The plan of action was simple. They needed to go west, and I insisted that they take a little to the left and come out on our own tracks, which now, after the cold snap, were frozen in the sand until spring, and follow the tracks without turning anywhere. Then, even if something happens, they will be looked for along fresh tracks. According to our calculations, taking into account the flat and hard road, the walk to the camp was thirteen to fourteen hours, fifteen at most. After taking a couple of hours to rest and get ready, Vadim (Borya suffered from an acute form of topographical cretinism and was completely unable to navigate the terrain) will have to take the seismic all-terrain vehicle and return with oil to Vasya and me, which will take another two hours. In total, the proceeds could come to us in about twenty hours, or, for good measure, in a day. In case of unforeseen circumstances, I said that I would sit with Vasya here, in the all-terrain vehicle, for three days, until the meat ran out, warming up with a gasoline stove and candles (I didn’t worry about water, hoping for snowfall). If no one comes for us in three days, we will go ourselves, if the weather permits. However, if the weather doesn’t allow it, we’ll go anyway, because there won’t be anything to eat.

We fried thick pieces of venison for Borya and Vadim for the road, and they walked west. Vasya and I carefully pulled the weakened tarpaulin over the body and tried to caulk all the cracks that we could in order to retain as much heat as possible in the body, in which we now had to spend an unknown amount of time. About an hour had passed since Borya and Vadim began their journey, but Bunge Land was so flat that I could still clearly see their silhouettes against the sunset.

We sat in the back by candlelight and boiled tea on a gasoline stove. Vasya began a long story about how he drove a KAMAZ to Kyiv and how he took a fellow traveler, and how she had no money to pay, and how she offered herself instead of money, and how he turned onto a country road, and how... The air in the back heated up , but it was some kind of unhealthy, stale warmth, and I climbed outside into the fresh air and began walking in circles around the all-terrain vehicle, clearing my head. On the third circle, I saw two bright lights flash on the horizon. These were the headlights of an all-terrain vehicle coming towards us.

Then Borya said that, having walked about ten kilometers in his old tracks, Vadim began to rub his leg and they sat down to rest and rewind their foot wraps. It was there that they saw the headlights of an all-terrain vehicle coming towards them, which was led by our chief geophysicist Alexey, to finalize the third and final profile through Bunge Land. He rolled along the tracks we had left and was extremely surprised when at one moment in the beams of the headlights, instead of a monotonous sea of ​​frozen sand and rare hummocks, two human figures suddenly jumped and waved their arms. Bora and Vadim were so lucky, and so my record remained unbroken.

Our troubles with all-terrain vehicles weren't limited to them breaking down. They also sometimes drowned when they had to cross all sorts of rivers and lakes. Theoretically, like military vehicles, they could float on the water and even move forward, using, instead of a propeller, the propeller movement of the tracks. But, again, here the polar law came into force, requiring the simultaneous coincidence of several conditions. Only in contrast to aviation, where this law required the coincidence of the weather, the airplane and the cap, for a successful crossing on our all-terrain vehicles we needed a leak-free hull, calm and sloping banks.

There is no need to explain the importance of the absence of holes in the body, but rarely would any of our all-terrain vehicles, especially after hauling and driving with a load three times more than allowed, not have them. The wind, especially the cross wind, was a hindrance because it created waves that swept water into the body and also because if it blew along the river, it gradually but inexorably turned the all-terrain vehicle around the center of gravity so that the car eventually found itself floating with its nose against the wind and along the river, and not across, as needed. If the bank was steep when launching, then the all-terrain vehicle would immediately dive nose-first into the water and fill the spark plugs, causing the engine to immediately stall, with all the ensuing consequences.

The sloping exit to the opposite shore was important because the all-terrain vehicle, which on land could overcome various obstacles, became quite helpless on water, became lighter due to Archimedes' law and could not catch its tracks well on the muddy bottom of polar rivers.

In my case, and I drowned with an all-terrain vehicle twice, the shores failed. Once it was my all-terrain vehicle’s fault - it dashingly flew up to the river and, without stopping, plunged into the water from the bank, which in appearance didn’t look so bad, but turned out to be steep, like the wall of a trench. Water poured through the hood onto the engine, the engine naturally stalled, and the all-terrain vehicle sat with its nose on the bottom of an unnamed river on Kotelny Island. A few seconds later I was sitting waist-deep in icy water. The second time it was my own fault, because I didn’t calculate the steepness of the opposite bank and carelessly waved my hand to the driver - like, go ahead, boldly, go ahead. We safely crossed the river, no more than twenty meters wide. However, as I approached the shore, I sensed something was wrong - the shore approaching us turned out to be a steep clay slope. The all-terrain vehicle stuck its nose into the shallows, sending a front wave muddy water onto the clay slope, having abundantly wetted the already slippery clay, the all-terrain vehicle applied gas, but the caterpillars could not properly catch on, but only spun and dug ditches for themselves. The nose of the all-terrain vehicle rose higher and higher, and the rear part of the body, on the contrary, sank lower and lower until water, naturally, poured through the rear side into the body, from where the heart-rending screams of my operators were heard.

Chief geophysicist Alexey, after meeting us on Bunge Land, drowned more seriously. Having shared engine oil with us, he entered the third profile and began to move west after us. In the approaching darkness, he ran into the bay of the only freshwater lake on Bunge Land - the bay was about two hundred meters wide if across, but a couple of kilometers long if you went around it. Alexey decided that, judging by the flatness of the surrounding area, the lake would be shallow and the all-terrain vehicle would ford the bay. He gave the command forward and the car, clattering its tracks, slowly went into the water. They actually walked along the bottom for about a hundred meters without surfacing, but then suddenly the bottom went down and the all-terrain vehicle surfaced and swayed on the water, moved forward by running caterpillars. . "Back! “- Alexey yelled, clearly remembering that on the right side of the all-terrain vehicle, like the Titanic, there was a half-meter long gap, ripped through the metal at the beginning of the season. The driver reversed and increased the gas, but by the time this forward movement died out and the all-terrain vehicle began to back up, the water had already weighed down the all-terrain vehicle so that it began to gradually sink and by the time everyone, half wet, squelching in the icy water, climbed onto the roof, he sank to the bottom at a depth of about two meters.

In the morning, when the seismicists, who accidentally noticed a dark point in the middle of the water surface, and at the risk of drowning their own all-terrain vehicle, swam to the sunken car, they saw the following picture. On the roof of the all-terrain vehicle, twenty centimeters from the water, behind an icy cushion made of wet sleeping bags and backpacks, three people, half-dead from the cold, wearing ice-covered clothes, lay hugging tightly. Alexey later admitted that he was already saying goodbye to life and estimated that they would freeze to death in six to eight hours if help did not come...

But despite all the breakdowns, sinkings, repairs, long forced walks on the tundra, waiting out bad weather and other troubles, we continued to rush across the tundra on a grid of two by five kilometers. We covered the entire island with caterpillar tracks and marked all our camps with empty barrels of gasoline and diesel fuel and everything that people left behind when they left the camp. We continued to do our job, despite the fact that winter had already taken over the island and the entire world accessible to us had again become black and white. The sun now very rarely peeked through the low hanging stratus clouds and there was less and less daylight left. The mercury in the thermometer confidently remained at the first ten degrees below zero and the stoves in our tents, which separated us from the freezing Arctic with a thin layer of tarpaulin, burned non-stop. Only by heating these stoves red-hot was it possible to warm the small space around them, but already three steps away, where our cots stood, we kept, hiding from the hungry Arctic foxes, our supplies of frozen venison, and it did not thaw there. It was possible to heat the stoves only by fully opening the fuel tap so that diesel fuel flowed onto the flame in a continuous stream. Because of this, our diesel reserves were quickly depleted and by mid-September they were completely gone. Faced with a choice - either freeze or risk burning - we began to burn aviation gasoline in our stoves, several barrels of which had remained scattered across the tundra since the spring, when we were flying around the island in a helicopter.. At first we were very careful, but then, when They realized that in such cold weather gasoline does not form dangerous explosive vapors, they became bolder and began to burn it recklessly.

…. Having had about twenty field seasons under my belt in the Tien Shan mountains, Kamchatka, Kolyma and the Arctic, I never ceased, and still do not, to be amazed at the mystery of transforming an empty space into a habitable place. One has only to pull up the tents, set up and light the stove, drag bags of “nits” inside (that’s what we called our personal junk) and inflate the rubber inflatable mattresses, and a piece of tundra, completely no different from millions of other such pieces, suddenly suddenly took on something completely different. quality. It became home. And when the day’s route ended, the last measurement was taken and the last point was put on the map, I waved my hand to the driver in the right direction, leaned back in the seat and said: “Home!” And we clanged our tracks in the thickening darkness, knowing that we would soon see in the distance a translucent cube of a tent glowing from the inside and the moving silhouette of our partner, who was performing the thankless job of a cook today. The tent will be cramped, everything will be saturated with the mixed smell of diesel fuel, wet clothes and fried meat, but it will be warm and light, and you can take off your quilted jacket and high boots and lounge on a cot with a mug of hot tea and light a cigarette - in a word, you can do whatever you want do at home. But the next cold morning the tent will be taken down and folded, everything will be packed into bags and boxes and thrown into the back of the all-terrain vehicle. Then the snow will quickly cover the square piece of land on which the tent stood and which I called home just yesterday, and this place will again return to its eternally empty state. And we will move on to the next camp, where this mystery of transformation will repeat again...

Every day the work became more and more difficult - by the end of September there were only four hours of daylight left. To meet my daily quota, I left camp early in the morning in complete darkness. Even during the day it was now very difficult to navigate the monotonous snow-covered tundra, but when it was necessary to do this also in the light of headlights, the process of figuring out where I was turned into a real puzzle. In addition, food products were running out, especially tea and sugar, the reserves of which had been undermined at the beginning of the season by increased fermentation. But most importantly, we all felt that our all-terrain vehicle was close to literally falling apart. The welds that held everything together, due to age and severe overload, came apart here and there, and we could not do anything about it. Sitting in the cabin, I watched with alarm as the roof moved and creaked, and the floor arched into mounds under my feet.

On one of the rare quiet and sunny days, we met with a detachment of seismicists who had finished work on Bunge Land and, according to them, were returning to Temp. This confused me somewhat, because, judging by where their all-terrain vehicle was looking with its nose, they were going in the exact opposite direction back to the east, to Bunge Land, which I informed their boss Zhora about. He was quite surprised, since he was completely sure that he was going to Temp, to the west. But a quick glance at the compass convinced him that I was right, and, having turned one hundred and eighty degrees, the happy seismics rushed in the now correct direction, expecting to arrive in Temp in four hours, and I watched them with envy until they disappeared behind the slope of the hill . This was the last all-terrain vehicle, not counting mine, of the three that I brought to the island in the spring, which could still move independently. The car in which Alexei drowned was permanently parked in Tempe due to a lack of spare parts.

A day later it was the turn of my all-terrain vehicle. It was a cloudy day and the eternal polar wind was blowing snow towards us. We were crossing a low rocky ridge and when the all-terrain vehicle, hovering for a moment on a sharp ridge, nosed down the slope, the windshield suddenly flew out with a crash and crumbled into small pieces. I knew that this would end sooner or later, because the cabin had been shaking for a long time at all the seams and on every hillock it was twisting at odd angles, but still, out of surprise, at first I did not understand what had happened, and for some time I sat motionless , sprinkled with glass shards. Then I came to my senses and cursed for a long time out of frustration. I had to finish the day's work and then drive the car back to the camp at a distance of twenty kilometers, against a headwind with snow in my face at a frost of about fifteen below zero. Having sworn enough, I calmed down and gave the command to move home. Vasya Tuzov looked at me with compassion as I covered my face with my palm and looked for the necessary signs through outstretched fingers. It was warm enough in the cabin from the running engine and I was not afraid of frostbite, but the snow cut my face like sand and knocked the tears out of my eyes.

As it turned out, this was only the beginning of our troubles. When we finished the last measurement already in the thickening darkness and went out into a familiar valley, at the end of which our camp stood, I relaxed a little, because Vasya already knew the way and would have found the camp without my help. I bent my head inside the cabin and hid my head in my hands, trying to soothe the pain in my snow-scarred eyes. Then Vasya patted me on the shoulder. I thought that he wanted to check whether he was driving correctly and I again began to stare into the snow, now even more blinding in the headlights. But Vasya again patted me on the shoulder and pointed his finger at the ammeter on the dashboard, showing the condition of the battery and the operation of the generator, which provided the current to charge this battery. The instrument needle fell to the left and sat there dead, not moving and not reacting to an increase in engine speed. “The generator is fucked, boss.” – the experienced Vasya diagnosed. I went cold. This meant that the motor takes current from the battery to maintain its operation, but no current flows from the dead generator to the battery and sooner or later it will “die”, the engine will lose ignition, and there will be a long silence ...

I told Vasya to drive the car to the camp as quickly as possible, and he obediently pressed the gas. Thank God that at least the engine was working normally, the tanks were full of gasoline and this time I had a spare canister of oil with me. I again hid my face from the wind and began to think about what to do next. The first step was to get to the camp. Then, immediately, before everyone there falls asleep, we will need to contact Temp by radio and tell them to rip off the generator in the morning, take out the glass from any inactive car and send Zhorin’s all-terrain vehicle, which was supposed to come to Temp a day ago, to us to the camp to the rescue. If we can’t get in touch now, we need to get in touch in the morning, and don’t turn off the engine all night - no one knew how much life was left in the battery and whether we could start it later. If we can’t get in touch in the morning, abandon camp and get everyone to Temp before they burn out all the gasoline.

We got to the camp without incident and I immediately, leaving the engine at idle, rushed to the radio. It was ten o'clock in the evening. My entire squad huddled around the microphone and listened attentively. The pace responded almost immediately. I quickly explained the situation with the glass and the generator, and Temp was very sympathetic to us. Then I explained what needed to be torn from where, and Temp said that they would certainly do so. But when I ordered Zhorin to send an all-terrain vehicle to us early, very early in the morning, there was a painful silence on the air. And then we had a rather strange conversation:

Pace, Pace! Why are you silent? How can you hear me? Welcome! – I asked.

I hear you well. “Welcome,” Temp answered without the slightest enthusiasm.

I repeat. Tomorrow early in the morning, I repeat, early in the morning, send Zhorin an all-terrain vehicle with spare parts to my camp. The camp is located on the Kamennaya River, ten kilometers up from the confluence of the Bolotnoy stream. How did you understand? Welcome! –

I understand you. The camp is located on the Kamennaya River, ten kilometers up from the confluence of the Bolotnoy stream. Reception. –

I repeat. Tomorrow early in the morning, I repeat, early in the morning, send Zhorin an all-terrain vehicle with spare parts to my camp at the indicated location. How did you understand? Welcome! –

I understand you. But I can’t send Zhorin an all-terrain vehicle. He's gone. “Reception,” Temp answered mysteriously.

I don’t understand, I don’t understand! I met Zhora yesterday on the route. He walked to Temp. Not entirely accurate, but it was going to Temp. Reception. –

The all-terrain vehicle came to Temp. But now he's gone. Reception. –

Didn't understand! Has he left Tempe? If yes, then where and when will he return? Reception. –

Temp was silent for a moment and answered:

All-terrain vehicle in Tempe. But he's not there. I can't send it to you. He's gone. End of connection. –

There was silence on the air. We all looked at each other dumbfounded and no one understood anything. It was clear that something unpleasant had happened on Tempe that should not have been discussed openly on air. Only one thing became clear to us - there would be no help from Temp.

I sat down on the cot, exhausted. I suddenly felt that I no longer had the strength or the will to fight the problems that somehow suddenly began to attack me from all sides. I realized that everything that happened was a sign that our work and our stay on the island was coming to an end. A decision had to be made. And I accepted it. We're getting out of here, not in the morning, but right now, and getting the hell out of here. That is, in Temp. It was impossible to work anymore.

Without turning off the engine, in the light of the headlights, under the slanting snowfall, we rushed to pack up the camp, mercilessly throwing into the snow everything unnecessary and half-broken, which we had not previously dared to get rid of, knowing that there would be no replacement for it. Everyone was working except Vasya, who was freed from everything, sat in the cockpit and maintained the speed a little higher than idle, so that, God forbid, the engine would not stall. Otherwise, we would have to set up camp again, sit in it and wait for a helicopter for emergency evacuation. It was impossible to go on foot - fifty kilometers in the snow and cold meant almost certain death. Around midnight, we poured the last gasoline from the barrels into the tanks of the all-terrain vehicle, the guys settled down as best they could - some in the back, some outside, clinging to guy ropes and wrapping themselves in tarps and sleeping bags - and we set off to the west.

At dawn the next day we rolled out onto east coast lagoons. I looked at the still distant, but already accessible, cozy homely haze of our tents and simply physically felt how the tension of the last weeks was disappearing. It was all over now. We went down and, rounding the lagoon, came out onto the coastal spit.

On the way to the large seismic tent, I saw the skeleton of an all-terrain vehicle that had burned to the ground. At first I decided that someone, for some mysterious purpose, had dragged here the skeleton of the Gerkin all-terrain vehicle, which burned down shortly before our appearance on the island, but then I discerned the familiar, although distorted by the fire almost beyond recognition, outlines of aluminum racks and blocks of the seismic station, which I myself helped install in the back in the spring. It turned out that this charred iron skeleton was Zhora’s all-terrain vehicle, which is in Tempe, but which is not there, as they tried to explain to me on the radio.

As I was later told, Zhora arrived in Temp about six hours after meeting us, having wandered around a couple of times along the way. His arrival was awaited with impatience, because the mash made by his guys, who were constantly sitting in Tempe, was already ripe and overripe and was becoming very strong, but bitter. Therefore, the table was set overnight and forty liters of mash were poured into mugs and sips without stopping. Everyone knows that even under normal conditions, drinking mash produces some kind of particularly bad and severe intoxication. And here, after a long abstinence, when the body is cleansing and weaning itself from alcohol, with a bad, canned-stewed snack and a lack of vegetables and vitamins, this fusel swill hit everyone’s brains with such force that everything escalated into some kind of wild obscenity. Less than an hour had passed before a general showdown began, tearful declarations of love, complaints to the authorities, finding out who was an asshole and who was not, and all that usual for field drinking. Someone was already beating someone in the corner of the tent when a heart-rending scream was heard: “The all-terrain vehicle is on fire!!” Everyone flew out. A white, dazzling flame beat the candle vertically upward, snatching out of the arctic darkness a brightly illuminated circle in which hopelessly drunk people were rushing about helplessly and falling into the snow, and someone continued to beat someone, but already in the snow. Then the gasoline tanks exploded and everyone ran in all directions. There was no question of saving the all-terrain vehicle. Everything that was inside burned down, the entire station, the darkroom, weapons, tents. Fortunately, before sitting down at the table, Zhora pulled out all the folders with the results from the all-terrain vehicle and brought them into the tent - otherwise they would have burned and the work of the whole season would have been lost and Zhora would have faced serious troubles, even, quite possibly, a trial.

No one ever found out who set fire to the all-terrain vehicle. Suspicion fell on the bomber, nicknamed Radish, who was accidentally found, dead drunk, in the snow behind the tent. He was lying face down, and there was a smoking hole in his cotton pants on the bottom, and on his butt there was a severe burn. It was decided that he, having filled himself with beer to the point of amazement, behind some devil opened the door of the cabin, lit a cigarette, dropped the cigarette butt on the seat, climbed in there himself, sat on the cigarette butt and fell asleep, and when his pants burned to the meat on his ass, he woke up in pain, and climbed out into the fresh air, where he calmly fell asleep almost to death, and the fire continued its work in the oil-soaked seat until it broke out.

Whether it was true or not, no one knew and will never know. All the same, our presence on the island, and at the same time the means of transport on Kotelny Island, has come to an end.

I still completed the remaining routes, working from Tempe. I completed them only because I had to fulfill the plan one hundred percent, otherwise the expedition would have lost the cash bonus.

I returned from my last march at the very end of September and someone took a photo of me and another geophysicist as soon as I got out of the cabin.

This photo still hangs on my wall in my Canadian home - tired, swollen eyes, a black beard, a duffel bag over my shoulder, a carbine under my arm, rubber boots, snow on a pebble spit and a tent in the background. I didn’t know then that this would be my last photograph on Kotelny Island, in the Soviet Arctic, in my country. Then I was just very tired and really wanted to go home to Leningrad.

And then Li-2 came for us and we all happily huddled in the empty cargo compartment, where it was almost as cold as it was in the open air. But it didn’t matter anymore - we were flying to the mainland. We settled down as best we could on our bags and trunks, the plane took off from the ground, our abandoned tents flashed under the wing, the nearby hills of the island drowned in frosty fog and the icy water of the Laptev Sea turned black under the wing. With relief, despite the strictest ban, we lit a cigarette together, celebrating the long-awaited end of the season and the beginning of a long, gradual return to civilization.

Looking at how incredibly quickly and easily the very places where I had been dragging at a snail’s pace in a strained roaring all-terrain vehicle flew by under my wing, I was sincerely glad that everything was already behind me and did not feel the slightest regret that I was parting with this stranger and a cold space where I managed to survive safely. But then I had no idea that this cold and inhospitable world had imperceptibly, unpersistently and unspokenly penetrated into me and put down invisible but tenacious roots in me. Later, having warmed up in family warmth and comfort, returning to my desk at the institute and being drawn into the orderly, normalized city life, I began to catch myself more and more often remembering everything that happened to me then on Kotelny Island, but without bad, without fatigue, danger and helplessness, without cold and discomfort. It’s just that suddenly reality stepped aside and the blue hummocks and snow of the Laptev Strait suddenly appeared, drowning in pink light, long, delicately colored sunsets or the mirror-sparkling frozen sands of Bunge Land. Gradually I realized that I simply love this inexplicably beautiful, half-ghostly, silent and shy world.

We did a lot of damage back then. We burst into this world with our roaring cars, rushed back and forth across the island, wounded the tundra with steel tracks, dumped empty barrels, killed hundreds of deer and killed dozens of unborn ones, and, having destroyed our unfortunate all-terrain vehicles, disappeared as if we were not there was. Almost thirty years have passed since then. About as long as it takes for the tracks of our all-terrain vehicles on the tundra to become overgrown - my beloved Arctic takes a very long time to heal the wounds that are so easy to inflict on it.

I don't know what's going on there now. Perhaps, due to lack of money in an impoverished country, all polar stations have closed and there is no place to rest after a difficult journey. Perhaps, as unnecessary, the air defense company was removed from the island, perhaps the barracks of the airport in Tempe were empty and frozen through, and now there is no one to drink with in the warm wardroom and watch an old movie while the blizzard howls. Don't know. And I won’t regret it at all if this is really the case. Because we are not needed there. All that is needed there is for it to become quiet and for everything to return to its original, eternal state. Let my beloved Arctic sleep soundly and peacefully.

I don't know if I will ever return to those places. Most likely I will never return. But it’s so close from Canada, you just have to fly across the North Pole, but it still doesn’t work out, fate doesn’t allow it, and time is running out. But if it suddenly turns out that I return, I promise that everything will be different. I promise that I won’t rush around the tundra there, making noise and littering. I promise that I will enter carefully, so as not to wake up my beloved, and sit quietly somewhere in the corner. I don’t need anything special anymore, I’ll just sit and watch, hoping that that pink light will light up over the strait again, like many, many years ago. Most likely, I won't wait for this. Then I will carefully, trying not to make any noise, go back where I came from. And forever.

The construction of Arctic infrastructure on the northern borders of Russia has been going on at an accelerated pace for two years now. However, the life of military personnel on the remote islands is still oversaturated with “hardships and hardships,” and transfer to mainland For them it seems an unrealistic prospect. After a wide public outcry that arose around the material about the military service from the Arctic island of Kotelny, the site decided to figure out how the base on the New Siberian Islands arose and what tasks it will perform as part of the Arctic Military District.

38,000 kilometers of tundra

This is exactly the area of ​​the New Siberian Islands archipelago, washed by two seas of the Arctic Ocean. For nine months of the year, the land on the islands is covered with snow and ice, and even in summer the air temperature here rarely exceeds +5 degrees Celsius.

There is formally no permanent civilian population here, but workers at polar stations and hunters spend most of the calendar year on the islands. In harsh arctic conditions, people hunt for arctic fox, fish and look for scarce mammoth bone, from which Yakut craftsmen create unique artistic products.

Fickle and quantitative composition animals living on the islands. In summer it comes from the mainland reindeer, polar bears wander across the ice. The coastal waters are inhabited by walrus, seal, and beluga whale.

The most large island The archipelago is Kotelny - its area is 23,200 kilometers. It is believed that the island was discovered back in 1773 by merchant Ivan Lyakhov while observing wandering herds of wild deer.

The beginning of scientific exploration of the islands dates back to the 19th century. In 1912, the icebreakers "Taimyr" and "Vaigach" made an expedition to them, and by 1928 a geophysical observatory appeared on one of the islands - the first stationary station on this land.

Capital "Temp"

The polar station at the Temp airfield, which arose after the war on Kotelny, is considered to be a kind of center, the capital of the New Siberian Islands archipelago. It was built on a pebble spit, near a fishing and hunting base of five wooden buildings, which supplied the population of the base with necessary food products.

We lived in Tempe, despite the unofficial status of the capital, modestly, in a northern way. There was a common barracks where all the airfield workers, headed by its chief, spent the night, a canteen, a meteorologists’ office and a small bathhouse. And, of course, a garage for repairing equipment and storing the GAZ-47 tracked transporter available to the polar explorers. As elsewhere in the North, this machine, which received the slang name "Stepanida", was the "workhorse" of the Tempa.

The then completely new AN-2, LI-2 and IL-14 landed at Kotelny. Planes flew to the island no more than twice a month, with regular delays due to bad weather. As witnesses of those polar years recall, aircraft They always looked forward to it at Kotelny. Together with them big land fresh news, correspondence, and products arrived. On the way back, the planes took away workers who had been replaced, the catch of hunters and fishermen, as well as data from meteorologists.

The heavy tread of war communism

The military appeared at Kotelny in the late 60s. The Cold War was in full swing and to ensure air defense on the northern borders of the Union, a radar was installed on the island. To serve it, a company of soldiers living in hastily built barracks was transferred to Kotelny.

In the 1970s, the USSR Ministry of Geology became actively interested in the New Siberian Islands. It was decided to create an expeditionary camp for seismic exploration specialists in the immediate vicinity of the Temp airfield, and seismic laboratories themselves appeared throughout the archipelago. By official version, they were supposed to monitor natural earthquakes in the Arctic Ocean. Taking into account the difficult political situation of that time, it cannot be ruled out that the geologists at Kotelny were, as they say, “dual-purpose” and were involved, among other things, in military-applied seismology.

Moreover, seismic exploration attracted a lot of attention at that difficult time. Suffice it to recall the resolution of the CPSU Central Committee of May 13, 1958, which literally said the following: “In connection with the urgent need to expand and improve in the shortest possible time the permanent system for early detection of nuclear explosions, oblige the USSR Ministry of Defense to create a permanent system during 1958-1959 nuclear weapons testing control service, incorporating existing special surveillance units into its composition." At the same time, in 1959, the “Special Control Service” was formed, under the auspices of which the so-called “early detection system for nuclear tests” functioned.

With the collapse of the USSR, the development of the New Siberian Islands was marked, if not an end, then certainly an ellipsis. In 1993, against the background of a large-scale curtailment of activities in the Arctic, the polar infrastructure at Kotelny was abandoned by people.

Rise from the Ashes - Boiler House

The first survey of military facilities on the New Siberian Islands after 20 years of inactivity took place in 2011 by a complex expedition of the Russian Geographical Society. Its participants decided that the runway of the Temp airfield had survived and was subject to restoration.

The next year, military sailors set off to explore Kotelny. The flagship of the Northern Fleet itself, the nuclear-powered missile cruiser Pyotr Velikiy, approached the shores of the New Siberian Islands. One of the tasks was then called “practicing landing operations.” It was during this operation that the deck-based Ka-27 helicopter made a hard landing at Kotelny. The crew was not injured as a result of the incident, but the progress of the expedition was disrupted.

In 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the return of the military to Kotelny. “Our military left there in 1993, and yet this is a very important point in the Arctic Ocean. I also mean a new stage in the development of the Arctic sea ​​route. We agreed that at this point we would not only recreate military base, but we will also put the airfield in order, make it possible for representatives of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, hydrologists, and climate specialists to participate in joint work to ensure the safety and efficiency of work on the Northern Sea Route, so that Russia can effectively control this part of its territory,” the Russian leader said at a meeting at the Ministry of Defense.

The words were not far from the deeds and already in October of the same year the military department reported on the restoration of the Temp airfield. The debut of the revived runway at Kotelny was the reception of an An-72 military transport aircraft with a working group of the Ministry of Defense on board.

Six months later, large-scale airborne exercises were held at the Tempa base, which involved parachute landing of 350 people and military equipment. At the same time, the construction of a temporary field camp on the island began, and equipment and construction materials were imported.

Terrible flower of the north

A year ago, a most important event occurred in the history of the military base at Kotelny. The Russian Ministry of Defense decided to build a closed-type town called “Northern Clover” here.

“This will be a modular town, which we are building using modern technologies. Personnel will only go outside for watch and duty - this is living in a closed-cycle city,” Oleg Golubev, commander of a detachment of warships of the Northern Fleet, said about the construction .

At the initial stage, more than 440 workers and about 120 units of construction equipment were involved in the construction of the town, which from a height resembles a trefoil, painted in the colors of the Russian flag.

In December 2014, a fifth, Arctic Military District was created in Russia. It included submarine and surface forces, naval aviation and air defense of the Northern Fleet. The event was also marked by the announcement of the commissioning of the Northern Clover.

Unprepossessing life of the island army

Against the backdrop of the triumphant exploration of the Arctic, through which Russia is advancing by leaps and bounds, it is easy to forget about those who are pulling the country to the northern riches on their shoulders. And the famous line from the regulations, which says that “a soldier is obliged to steadfastly and courageously endure all the hardships and deprivations of military service” is probably the only thing that can explain the conditions of service at Kotelny today.

In the course of preparing the next material about the life of ordinary soldiers and officers in the Russian army of the 21st century, the site’s correspondents talked to more than 10 military personnel from Kotelny and found out what the development of the Arctic actually turns out to be.

Poor quality food and rusty water from taps, lack of stable communication with relatives, delays in payment of allowances, inability to transfer to the mainland - these are just a few of the problems that the soldiers at Kotelny faced.

“Lord, we’re just tired of all this…” says the wife of one of the servicemen in despair, who has been waiting for her husband to return from the island for more than a year.

The end is near

At the end of May, the FSUE Spetsstroyengineering under Spetsstroy of Russia summed up the results of the tender for the second and third stages of construction and commissioning of the Temp airfield at Kotelny. Another 5 billion government funds will be spent on Arctic infrastructure. The airfield will be able to receive aircraft of all types, landing units will be able to be based in military camps on the island, and warships will be based in Stakhanovtsev Bay. After all, the main task of the new military district, as the commander of the Northern Fleet Vladimir Korolev succinctly noted, is maintaining stability in the Arctic.

Time will tell whether the life of the military personnel themselves, who work every day in the harshest conditions, will change after construction is completed. After all, no one will say how many billions will be spent on people.

In 2013, in the context of infrastructure construction in the Arctic, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu expressed himself unequivocally:

I really don’t want anyone to have to perform great feats because of someone else’s laxity.

Who is to blame for the current situation at Kotelny remains to be seen, but the people serving there are already performing their feat today.

Continues to monitor developments.

Kotelny Island - from the polar station to the Arctic bridgehead

The construction of Arctic infrastructure on the northern borders of Russia has been going on at an accelerated pace for two years now. However, the life of military personnel on remote islands is still oversaturated with “hardships and hardships,” and transfer to the mainland seems an unrealistic prospect for them. After a wide public outcry that arose around the material about the military service from the Arctic island of Kotelny, Voennoye.RF decided to figure out how the base on the New Siberian Islands came about and what tasks it will perform as part of the Arctic Military District.

The eye immediately catches the mistake. We do not have an Arctic Military District, we have the USC SF (United Strategic Command of the Northern Fleet).

38,000 kilometers of tundra

This is exactly the area of ​​the New Siberian Islands archipelago, washed by two seas of the Arctic Ocean. For nine months of the year, the land on the islands is covered with snow and ice, and even in summer the air temperature here rarely exceeds +5 degrees Celsius.

There is formally no permanent civilian population here, but workers at polar stations and hunters spend most of the calendar year on the islands. In harsh arctic conditions, people hunt for arctic fox, fish and look for scarce mammoth bone, from which Yakut craftsmen create unique artistic products.
The quantitative composition of animals living on the islands is also variable. In the summer, reindeer come from the mainland, and polar bears wander across the ice. The coastal waters are inhabited by walrus, seal, and beluga whale.

The New Siberian Islands are belonging to Russia archipelago in the Arctic Ocean between the Laptev Sea and East Siberian Sea. Administratively, it belongs to Yakutia. They consist of three groups of islands: the Lyakhovsky Islands, the Anjou Islands and the De Long Islands. The first information about the islands was reported at the beginning of the 18th century by the Cossack Yakov Permyakov, who sailed from the mouth of the Lena to the Kolyma. In 1712, as part of a Cossack detachment led by Mercury Vagin, he landed on the island, later called Bolshoi Lyakhovsky.

The largest island of the archipelago is Kotelny - its area is 23,200 kilometers. It is believed that the island was discovered back in 1773 by a merchant Ivan Lyakhov while observing wandering herds of wild deer.

The eastern part of the island, now called the Thaddeevsky Peninsula, was once explored by the famous Yakov Sannikov.

Where the name of the island came from is not known for certain. One of the versions claims that the Cossacks, when landing on the island for the first time, found a cauldron on the shore, previously left by an unknown person. According to another version, they, on the contrary, forgot their own cauldron on the shore, in a hurry to leave the island.

The island's topography is hilly, in the south is its highest point - Mount Malakatyn-Tas, 361 meters high. The earth's crust consists mainly of limestone and shales. Inland waters represented by small rivers and lakes. Largest lake- Evsekyu-Kuel. The climate is arctic and harsh. Animal and vegetable world typical of arctic tundras.

During the Soviet Union, the island housed a military base, mothballed after the collapse of the USSR. In 2013, restoration of the base and runway of the Temp airfield began. In the future, it is planned to build a full-fledged military camp here.

Kotelny Island is located between the East Siberian and Laptev Seas and is the largest in the archipelago of the New Siberian Islands, as well as in the small archipelago of the Anjou Islands. According to administrative division, the island is part of the Bulunsky ulus of Yakutia, Russian Federation.

The area of ​​the island is 23,200 square kilometers, highest point- Mount Malakatyn-Tas, raised above sea level by 361 meters. Kotelny Island is part of the Ust-Lensky nature reserve.

The beginning of scientific exploration of the islands dates back to the 19th century. In 1912, an expedition was made to them icebreakers "Taimyr" and "Vaigach", and by 1928, a geophysical observatory appeared on one of the islands - the first stationary station on this earth.

Capital "Temp"

The polar station at the Temp airfield, which arose after the war on Kotelny, is considered to be a kind of center, the capital of the New Siberian Islands archipelago. It was built on a pebble spit, near a fishing and hunting base of five wooden buildings, which supplied the population of the base with necessary food products.

GAZ-47 at Kotelny. Russian Geographical Society Novosibirsk

We lived in Tempe, despite the unofficial status of the capital, modestly, in a northern way. There was a common barracks where all the airfield workers, headed by its chief, spent the night, a canteen, a meteorologists’ office and a small bathhouse. And, of course, a garage for repairing equipment and storing the GAZ-47 tracked transporter available to the polar explorers. As elsewhere in the North, this machine, which received the slang name "Stepanida", was the "workhorse" of the Tempa.

The then completely new AN-2, LI-2 and IL-14 landed at Kotelny. Planes flew to the island no more than twice a month, with regular delays due to bad weather. As witnesses of those polar years recall, aircraft at Kotelny were always eagerly awaited. Along with them, fresh news, correspondence, and food came from the mainland. On the way back, the planes took away workers who had been replaced, the catch of hunters and fishermen, as well as data from meteorologists.

The heavy tread of war communism

The military appeared at Kotelny in the late 60s. The Cold War was in full swing and to ensure air defense on the northern borders of the Union, a radar was installed on the island. To serve it, a company of soldiers living in hastily built barracks was transferred to Kotelny.
In the 1970s, the USSR Ministry of Geology became actively interested in the New Siberian Islands. It was decided to create an expeditionary camp for seismic exploration specialists in the immediate vicinity of the Temp airfield, and seismic laboratories themselves appeared throughout the archipelago. According to the official version, they were supposed to monitor natural earthquakes in the Arctic Ocean. Taking into account the difficult political situation of that time, it cannot be ruled out that the geologists at Kotelny were, as they say, “dual-purpose” and were involved, among other things, in military-applied seismology.


Seismological station at Kotelny

Moreover, seismic exploration attracted a lot of attention at that difficult time. Suffice it to recall the resolution of the CPSU Central Committee of May 13, 1958, which literally said the following: “In connection with the urgent need to expand and improve in the shortest possible time the permanent system for early detection of nuclear explosions, oblige the USSR Ministry of Defense to create a permanent system during 1958-1959 nuclear weapons testing control service, incorporating existing special surveillance units into its composition." At the same time, in 1959, the “Special Control Service” was formed, under the auspices of which the so-called “early detection system for nuclear tests” functioned.

With the collapse of the USSR, the development of the New Siberian Islands was marked, if not an end, then certainly an ellipsis. In 1993, against the background of a large-scale curtailment of activities in the Arctic, the polar infrastructure at Kotelny was abandoned by people.

Rise from the Ashes - Boiler House

The first survey of military facilities on the New Siberian Islands after 20 years of inactivity took place in 2011 by a complex expedition of the Russian Geographical Society. Its participants decided that the runway of the Temp airfield had survived and was subject to restoration.

The state of the infrastructure of the Temp airfield during an inspection by the Russian Geographical Society expedition

The next year, military sailors set off to explore Kotelny. The flagship of the Northern Fleet itself, the nuclear-powered missile cruiser Pyotr Velikiy, approached the shores of the New Siberian Islands. One of the tasks was then called “practicing landing operations.” It was during this operation that the deck-based Ka-27 helicopter made a hard landing at Kotelny. The crew was not injured as a result of the incident, but the progress of the expedition was disrupted.

In 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the return of the military to Kotelny. “Our military left there in 1993, and yet this is a very important point in the Arctic Ocean. I also mean a new stage in the development of the Northern Sea Route. We agreed that at this point we will not only recreate a military base, but also We will put the airfield in order, make it possible for representatives of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, hydrologists, and climate specialists to participate in joint work to ensure the safety and efficiency of work on the Northern Sea Route, so that Russia can effectively control this part of its territory,” the Russian leader said at a meeting at the Ministry of Defense.

Temp airfield after restoration

The words were not far from the deeds and already in October of the same year the military department reported on the restoration of the Temp airfield. The debut of the revived runway at Kotelny was the reception of an An-72 military transport aircraft with a working group of the Ministry of Defense on board.

Six months later, large-scale airborne exercises were held at the Tempa base, which involved parachute landing of 350 people and military equipment. At the same time, the construction of a temporary field camp on the island began, and equipment and construction materials were imported.

Terrible flower of the north

A year ago, a most important event occurred in the history of the military base at Kotelny. The Russian Ministry of Defense decided to build here closed town "Northern Clover".

"Northern Clover" on Kotelny Island

“This will be a modular town, which we are building using modern technologies. Personnel will only go outside for watch and duty - this is living in a closed-cycle city,” Oleg Golubev, commander of a detachment of warships of the Northern Fleet, said about the construction .
At the initial stage, more than 440 workers and about 120 units of construction equipment were involved in the construction of the town, which from a height resembles a trefoil, painted in the colors of the Russian flag.
In December 2014, a fifth, Arctic Military District was created in Russia. It included submarine and surface forces, naval aviation and air defense of the Northern Fleet. The event was also marked by the announcement of the commissioning of the Northern Clover.
Unprepossessing life of the island army
Against the backdrop of the triumphant exploration of the Arctic, through which Russia is advancing by leaps and bounds, it is easy to forget about those who are pulling the country to the northern riches on their shoulders. And the famous line from the regulations, which says that “a soldier is obliged to steadfastly and courageously endure all the hardships and deprivations of military service” is probably the only thing that can explain the conditions of service at Kotelny today.

In the course of preparing the next material about the life of ordinary soldiers and officers in the Russian army of the 21st century, Voennoe.RF correspondents talked with more than 10 military personnel from Kotelny and found out what the development of the Arctic actually turns out to be.
Poor quality food and rusty water from taps, lack of stable communication with relatives, delays in payment of allowances, inability to transfer to the mainland - these are just a few of the problems that the soldiers at Kotelny faced.

“Lord, we’re just tired of all this…” says the wife of one of the servicemen in despair, who has been waiting for her husband to return from the island for more than a year.

The end is near

At the end of May, the FSUE Spetsstroyengineering under Spetsstroy of Russia summed up the results of the tender for the second and third stages of construction and commissioning of the Temp airfield at Kotelny. Another 5 billion government funds will be spent on Arctic infrastructure. The airfield will be able to receive aircraft of all types, landing units will be able to be based in military camps on the island, and warships will be based in Stakhanovtsev Bay. After all, the main task of the new military district, as the commander of the Northern Fleet Vladimir Korolev succinctly noted, is maintaining stability in the Arctic.

Russian military in the Arctic

Time will tell whether the life of the military personnel themselves, who work every day in the harshest conditions, will change after construction is completed. After all, no one will say how many billions will be spent on people.
In 2013, in the context of infrastructure construction in the Arctic, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu expressed himself unequivocally:
I really don’t want anyone to have to perform great feats because of someone else’s laxity.

Arctic "Temp" on Kotelny Island is back in service

The Temp Arctic airfield, mothballed more than 20 years ago, is back in service. At the end of October, the first Russian military transport aircraft (An-72) landed on its runway.

Performance characteristics of the An-72 “Cheburashka” aircraft

An aviation commandant's office also opened on the island.

"Temp", located on Kotelny Island, part of the New Siberian Islands archipelago, was built back in Soviet times. It began operating in 1949 and received aircraft until the early 90s, when it collapsed Soviet Union and Arctic exploration was suspended. Accordingly, the airport was abandoned.
Times have changed, and Russia has taken up the exploration of the Artik with new energy. They first tried to recreate the airfield in 2012. The Russian military planned to land on the island from the air, but it didn’t work out - the helicopter crashed. Fortunately, no one was hurt, but the expedition had to be abandoned.
The second attempt was made from the sea and was successful. In September of this year, ships of the Russian Northern Fleet, led by the heavy missile cruiser (TARKR) Peter the Great, arrived at Kotelny Island. They delivered a special detachment of 150 people to the island, as well as 40 units of various equipment, fuel and food.

The ice expedition undertaken can be called unprecedented.

Nuclear icebreaker “50 Let Pobedy” (project 10521). IT is the largest not only in Russia, but also in the world. The overall width of this giant is 30 meters, maximum length is about 159.6 meters, draft is 11 m, shaft power (energy flow directed to the shafts from the propulsion system) is 49 MW, propulsive power is 54 MW. Displacement - 25168 tons. The maximum ice thickness that the icebreaker is designed to handle is 2.8 m. The crew is 106 people (in our days). Commissioned in 2007 by OJSC Baltic Plant.

Almost the entire nuclear-powered surface fleet of Russia was involved in the operation - TARKR "Peter the Great" and four nuclear-powered icebreakers of the State Corporation "Rosatom" - "Yamal", "Vaigach", "50 Let Pobedy" and "Taimyr".

The ships and vessels covered over 4 thousand nautical miles, passing into the Kara and Barents Seas, as well as the Laptev Sea.

On the largest of the islands of the archipelago, Kotelny Island, it was decided to build a permanent pier for receiving barges and middle-class vessels, similar to the pier on the island New Earth, and also use the port of Tiksi as a base point for the delivery of materials to Kotelny Island, which will ensure the possibility of delivering supplies, including wintering supplies, for three months.

On September 13, engineering and special equipment and various property were unloaded onto Kotelny Island, and a test tactical exercise of the Marine Corps was carried out on an amphibious landing on an unequipped coast. In total, 35 units of military engineering and special equipment were unloaded.

Ship helicopters began unloading the ships on September 13. A field camp has been equipped for the temporary accommodation of marines, personnel, and the airfield commandant's office, and its security and defense has been organized.

Seven crews of engineering and special equipment of the marine engineering service equipped three landing points, the shore was strengthened, the coastal site, routes and access roads were equipped. Two helicopters involved Mi-26 Air Force for unloading large cargo.

Characteristics of the Mi-26T modification.

Parameter	Characteristic
Main rotor diameter
Number of rotor blades
Area swept by the main rotor
Tail rotor diameter
Fuselage length
Main rotor height
Chassis base
Chassis track
Empty mass
Normal takeoff weight
Maximum take-off weight
Load capacity in cargo compartment
Load capacity on external sling
Cargo compartment length
Cargo compartment width
Cargo compartment height
Cargo hatch dimensions
Cargo compartment volume
Mi-26 crew
Mi-26T2 crew	2 people (3 people with external load sling)
Soldier passenger capacity
Passenger capacity of paratroopers
Passenger capacity of stretchers for the wounded	60 + three places for accompanying medical workers
Fuel tank capacity
Volume of external fuel tanks (PTB)	14,800 l in four tanks or 4,780 l in two tanks
Power point	2 × turboshaft Motor Sich D-136 (PD-12 in the future)
Engine power	2 × 11,400 l. With. (takeoff)
Jet fuel consumption	3100 kg/hour
Maximum speed
Cruising speed
Flight range at maximum fueling
Flight range at maximum load
Flight range during ferrying	2350 km (with four PTB)
Service ceiling
Static ceiling
Dynamic ceiling

During the period from September 14 to 16, ships were unloaded using landing craft, pontoon ferries, ship helicopters and Air Force helicopters.

Currently, all equipment and property have been unloaded. Unloading of diesel fuel and fuels and lubricants continues.

Work has begun on the reconstruction of the runway at the Temp airfield. Frame heated tents have been installed for temporary accommodation of personnel. The installation of prefabricated housing from social blocks has begun, and the system has been deployed.

In parallel with the unloading operation, a field camp was equipped on Kotelny Island to accommodate the marines of the Skver Fleet, frame heated tents were installed for temporary accommodation of personnel of the aviation commandant’s office, a space communications system and a medical unit were deployed. Restoration work has begun on the Temp airfield runway.
Modern technologies will make it possible to have a full-fledged military camp on the New Siberian Islands, where not only military personnel will be stationed for their intended purpose, but also meteorologists and Emergency Situations Ministry employees, who together will have to ensure the safe use of the Northern Sea Route.

Kotelny Island from satellite

It was possible to restore the island's infrastructure and build an airfield in record time, in just a couple of months. Now a modular residential complex for polar explorers has been created on the island, where there is everything necessary - electricity, a water filtration and purification system, hot and cold water supply.

According to forecasts, air traffic between Kotelny Island and the mainland will be carried out all year round, in any weather. In addition, in the near future, according to forecasts, this Harbour Air will be able to receive military transport aircraft, including the heavy Il-76.

So far, the military has completed only part of the tasks set by the country’s president to strengthen the Russian presence in the Arctic. Now it is necessary to recreate the structure of another Arctic airport - the Tiksi take-off complex, located in the Yakut village of the same name.

Will SF-USC be given other tasks in addition to protecting fish, gas and oil resources? Yes, they are being installed now. Here we can highlight the transport direction - increasing the safety and efficiency of using the Northern Sea Route (operation of a military airfield on the New Siberian Islands, work to restore runways at other military Arctic airfields - all these facts fit into the new strategy).

Another area that the General Staff directly highlights is ensuring security in the north of Russia. After the collapse of the USSR, the northern (Arctic) direction for Russia became one of the most unprotected. And if you consider what strategically important resources it has here Russian Federation, then the “uncovered” Russian North may soon become easy prey for those who have long set their sights on the Arctic. And we are not necessarily talking about conducting combat operations or large-scale special operations.

And so that no one suddenly has an urgent need to test the strength of the Russian Arctic in the near future, the same structure is being created in which naval, air and land groups will be integrated. A single fist is being created, which, by the mere fact of its existence, is quite capable of cooling down hotheads. By this, Russia makes it clear to its “partners” that it is ready to defend its interests, using all available forces and means for this. And the strength and resources are not so little. One Arctic group of Russian icebreakers, for which, of course, there will always be work in the region, for what it’s worth... If you hadn’t announced the start of work to revive the military presence in the Arctic now, and if you hadn’t started doing this, rolling up your sleeves, you could have gotten one tomorrow a “forceful move” that would force the country to fly out of the region in a traffic jam. It is not without reason that the world press is already beginning to exaggerate the topic of the “international status” of the Arctic... So the timeliness of the work begun is difficult to overestimate.

Russia has restored its military base on the New Siberian Islands, the main task of which will be to ensure the security of the Northern Sea Route. The base was closed 20 years ago, but now a group of military personnel has arrived there and is working to re-open the facility.

The nuclear icebreaker “50 Let Pobedy” leads warships of the Northern Fleet to the New Siberian Islands.

On the largest of the islands of the archipelago, Kotelny Island, it was decided to build a stationary berth for receiving barges and middle-class vessels similar to the berth on Novaya Zemlya Island, and also to use the port of Tiksi as a base point for the delivery of materials to Kotelny Island, which will provide the possibility of delivering supplies, including wintering for three months.

Big landing ship project 775 "Olenegorsky Gornyak" unloads equipment on Kotelny Island
On September 13, engineering and special equipment and various property were unloaded onto Kotelny Island, and a test tactical exercise of the Marine Corps was carried out on an amphibious landing on an unequipped coast. In total, 35 units of military engineering and special equipment were unloaded.
Ship helicopters began unloading the ships on September 13. A field camp has been equipped for the temporary accommodation of marines, personnel, and the airfield commandant's office, and its security and defense has been organized.

Seven crews of engineering and special equipment of the marine engineering service equipped three landing points, the shore was strengthened, the coastal site, routes and access roads were equipped. Two Mi-26 helicopters of the Air Force were used to unload large cargo.
During the period from September 14 to 16, ships were unloaded using landing craft, pontoon ferries, ship helicopters and Air Force helicopters.
Currently, all equipment and property have been unloaded. Unloading of diesel fuel and fuels and lubricants continues.
Work has begun on the reconstruction of the runway at the Temp airfield. Frame heated tents have been installed for temporary accommodation of personnel. The installation of prefabricated housing from social blocks has begun, and the system has been deployed.

In parallel with the unloading operation, a field camp was equipped on Kotelny Island to accommodate the marines of the Skver Fleet, frame heated tents were installed for temporary accommodation of personnel of the aviation commandant’s office, a space communications system and a medical unit were deployed. Restoration work has begun on the Temp airfield runway.
Modern technologies will make it possible to have a full-fledged military camp on the New Siberian Islands, where not only military personnel will be stationed for their intended purpose, but also meteorologists and Emergency Situations Ministry employees, who together will have to ensure the safe use of the Northern Sea Route.

Kotelny Island from satellite

The New Siberian Islands are a Russian-owned archipelago in the Arctic Ocean between the Laptev Sea and the East Siberian Sea. Administratively, it belongs to Yakutia. They consist of three groups of islands: the Lyakhovsky Islands, the Anjou Islands and the De Long Islands. The first information about the islands was reported at the beginning of the 18th century by the Cossack Yakov Permyakov, who sailed from the mouth of the Lena to the Kolyma. In 1712, as part of a Cossack detachment led by Mercury Vagin, he landed on the island, later called Bolshoi Lyakhovsky.
Kotelny Island itself was discovered in 1773 by the Russian merchant Ivan Lyakhov. The eastern part of the island, now called the Thaddeevsky Peninsula, was explored at one time by the famous Yakov Sannikov.