A couple of months ago, I went to the north coast of Siberia to install one of our instruments for the purpose of measuring the pollution which enters the Arctic in that region.
As it happened, we couldn’t fly to our destination, because of bad weather. I will return there in August for a second attempt..
17/06/2019
Attached pictures from loading equipment last week. I’ll be in that town on Sunday, then ski-plane to the site much further north.
This next link is from the height of summer:
Yes, I have packed my ECW’s . They’ve been waiting in a box for five years.
Got my dogtags, too: https://www.mydogtag.com
17/06/2019
Sunday morning. Went to Orthodox services in both the (new) city church; and the historical reconstructed original fort from 1564. Bought an icon card of Saint Antony. Both it and me were blessed by the priests. I explained that we were going to Bely Island where there is recently built a tiny northernmost Orthodox chapel. I will take the St. Antony card and leave it there. Much singing, chanting, bowing and crossing. Very ancient and resonant atmosphere.
Sunday morning: Went to Orthodox service in main church, also in reconstructed medieval church (pic). Was blessed by priests, twice. May need it, because of evening news.
Afternoon: open-air festival at nearby village of indigenous people. Several yurts set up for visitors with stoves inside. Seriously cute kids.
Return: Arctic Circle marker is on outskirts of town. Picture shows my reflection directly on top of the line.
Evening news:
Situation setting up for possibility of giant screw-up.
(1). Vassili and the truck are not on the island yet – 700 km done, 80 km still to go. Unknown mechanical problem has reduced them to walking speed. No contact until next scheduled satellite call tomorrow mid-morning. Once they do arrive, at least 2 days’ setting up. But:
(2). Pilot says we can fly out only on Tuesday. Snowstorms coming, no flying after Wednesday. 5 hours each way. Leave 4 AM, arrive 9 AM. But:
(3). Pilot also “seems” to have said that we can fly out on Tues, return Weds as long as we take off ahead of storm on Weds. This implies overnight on Bely, but no facilities there other than 2-room weather station. If wx goes bad quickly, we could be stuck with nothing more than what we’re wearing (no weight for ‘luggage’ on bush plane). If plane fails to take off ahead of storm, not clear how much work it would be to clear landing strip for takeoff.
(4). No extra food for us there, must take.
(5). Vassili and truck crew “might” need 10 days to get back, if truck reduced to walking speed. No-one knows if they have enough food.
(6) Olga informed me that she gets seriously airsick, will need to lie down in plane (where?) and may be incapacitated for hours upon arrival.
(7) Olga totally freaked out, on phone all the time. Her laptop still on Moscow time = 2 hours different. We missed dinner here, restaurant closed at 9 PM on Sunday, she thought it was only 7.
(8) Vassili’s truck may break down completely.
(9) to save (her) money, Olga wants us to check out of this hotel at 4 AM on Tuesday.
Me? – I’m just along for the ride. Picture in front of one of the original settlement cabins 100+ years ago.
Wish me luck and fortitude (both mental and physical, {+1})
17/06/2019
Some of you have asked about ECW’s. Like all other equipment, I run them through a checkout in advance: one does *not* want to find that something is missing at the last minute.
FOR YOUR AMUSEMENT … I took the attached sequence before I boiled to death in my over-heated hotel room. But I know that I will need all of this when we get there.
Doing foolish things sometimes takes a lot of preparation.
17/06/2019
Early phone call: “Fly!”.
Quickly dress in ECW’s, pack bags, in car to airstrip 9 AM. Weather in Salekhard is clear, crisp, -13’C.
Load stuff into plane (pic 1289).
Pilot Vladimir in left seat; I am in the right-hand seat (pic 1290).
Start engines
Fly north over vastness of frozen nowhere (pic 1306)
Halfway up Yamal Peninsula, fly over yurt camp of indigenous Nenets people, middle of ice, yurt + stuff + reindeer. (Pic 1319).
Not much further, encounter wall of blowing snow. No possibility to proceed, because we could not see how/where to land on tundra at Bely Island, still another 300 clicks north. Complete white-out.
Pilot aborts mission, turns around.
3 hours later, back in Salekhard, snowing, blowing, -9’C.
Olga had checked us out of ‘nice’ hotel (too expensive for her: $80 / night). Checked us into ‘economy’ hotel ($55 / night). I will be considerate, and muse on whether one can use the term ‘quaint’ to describe linoleum.
Dinner in Linoleum Hotel’s cafeteria was so astonishing, it reminded me of my childhood in postwar England. (who put the “omni” in “omnivore” ??). Retreated to Linoleum room with bottle of beer to rinse out the greasy taste (pic 1322).
Most likely, we cannot successfully fly at this time of year: weather is too unpredictable, can change from clear to snow/fog/ice in 2 hours. Will have to return in ‘summer’ = mosquitos almost as large as airplane.
Tie up loose ends of organizational issues tomorrow; depart SLY-SVO; back to LAX in a couple of days, such a ridiculous contrast.
[1] “It’s the Arctic”
[2] “I’ll be back”
17/06/2019
Leaped out of plunging helicopter onto top of burning skyscraper, in order to prevent nuclear secrets from falling into the hands of the Mafia;
Complimented an elegant lady in a restaurant on her grace, poise and classical fashion style; and was punched through a plate-glass window by her jealous husband;
Was in a championship game of chess versus the world grandmaster, and “things just escalated” when I checkmated him;
Fought off a hungry polar bear with nothing other than a piece of driftwood;
Was not looking where I was going, and walked smack into the wing of the airplane, causing the metal frame of my glasses to inflict a gigantic circular bruise.
The Gods of the ancient Greeks were jealous of man’s pretensions, and required ritual humiliation and sacrifice. The Aztec Gods had the same ideas, but their requirements were somewhat more gruesome. The mysterious forces that control science are no exception. I guess that yesterday it was “my turn” to deliver the Daily Sacrificial Stupid.
And; by doing so; prevented said Gods of Chance from getting their revenge in other ways: such as aircraft crashes, bouts of diarrhea, English food, or any of the other disasters that regularly befall expeditions to distant places.
Just ‘being intrepid’ is hard enough; being consistently suave and well-dressed while simultaneously being intrepid is almost impossible for anyone other than Sean Connery.
But it’s a good story and allows me to glower very convincingly.
17/06/2019
Well, we *didn’t* get to Bely Island.
But we *did* have an Aethalometer on hand – which I certainly wasn’t going to allow to sit in a box until summer.
And we *are* at a Far North location, for which there is considerable value for any kind of data at all. Because, in fact, there are NO OTHER MEASUREMENTS OF BC ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE NORTHERN HALF OF ASIA. Imagine that: half of a continent; spanning eight or nine time-zones; with all of that pollution going into the now-melting Arctic; and no data at all.
Screwdrivers. (picture 1321). Olga freaks out … “What are you doing ?? Why are you opening the instrument ???”.
I put on my best Elliot Ness voice: ‘Just checking. Ma’am. It’s the law.’
Actually, making sure that all the cables and tubes are firmly seated, all screws tight, nothing loose.
The airstrip is way out on the edge of town, an absolutely perfect location with nothing but forest and snow for 180 degrees of direction (East).
The town of Salekhard, the river port, the industry: are all on one side only (West – picture 1329). When the wind comes from the clean side, we will get data representing the general background atmosphere in this part of the world. Olga obsesses over abstract points of science. Me, I stick the hose out the window. (picture 1326).
Plug it in.
Olga: “What about the initialization and calibration and setup parameters and ?”.
Elliot Ness: “It just works, Ma’am. It’s automatic.”
The Aethalometer will stay here, acquiring data on the background atmosphere in this part of the world, until I return in August and take it to Bely Island. Olga abruptly becomes ecstatic when she realizes the prospect of data. 1700 hours of real-time data. 100,000 minutes of real-time data. In the past, she had to collect and analyze samples one at a time in a lab.
Now; finally; I could proceed to my real personal objective: whose importance (to me) I naturally could not have revealed. I’ve set up innumerable Aethalometers and looked at innumerable data files – this one was no different: but my personal goal was to get closer to an edge of the world.
When I repeat this in August on Bely, It will be at a place that is more ‘extremis’ … but with green tundra rather than snow everywhere, it won’t *look* quite as ‘borealis’. Stay tuned and tell me what you think.
We return back to the Linoleum Hotel in an indigenous vehicle (picture 1342). Time to re-book return flights home, one last mystery meal. Shake hands, gravelly voice, they all know the Arnold Schwarzenegger tagline.
It’s gonna be REALLY WEIRD to land in LA. Even at the best of times, it’s weird. But now it will be a complete 180-degree inversion: 12 hours of jetlag (day into night); snow into sand; an infinity of spindly trees into an infinity of suburbs; parkas into shorts, borscht into tacos.
Wish me luck.
Anton Andreyevich Khansen
17/06/2019
Time to go home, done as much as we could. Before I came here, Salekhard seemed impossibly exotic, ridiculously far away, and exactly on the opposite side of the world i.e. 12 times zones different. A dot on the map. After only a week, it seems very familiar, even if: Covered in snow Written in Cyrillic But normal, understandable. Drive to airport:
“Slightly” unusual to see large helicopters on apron along with planes waiting (pic 1437) … but this part of Russia is a vast frozen swamp underlain with more oil and gas than anyone can imagine. Much of Putin’s power comes out of the ground in this province. The indigenous people receive condescension and ‘civilization’, very similar to the Inuit on the North Slope of Alaska. Runway 22 in the middle of the flat forest (pic 1352) and we take off, gone, gone (pic 1356). Predictably completely horrible overnight in Moscow: litter, cement, rudeness, rapaciousness, worn carpets, noise. The indifferent shrug of the Capital of the Second World. Pushy mass of passengers in “Thug and Barbie” outfits at airport. 12 hours of Aeroflot, 10 timezones. Burst the bubble, emerge blinking. (pic 1359). Am greeted … yes, greeted! – at United Airlines lounge at LAX. Asian shredded chicken, avocado, glass of non-astringent white wine. (pic 1360). Thank you for sharing in my adventure. Apologies for pretension, loquacity, opinionation. I will go back to Yamal in mid-August. It will be *hot* (almost); green (or muddy or melted); and filled with smell, humidity, and biting-and-stinging insects. It will also not get dark.
That’s why we travel, stay tuned.
08/08/2019
I am on my way back to Salekhard. I arrived at LAX with plenty of time for the connection, but was told that I could not use the United lounge because I didn’t have an outbound ticket on their airline … despite having flown on them the same distance as two round-trips to the Moon.
Strike 1.
On the Aeroflot flight from LAX to Moscow, the stern Russian lady sitting next to me has the demeanor and attitudes of a strict piano instructor, acknowledging only Pushkin or Tchaikovsky. My lack of culture is a disappointment, my decision to stay at the airport overnight (instead of going into the center of Moscow) is a disgrace.
Strike 2.
I get to SVO. Successfully buy a SIM card for my second phone, so I’ll have a Russian number for the team.
Ball.
Successfully buy more envelopes and stamps for mailing.
Ball.
Last time, I had (literally) been taken for a ride by an unlicensed “taxi” driver – in retrospect, the fifty bucks I handed over was preferable to losing my luggage or my life – a mistake I will NEVER make again. This time: ask how to get to airport hotel … “The free shuttle is just over there, sir”. And although this one it is right next door to the horrible, faded place where I stayed in April … it was CLEAN, MODERN, an American “business traveler” hotel. PERFECT. Nice buffet dinner, glass of wine.
Home run!
Dead tired by 8 PM; sleep till midnight; an hour of e-mail; one Zolpidem; sleep till 5. Back to the airport and I am … ‘nowhere’. Or ‘anywhere’. And very early.
Three hours to kill … so why not go to the “Czech Beerhouse”? Ha ha, I’ve NEVER had a glass of Pilsner at 9 AM.
Finally we board, take off.
Yes, the seat behind me has the inevitable screaming, inconsolable baby: but I have earplugs, they gave me a nice sandwich, I have passed through Moscow without stepping in the cowpat.
13/08/2019
I arrive in Salekhard. It is green, cloudy, cool and raining. I’m in England! Well, not really, because I am also clearly in Russia. Although the city is obviously the same, the colors of nature have all changed.
Compare the same view (April)
with (August):
There is green grass, wildflowers, and mud everywhere. It’s ~15’C = ~60’F.
I walk around the city. You wouldn’t know you were on the Arctic Circle.
But the buildings are all constructed on tall foundation pilings sunk into the permafrost. There’s a ‘cold space’ between the underneath floor of the building and the ground. Otherwise the ground would melt and the building would sink, because there’s no bedrock for the foundations, only (frozen) sandy mud. This, in turn, means that the lowest floor of each building is about 2 meters above the sidewalk. You have to go up a flight of stairs to get to anything. Also, because of the harsh winters, there are (few) large glass windows: and the staircases often have snow roofs over them. The net effect is that you have to choose to go into a business: up stairs, through a padded door.
As a resident, you know which shop or business you wish to visit.
s an outsider, I have no idea of the “life within”, it’s as mysterious as an Oriental bazaar. This is a city of fifty thousand people where everything happens upstairs behind closed doors.
There are some things at street level: for example, a local harvest of the very rare Siberian Watermelon …
And some local art, a mural on the back of an old brick wall that looked very rude at first, until I looked closer (enlarge the picture …)
But the most surprising thing of all, the greatest change, is the resurgence of religion. A couple of years ago, I visited Red Square in Moscow for the first time since the Fall of Communism … and was astonished to see a new building emblazoned with icons of the Russian Orthodox Church. Religion can be a powerful political force when representing national identity.
Here in Salekhard; in addition to the new church near the hotel, which I visited in April; they are constructing an absolutely huge new Cathedral. Despite being surrounded by a sea of mud and construction trucks
its towers and cupolas gleam blindingly in the high-latitude, low-angle sun, a vast presence on the skyline.
On the way back, I see a forlorn sign attached to the side of a nondescript building. It reads:
“Communist Party of the Russian Federation”.
This is all that remains of the monolithic organization that stretched barbed wire and minefields from the Baltic to the Black Sea and dominated my childhood future with the gray threat of nuclear war. Now, like the Berlin Wall, it’s gone. Read ‘Ozymandias’. The replacement gleaming domes are still controlled from the Kremlin: the mythology has changed, the atmosphere is more visceral. They built a tiny chapel with a gold cupola on Bely Island … not by mistake, but as a clear statement. I’ll be there soon.
13/08/2019
The airstrip is covered in … grass. We will take off on wheels, and land on water. No snow, no skis. It has not yet occurred to me, what the implications of this will be, on Bely Island.
I will be traveling with Yuri, a scientist from Ekaterinburg. Yuri is an expert on methane in the atmosphere, an important “greenhouse gas” that is released from melting permafrost as well as by leakage from oil-and-gas production. Yuri has been to many places; has the modesty that comes with experience; and – like most other Russians as I am now learning – is universally referred to by his {first name + patronymic}, not his ‘family’ name. Thus, he is always Yuri Ivanovich, never Yuri Markelov. My careful memorization immediately evaporates: I had not taken note of anyone’s middle name.
We load the plane,
shake hands with the aviation manager
and pilot {Alexey son-of-someone} steps on the gas.
Alexey takes my camera and tells me to hold the controls. No, it’s not at all easy, to keep the plane flying straight and level … after all … we’re only supported by air !
Outside, the “land” looks more like 50% water. In April, it had all been snow and ice, and Vasiliy drove a giant truck all the way to Bely, loaded with the prefabricated building. This would be impossible in summer.
We fly for three hours up the coast of the Yamal Peninsula – flat to the horizon.
Finally, we approach our fabled destination, the pristine view that has been my screensaver for the last four months, the gleaming landmark at the top of the world ….
And as we approach, I see it all,
The ‘Goal of a Lifetime’ is surrounded by ….
MUD. Mud and water and squishy grass and more water and mud that sucks your boots off and more squishy grass and mud and water all the way to an infinite horizon, four hundred miles of trackless, featureless, landmark-free cold swamp.
The Russians call it tundra. They know what this means. I didn’t – I always thought of it as a winterized version of the Colorado Plains: flat, scrubby, but dry.
WRONG. One does not ‘stroll’ anywhere.
To dispel my ignorance I’m not going to use the word ‘tundra’ anymore. Folks, it’s a swamp.
Plank boardwalks connect everything important because it’s almost impossible to walk around otherwise.
And the best part is that the small shed where I will install the Aethalometer; assembled on the ice by Vasiliy only 4 months ago; is located as far as possible from everything else, to minimize contamination. My commute is a half-mile round trip slog through the swamp.
“Aethalometer Serial Number 360, this is your new home. You’re not in Kansas anymore.”
Tolkien described the Last Homely House before approaching Mordor. I don’t think he had ever been anywhere like this.
16/08/2019
Bely Island is the first place I have ever been in my entire existence, where I actually felt a visceral fear for my life. To date, I have not chosen to walk the streets of East Oakland late on a Saturday night: I have no reason to do so. But I do need to walk back and forth through the swamp on Bely Island to the Aerosol Shed, to check on the Aethalometer periodically. Because of the squishy mud, this takes ten to fifteen minutes each way, and is slow, tiring, hard work. Fortunately, it doesn’t get dark – because that would make the journey almost impossibly scary.
Upon arrival, the Station Chief issued each of us with two “highway flares”, pyrotechnic torches that ignite by pulling off the cap. ‘Most of the time’, that is …. these are Chinese-made copies of something, and apparently they don’t always work. They’re supposed for burn for a minute or two. We were given very stern, strict instructions to NEVER go outside without them.
A polar bear will kill and eat you if it thinks it can. They usually kill and eat seals, but I’m quite sure that I would be less sinewy and just as tasty as a seal. Polar bears can gallop ridiculously fast and are entirely at home in the water or on land. Basically, if you’re out in the open and are suddenly confronted by a bear, you’re its lunch.
When the chief was handing out the flares, someone joked “If it does ignite, you’ve got 2 minutes to make your peace with God. If not, pray fast.” I was not sure how real of a threat this was, and cheerfully squished back and forth to set up the equipment in the Aerosol Shed. This naivete lasted all of a few hours …
That evening, we’re sitting in the station having a really excellent dinner. I had brought gifts, drink, and American cigarettes; and after we toasted our way through first their bottle of ‘Tundra’ vodka and then my bottle of Kentucky bourbon, we were mellow and enjoying a pleasant evening of conversation.
Suddenly, there’s a commotion outside: Botsman, the station dog, is barking at a bear. I look out of the window right behind where I’m sitting. Through the steamy glass, there’s a polar bear no more than twenty yards away.
The station chief jumps up, grabs a rifle and a flash-bang pistol. Botsman does his job
and the bear runs away from the flash. I had brought a bag of ‘Trader Joe’s Special Yummy Dog Treats’. Now was a good time.
We walk back to our sleeping building … watchfully. The next morning, we get up to go for breakfast.
And … no-one’s going ANYWHERE. There are 2 bears just on the other side of the creek.
Here’s an extended video clip.
By this time, the second bear had walked off to the surfline: but it took Botsman a great amount of barking before the first bear finally swam away down the creek. We waited nervously for a good while before crossing the rickety bridge.
The cook was looking out the window too. His job was making meals, not being one.
After breakfast, Yuri Ivanovich and I walk to the ocean beach. It stretches to infinity.
I stand in the water in my rubber boots.
There on the sand, unmistakably, are the tracks of a polar bear.
No, I’m not going for a swim – even though I had brought a swimsuit and towel with me.
A cross memorializes something or someone. I don’t want to be the reason for another one.
Botsman runs up. I give him another Yummy Dog Treat. He likes me. Under the circumstances, this could save my life.
n the past, I was always a “Cat Person”. Times change.
16/08/2019
The science setup on Bely is excellent. The Aerosol Shed was erected from prefabricated panels in April, on the end of several hundred meters of electrical cable at a location upwind of everything else.
In this picture (facing south) the meteo station is at lower left; the pylon, chapel, “old building”, and guest house are in the middle and upper; and the remediation clean-up effort is at the top of the picture. This is where hundreds of tons of scrap metal from old military installations is being gathered up and hauled away by barge.
Here’s a video clip from flying over the station:
The Aerosol Shed is way off the bottom left corner of this picture.
It stands in magnificent isolation, the dot on the horizon:
This is view out the door, back to the station
The “clean sector” of wind direction is at least 180 degrees.
Yuri Ivanovich, Alexey and I carry the Aethalometer through the swamp; put it on the shelf; and I plug it in.
Is that all? They say incredulously.
Yup, that’s all. It just works.
They look somehow – disappointed. This incredibly sophisticated state-of-the-art real-time super-sensitive MAGIC BOX … just plugs in and works? No incantations of setup and calibration? No arcana of alignment? No mumbling, no rituals?
No Sir. Out of the box, plug it in.
I play the master card of Russian racial-cultural prejudice.
“Over the years, we have developed this instrument with continuous improvements so that it can be shipped to remote locations; taken out of the box; and works automatically: in India, Africa, and even Arabia.”
That’s all they need to hear. If Magee Sci has developed the box so it can be unpacked by Africans or Arabs … then obviously it will work in the country that was first into space. Their hearts swell with pride at the comparison, and they immediately take ownership of the data.
I go back the following morning and download about 12 hours of data. The air is so clean, I must gather the data points into one-hour averages.
Roughly five nanograms. Exactly in the range of expectations … but until today, no-one had any idea.
Now we do.
Aerosol d.o.o.
Kamniška 39A
1000 Ljubljana
Slovenia, Europe
+386 1 4391 700
Aerosol USA Corp.
10157 SW Barbur Blvd Suite 100C
Portland, OR 97219 USA
+1 510 646 1600