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VOYAGE TO THE © 2003-2004 Michael L. Charters, Sierra Madre, Ca. |
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Russian nuclear icebreaker Yamal
at Franz Josef Land
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| I think it was on the
fogbound, treeless coast of far northwestern Siberia that the true reality
and significance of my experience finally sank in. I was wandering around on mushy Arctic tundra at a Gulag camp abandoned only about 30 years earlier, among sagging wire fences, dilapidated and lonely guard towers, and crumbling wooden huts, with my temporary home a Russian nuclear icebreaker somewhere lost in the mists a few miles offshore and the noise of helicopter engines rising and falling in the chill air as our group shuttled back and forth. When the sound of the rotors receded, we were surrounded not only by hundreds of miles of empty tundra, but by a stillness that seemed to contain the voices of countless victims of the Soviet prison system. Yet the fact that we had gotten such immediate and unequivocal permission to visit this sensitive site spoke to us more eloquently than anything else could have of the tremendous changes that were taking place in the Russia of the early 1990's. |
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| (L) Waterjet-powered
catamaran ferry Varangerfjord which took us from Kirkenes, Norway to Murmansk, Russia (I flew from L.A. to Copenhagen to Oslo to Kirkenes). (R) Rica Arctic Hotel in Kirkenes. |
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| (L) Wake of
the Varangerfjord at 28 knots. The trip from Kirkenes to Murmansk takes
about 4-1/2 hours and is a new commercial route initiated in 1991. (R) Russian pilot boat that met us at Murmansk. |
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| (L) Murmansk is one of
the major Russian seaports, both commercial and military. These are two
STOL (short takeoff and landing) aircraft carriers. The Yamal's crew showed no concern at our snapping pictures of their naval vessels. (R) Our first view of a nuclear icebreaker, one of the five operated by the Murmansk Shipping Co. This is the Rossiya, slightly older sister-ship of the Yamal. (Below) Scenes of Murmansk harbor, one of the great natural anchorages of the world, which lies at the end of a long fjord like those of Scandinavia. |
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| In
1994, I combined three major lifelong interests, Russian history, ships
and nautical matters, and Arctic exploration, and signed up for a journey to the North Pole. Only the year before had such a trip been possible, so about 100 American passengers joined 140 Russian officers and crewmembers to cross the Arctic Ocean. The Russians were just as excited about it as we were since they had never done anything like it either. The Yamal is one of the world's most powerful ships, capable of travelling through the Arctic's heaviest ice, and one of only three surface vessels in the world able to reach the North Pole in either summer or winter. |
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Visit my main website at:
www.calflora.net |
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