Snowmobile expedition in the Urals.

My week-long adventure across the circumpolar Urals in the company of several similar thrill-seekers came to an end.

A week without communication, Internet, civilization, and almost nothing at all.

Overnight stays in snow-covered, roof-deep cold huts with wooden bunks and a stove.

The water is from the river, but to get it, you must first cut a hole with a foot and an axe.

The toilet is under the Christmas tree, at best a wooden "toilet" type with a huge stalactite growing from somewhere deep and the top already sticking out above the floor level.

Here you have to be careful not to scratch the fifth point.)

When you walk into the wind at night with a flashlight, the main thing is not to fall through the waist along the way, since the height of the snow cover is more than three meters. It is better to follow the snowmobile trail, then the depth of the "sinkhole" will be only knee-deep.

During this expedition, we traveled more than 600 km through the Urals, crossing its ridge several times from Europe to Asia and back.

We brought everything with us on snowmobiles and sleds - gasoline, food, sleeping bags and 20 liters of excellent moonshine. We had enough. Gasoline too.

The weather in the mountains is unpredictable.

In the morning we crawl out of the hut with weathered and swollen faces and go to the icy snowmobiles to beat off the ice with mallets. The sun shines in the clear sky, freshly fallen snow sparkles with diamond crumbs - beauty!

We're going to storm another pass. Half an hour later, a snowstorm begins and the sky merges with the ground, there is a gale-force wind on the pass and visibility is less than five meters. I can't see anything!

I lost count of how many passes we passed during the expedition, some of them were stormed several times and it was a complete thrash.

The probability of falling off a cliff, getting caught in an avalanche, hitting a rock at full speed, or hitting a rock is very high.

They fell, crashed, and fell through the ice on the rivers that opened up, and it's impossible to count how many holes they opened by pulling out the stuck equipment.

You ask - what's all this for?

It's an adventure! What's life like without adventures?

As it is fashionable to say now, it is simply necessary to periodically leave the comfort zone. To avoid getting fat while lying on the couch with a beer.

Test yourself, meet interesting people, just climb to the top of the pass, stop, turn off the engine, take off your helmet and squint at the dazzling white snow coat covering the rocks against the piercing blue sky, whisper: "... your mother, how beautiful!"

 

Subpolar Urals. Parnuk Shelter.

You can meet amazing and happy people in these godforsaken places.

For two days we lived in a house built by Ivan Nikolaevich Vukuev from an old barn. My grandfather is 77 years old, was born in the tundra, in the plague of a reindeer herder, walked and skied all over the Urals, was involved in sports in his youth, a coach, a master of sports in cross-country skiing, a hunter, a fisherman.

He worked as a lifeguard, a shift worker, and did all sorts of things. 4 years ago, he built a shelter for travelers, a sauna, and all this in the mountains, where there is no road. In winter, only by snowmobile, in summer — by helicopter.

How? I don't know

He took us through the forest trails to Pyramid Mountain, where quartz and gold were mined in Soviet times.

The amazing storyteller Ivan Nikolaevich!