Boile's island. Restoration of the Russian military base on the island of boiler

23.09.2019

One of the key strategic points in the development of the Arctic is the archipelago Novosibirsk Islands. Our military and researchers have chosen the largest island in the area. Delivery to the island island, which is part of the Anjo Islands group, since 2013 is a requested service among companies carrying out maritime freight.

Boiler - really big Island, its area is more than 23 thousand km. sq. He is known since the XVIII century thanks to the merchant Ivan Lyakhow. This territory in the East limits the sea of \u200b\u200bLaptev, dividing it with the water management East Siberian Sea. A berth is erected here, similar to what is already equipped on a new land.

On the island of the boiler in the Arctic build a military city of a closed cycle

This is required in order to freely receive vessels of any class with cargo and carry out raid unloading from the barge.

Cargo transportation to the island of boilers from the mainland is required to bring the winter stocks at the time when the marine message will be difficult to ice and low temperatures. In this area, the snow melts only for two months, everything else is a harsh Arctic winter.

This island is part of the Ust-Lensky reserve and is known for its characteristic Arctic fauna - they are hunting for the fox, the remains of Mammoth are found, there are populations of deer and polar bears. A polarist was buried on the boiler room Dr. Herman Walter. In honor of the brave researcher named one of the islands of the island.

Logistics of cargo delivery to the island boilele implies competent making of the route. If passenger and oversized freight transportation can be carried out airwayThanks to the "Temp" airfield, then transportation on the island of boiler heavy machinery, equipment for stations, residential modules is possible only by sea and desirable during summer navigation, for the convenience of unloading to the shore.

In 2013, the former Soviet military base began to restore here. This is included in the program developed by the Ministry of Defense of Russia - the creation of the "Arctic shield", radar and other stations. Transportation on the island boiler mainly walks by the sea from Tiksi - the port located on the continent closest to the archipelago.

In 2013-2014, the reconstruction of the airstake pace, which is expanded to receive heavy aircraft and development military aviation. Nevertheless, sea transportation on the island boilers remain the preferred type of cargo delivery.

A military town built on the island, for the construction of which vessels deliver engineering equipment, special equipment, building materials and other property. Here is the 99th tactical group. Also, the military often ordered the shipment to the island of boilers by the sea of \u200b\u200bBTrov, snowmobiles, tractors and other units necessary for the full functioning of the military settlement in the conditions of the Arctic.

We provide cargo delivery to the island and back to the continent with the involvement of your own technology for unloading the goods to the unequipped shore. For the organization of life and work of military personnel on the remote territory of the Far North, the regular supply is needed - food and household reserves, medical cargoes, additional materials for the repair of housing and equipment. All this can be delivered at any time by sea, using the services of marine freight.

Powers Island: Photo

Online information about the village of the island of Boiler, which is located in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) and the Ust-Yansky district.

Gradually, information about the village of Kotel Island Starting to be complemented by our specialists. So you can easily and access the location of this location settlement, Read and find out the weather forecast in the village of Kotel Island. Information will also be placed on work, active enterprises currently working, hospitals, schools and many other things.

The next step will be a combination of each settlement and all residents to a large online social network. Thus, all residents of the Ust-Yansky district will be able to easily communicate with each other.

Weather in Selo Island Boiler for a week, Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) Region, Ust-Yan district

This section will help to know what weather in the village island boiler a day (September 17, 2018). As you can see, we provide the maximum number of days with the weather forecast in the village of Kotel Island, which is located in: Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Ust-Yan district.

Thus, you are easily viewed by the weather forecast in the village or the village of Boiler Island for today, tomorrow, week (7 days) or for 2 weeks (14 days), month. You can always trust our online service. We try to increase the maximum weather accuracy, pressure, humidity or clouds in the city island boile

Departure map to village Island Boule, Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) Region, Ust-Yansky district

How to get to the village of Kotel Island, the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) region, Ust-Yan district.

Where is the village island a boile? You can look at the Yandex map on our site.

Online map of the village island Kotel, Ust-Jan district, Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)

You will always be useful for you to use the online map of the village of Boiler Island (Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), the area, Ust-Yansky district), which is located in Russia. Online map The village island a boile will allow you to quickly find location of the settlement, will help you navigate in the area. On the online Yandex map of the village island a boiler housed additionally all state units of the village or the city island boiler. In addition to state institutions, stores, schools, hospitals, cultural centers, chosets and many other objects are designated.

By the way, you have a real opportunity to view the weather to the neighboring village of Mikhailovka.

Base on about. Booby

Snapshot with spacecraft "Resource.F3", CAF camera 3000. Scale about 1: 100 000.

Novosibirsk islands are located in the Arctic Ocean, north of the mainland shore of Eastern Siberia, in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). The picture shows the western part of the island of the boiler, the largest in the archipelago. Western rocky island shore is washed by the waters of the shallow sea Laptev. The island is complicated by alluvial and marine sediments, limestones, sandstones, shale, granites. The powerful multi-year permanently distributed is common. The river network is well developed and represented by the rivers of hoster, the cross. Severe landscapes of Arctic deserts and tundras are common here.

The landscapes of the Arctic desert are confined to the aligned surfaces of the plateau and the flat-crossing elevations (Walter). The herbal-moss cover with lichens and single flowering plants is strongly resolved. The mining and arctic polygonal tundra with a well-developed mossy cover and a sparse tier of flowering plants are developed below on the slopes of elevations.

Landscapes of the Arctic TundR are located on low wavy plains, strongly dissected by river valleys. Shrubs Here are presented by polar (arctic) willow and polar birch. The most prominent role is played by camneur, fluffy, polar poppy, gravel, partridge grass. Characterized by a wide variety of moss and lichens.

Lemming (polar mouse), sands and northern deer are inhabited on the island (for the winter it goes on the mainland). Miscelled ermine. Pretty often the polar bear comes. Many different birds. Geese, White Partridge, Polar Owl, Punch, Seagulls, Klyuki fly here to display offspring.

Kotel Island

In rivers, lakes, sea bays and lagoons, Holts, Navaga, Chir, Omul, herring and some other fish are found. In coastal waters there are nerves, walrus, whitewash. There is no permanent population on the island, but employees of polar metterologic stations and commercial programs are carried out on the island most of the year. Spring fishing, hunting, fisheries, search of mammoth bone - the diverse material of the Yakut killeries, glorified by their artistic products.

The boiler was opened in 1773 by the merchant I. Lyakhov. The eastern part of the island, now called the Faddean Peninsula, explored the famous Yakov Sannikov in his time.

Where did the name of the island, it is reliably unknown. One of the versions claims that the Cossacks, for the first time, planting on the island found on the shore of the boiler, which remained earlier, not known by whom. According to another version, they, on the contrary, forgotten on the shore, in a hurry leaving the island, its own boiler.

The relief island is hilly, in the south there is its highest point - Malakatyn-Tas Mount, 361 meters high. As part of the earth's crust is mainly limestone and shale. Internal waters are represented by small rivers and lakes. The largest lake - Euseku-Kuel. The climate is arctic, harsh. Animal and vegetable world is typical for the Arctic TundR.

In times Soviet Union A military base was placed on the island, waste after the collapse of the USSR. In 2013, the restoration of the base and the runway of the airfield "Temp" began. In the future, it is planned to build a full-fledged military town.

Island Boiler: Photo Overview

Boiler island: where is located

The boiler island is located between the East Siberian and Sea Laptev and is the largest in the archipelago of the Novosibirsk Islands, as well as in the Small Archipelago of Anjo Islands. According to administrative divisionThe island is part of the Bulun Ulus Yakutia, the Russian Federation.

The island area is 23.200 square kilometers, the highest point - Mount Malacatyn-Tas, raised above sea level by 361 meters. The island of the boile is part of the Natural Security Reserve "Ust-Lensky".

Boiler Island on world map

Island Boiler: how to get

From Moscow to the boiler room - 13 hours of flight. Almost 7 - to Yakutsk - on the usual flight plane. Then you need to fly to Tiksi. From there - already on the Mi-8 - after three hours of flight over the sea with refueling on the island of Pillar, you can reach the boiler room. According to forecasts, the flight between the island of boiler and the big earth will be carried out round year, In any weather.

Cowle Island: Video

Military equipment and base on the island of the boiler

Boiler - really big island, its area is more than 23 thousand km. sq. He is known since the XVIII century thanks to the merchant Ivan Lyakhow. This territory in the east limits the sea of \u200b\u200bLaptev, dividing it from the waters of the East Siberian Sea. A berth is erected here, similar to what is already equipped on a new land. This is required in order to freely receive vessels of any class with cargo and carry out raid unloading from the barge.

Logistics of cargo delivery to the island boilele implies competent making of the route. If passenger and oversized freight transportation can be carried out by air, thanks to the "Temp" airfield, then transportation on the island of boiler heavy machinery, equipment for stations, residential modules is possible only by sea and desirable during summer navigation, for the convenience of unloading ashore.

In 2013-2014, the reconstruction of airstakes began the pace, which is expanded to receive heavy aircraft and the development of military aviation. Nevertheless, sea transportation on the island boilers remain the preferred type of cargo delivery.

Lion Lipkov

Means of transport

On the island of the boiler room

Calgary, Canada, 1999-2000

Vadim Litinsky

.... Everything, what I want to tell, started the April 1972 Day, when An-2 turned around, having tolding us a cloud of snow, slipped into the far end of the strip, roared, and flew past us, gaining height. I spent it with my eyes until he melted in Beles the pale blue sky, and then looked around. Ahead of me lying a white frozen bay. On the left and right, to the horizon are white rounded hills, with black strokes of rocky stamina. A smooth energetic wind drove snow on the cloth sand of the coastal braid and has already noticed hasty drawers and bags with our field equipment, trepal tarpaulin and hoods of our jackets. The low barracks of the local airport were guessing the low barracks of the local airport.

We were six then planted on the shore of the boiler house, the first landing of a big expedition, which was supposed to start the geophysical shooting of the Novosibirsk Islands. Six people who worked a lot in the taiga, but never happened in the Arctic. In the taiga, when you throw out somewhere, you can not hurry to put the camp. There was a time to go around and, without hurrying, choose the most the best placewhere to put the tents - to be and close to the water, but not too close to not flooded suddenly to be in the shade, and so that there were firewood, and to be closed from the wind. Here, on the island of the boiler room, there was no choice and it was necessary to rush. It was cold here, very cold and, moreover, windy and uncomfortable. It was necessary to raise the tent rather, at least one, not even for all the rules, skchche, in the tent put the stove, pour the tank with a diesel bar, ignite, stuff the teapot with snow, put on the stove and then, inside, you can safely smoke and think about How to be, and what to do next.

It turned out that in the cold and in the wind, a person works and thinks slower. It turned out that a certain effort of the will is required to force themselves to make a trifle, but the necessary action - for example, fasten the hood to the jacket. It turned out that the tents, issued to us from the warehouse, were intended for the summer roast taiga and had huge windows on the side walls, tightened with a grid for access of fresh air and to protect against mosquitoes, and these windows immediately had to be tightened. It turned out that iron stakes for stretch marks were too short and did not go deep enough into the freezing pebbles and did not allow to pull the tents well. It turned out that three of us hate all this and with the first plane are going back to the mainland. But in spite of everything, after two hours we sat around the stove and drank tea. So it started. Then there was a lot of things ...

Kotel Island

No one really knows where this name comes from. On one legend of the Cossacks, for the first time, putting at it three hundred and something back on it, found on the shore of the boiler, left by unknown by anyone to them. On another, no less plausible, the Cossacks, on the contrary, forgotten on the shore, in a hurry leaving the island, its own boiler. As it really was, no one knows, but it can be confident enough to say that two hundred years ago the Cossack Lyakhov looked north on the coast and "watched the Earth", crossed the strait on dogs and opened the island of Big Lyakhovsky. And one after another went. From this islands already someone else "saw" in the north is the island of small Lyakhovsky, and from him - the island of the boiler, north of the small Lyakhovsky. On this chain stopped. But many people believed how she believed Cayur Sannikov at the beginning of the last century, that there is an earth and further to the north. He said that he saw remote blue mountains from the northern end of the boiler room. And not only said, but also harnessed dogs and rushed there, north, but he did not let the great Siberian worm of a strip of almost constantly open water along the seabed of the seabed. After flew airplanes and airships, the icebreakers were broken and the atomic submarines were cut under it, but no one found anything. And sorry ... But something saw Cayur Sannikov!? Such people do not lie ...

So the island boiler stayed on the map without a northern neighbor. But the fact that the map is called the island of the boiler room - not the island at all, but only a part of an even greater island. What is called the boiler house is its western part. Eastern It is called the island of Faddeevsky, in honor of some unknown Faddey, and this island of Faddeevsky, as you already guessed, is also not an island. And between them is the land of the Bunge - flat, like the table, sand beach Long and width of a hundred kilometers, barely rising above sea level, is so low that in winter, under the snow, looks like a frozen sea. Because of this lowland, confusion happened with the islands, because the pioneers decided that this was the strait, and the boiler and Faddeevsky were real islands. When they figured out what it was already too late, because the names were established on the maps. Fortunately, there was enough mind (it was before the revolution) not to change anything. So everything remains - the island of the boiler, the land of the Bunge, the island of Fadeevsky.

Everyone who lived or worked on Novosibirsk IslandsWill say, and not suitable that boiler - best Island Archipelago. And indeed, there was everything you need for a good life in the Arctic. You need an airport - please West Bank, in the pace where airplanes fly. Not very often, but fly. And that means - letters, newspapers, movies, vodka and sometimes, but very, very rare, even the highest in the Arctic, a delicacy - beer! You are tired of sitting alone in my proof hut or a tent and you want to communicate - there are two permanent polar stations - Sannikova and the pace, go there with a bottle, talk to all-in -out-in-law radio players, exchange books, sleep on clean sheets, look at 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 sandy skins - there are local hunters, again take vodka, and - to them. Need a fish - take the Yashik vodka and move to the east, where the island of the boiler is ends and the land of the Bunge begins and where the Balycts river flows, in which huge salmon is caught. The meat ended - sit on the all-terrain vehicle, take how much you have vodka, and - on the hunt, glory, God, deer on the island is full.

But you already probably noticed that I emphasize all the time - in order to enjoy all the benefits and charms of the boiler room, you need to have two things: vodka and vehicle vehicle. And if vodka on the island, bad, poorly, having raised, it was possible to get it, then with the transport it was very bad. I want to tell about it.

All over or less permanent settlements in the Soviet Arctic, be it polar stations, military posts or airports, there are several permanent. These are huge pyramids of empty iron barrels from under fuel, abandoned windmills with forever frozen blades and unloaded skeletons of machines, tractors and all-terrain vehicles. The airport of the island of the boiler house was not an exception to this rule. The takeoff strip on the pebble spit separated the small lagoon from the bay, two low barracks, a garage, a workshop, antennas with stretch marks and the signs marked above - that's the whole airport. He was called the pace, from a nearby polar station, which, in turn, picked up the name from the neighboring Yakut hunting pace.

The airport led a quiet life, taking and sending all three types of aircraft worked in the north: An-2, Li-2 and Il-14, flying there quite infrequently, can two times a month, if there is weather, so every landing was an event . The aircraft have resentd mail, vodka, rested tanned shifts, newspapers of weekly limitation and films, borrowed polar shoes and hunters on mainland, fish from the Balike River and carcasses of local deer. After the departure of the aircraft back to the mainland, the rapid activity caused by the arrival was quickly replaced by the usual rest. Every evening, after dinner, in the dining room, to blame, in the cabin company, according to the sacred tradition of polarists, the sheet unfolded and the film was spinning. The bad weather closed the airport for weeks in a row, and sometimes the crews of the aircraft were stuck there, Durier from idleness and drank cool.

In those initial post-war years, at the pace was only one tractor, which was taught and tilt the cargo on the steel sheet to airplanes and barrels with flammable for refueling. Then the second, more and more powerful appeared. The presence of two cars has given the opportunity to populate the airfront, with approval and on behalf of the head, go to the hunt for deer. These trips demanded iron health and nerves - try shinking three days in a close iron box with a suspension slightly softer than that of the cart, sleep under the roar of a diesel engine, breathe it with the same bit, and in the breaks, crawl on the belly on raw tundra, sneaking to careful Beasts. However, resistant hatred of meat stew, which was produced from any polarist very quickly, forced them to carry any difficulties.

Once, early in the spring, the head of the airport sent on a large tractor of two - a tractor driver and a worker - to intelligence whether deer did not appear. The men crossed the lagoon on the ice, climbed to nearby hills and wrapped around them twelve and, not noticing any deer, moved back home. The shortest path was again lying through the lagoon, which they crossed on the way to Soping, but they were not lucky the way back and, in about half a kilometer from the aeriport, the tractor fell through the ice. The lagoon was shallow, - a meter of one and a half from strength, so the tractor sat on the bottom and peacefully stalled - it was deep enough to pour the engine. Undoubted hunters put a gearbox to neutral so that you could then pull out the car on a tug, got out to the ice and spent the airport, the carbine and sleeping bags. Reaching barracks, they reported an incident to the head and offered their plan to solve the problem - the boss, on the one hand, as an interested party and an official who sent them to intelligence, gives them a half-box of vodka (six bottles), and they, as performers On the other hand, the tractor undertakes to pull out and return to life. However, negotiations quickly visited a dead end. The boss, on the one hand, was, for some reason, in a rigging and stubborn mood and said that vodka would not give. The men, on the other hand, were also not in the radiant arrangement of the Spirit and directly said that without vodka will not pull the tractor from the lagoon. And, as it sometimes happens in life, both sides rested on their own and rested for a long time, throughout the winter. And there came spring and water rose in the lagoon. And then the summer came, the ice melted at all, the tractor asked deeper into the outlined bottom Il and the problem of extracting the tractor from the lagoon disappeared by itself.

In short, a few years later, when we first appeared at the time of April windy day, the tractor still stuck in the lagoon. He was already anything and was written off on the act and filmed from the airport subsection. Our drivers climbed a long cable to him, and when the ice was melted, pulled it out to braid all-terrain vehicles, went over the engine and replaced the wiring, and then, after a short negotiation, they exchanged him to the airport boss on the vodka box and the necessary spare parts for our all-terrain vehicles.

For a long time the airport pace, as the center of polar life on the island, did not know the competition. However, at the height of the Cold War, at the end of the sixties, the military appeared on the island. They chose the most dull place on the already not very joyful island, in the failure between the two hills and built a barracks for the air defense company ( fortune defense), A radar was on the top of one of the sobes, and on the cliff by the sea dumped into a bunch of iron and electronic trash and stuck iron mast into it. This pile was called a "false goal", and it was created for the deception of the enemy and bringing him to complete confusion. After that, the navigation was abandoned to the coast of the company of young soldiers and locked them in these barracks for two years. Without vacation. As in prison strict regime, Just not a sentence, but by calling the homeland .... The profits and wives of the officers and settled in the barrack next to the barracks, where there was a net for twelve square meters with a tiny front on Lietenenate with his wife with a tiny front, it was also a storage room, with a shared kitchen at one end of the long corridor and with a shared dressing room.

... I often visited the air defense service in this company, which the population of the boiler room began to call no other than the "warriors" ("... went to the warriors ...", or "... the warrior has spare parts .."). And every time I had a sorry for pain of these pale young guys who had only three hundred meters of tundra from the barracks to the locator who had seen the sun three months in the year and the esshers only Crupe and Canned All these two years of service. Even the bread they ate semi-wow - the company commander forbade the bakery sugar, because he was afraid that he had access to yeast would also be taken. It is possible that the commander did not know that without sugar, the yeast would not fit and the dough would not be a magnificent and nostril and will not succumb to their primitive stove. Perhaps, but little likely. And most likely - I knew and did not give anyway, as the crude inside the bread was a smaller evil for military service than the brand ...

Only the tractor was also at the disposal of the commander at the disposal of the commander, so there was no special advantage over competing airport - the military did not have. However, in the seventieth, after numerous reports to the upstream command, the warrior of ZIL-150 appeared for the transportation of goods from the airport in winter - in the summer no car would have passed five meters at the outflowing tundra. In addition, there was another problem. The fact is that, as I said, the air defense company was posted on the north side of the lagoon, kilometers from four from the airfront. Like any normal lagoon, she separated from the sea already mentioned oblique. Spit was a long, straight, like a dam, and pebble, so that it could be famously ride even by car. But, unfortunately, Spit was not solid. In her northern part there was a "buzz": the opening of the width of meters in twenty, through which all the excess water from the lagoon went to the sea - in the summer sleepily and calmly, with a weak flow, and in the spring, in the flood - with roar, foam and waterways. Because of this "buzz", none, nor warheading to the airport, or airports to warriors, it was impossible directly. And since the airport warriors were needed more often, they were built from the barrels and the rafts boards, they pulled the trick and reached the other shore, turning around the cable with their hands. This crossway was interesting feature - almost every year it had to build it again, because someone, in the last fall, moving through the ready to frozen a buzz, be sure to be lazy to pull the dam to the shore, he cleared into the ice, and in the spring it carried it into the sea with a stormy and unexpected, as always in Arctic, Flood.

But in the winter there were no problems. It was worth only to freeze the lagoon, and she quickly wanted until the bottom, like a war guili, on the one hand, and airports, on the other hand, quickly rolled the winter tractors and marked it with a pair with red checkboxes - in case of Purgi. And no serious obstacles have no longer existed, except for a very bad weather, so as not to go to visit each other and do not cushion a bottle -Own-joyful tenth.

After long negotiations and the writings of many papers, it was the airport turn to get their car. In the next navigation from the side of the cargo, it was removed and delivered on Barge to the airport of another ZIL-150, but now in the form of a petrol station, then-there with tank instead of the body. The airports were very proud of this car and loved to be famous for just a landed plane and, as it relies on aviation laws, the first thing to quickly refood it. What relief was from this car by working airport, everyone will understand, who had to download the manual pump for hours - and it is at best, and in the worst - to serve a bucket with gasoline, in the cold and with the breeze, while naturally shedding gasoline on Hands and foolishness and knowing that spilled gasoline in the winter - the most reliest path to strong frostbite. So the benzodeman fell very by the way and was loved and guarded.

Once in the winter, about the year before us, the Radiogram came to the airport, which board came out at the tempo. On the jargon of the polar shoes, it simply meant that the plane flew in the pace and you need to get ready to meet it. Board, then-there is a Li-2 plane, the Russian version of the Immortal Disti-3 (the last Li-2 still flew in the Arctic at the beginning of the eighties), arrived safely and brought the usual set - mail, old newspapers, films, three soldiers in the company and , of course, vodka. Vodka was a lot - reserves for the new year. Therefore, by calling warriors to raise the car to pick up everything they were due, the head of the airport discussed the situation with the pilots and closed the airport on the weather conditions "up to twenty-four Moscow", then-there for a day. And the airport thug.

Slowly buudes are mostly elected, the most important people: the boss, the main mechanic, radio las and pilots. The rest of the proletarians are drivers, cooks and a pair of workers, buzzed so-so, on a bottle on a shot and under the record in the book of the fence (this is such a book where everything taken by an employee from a warehouse - boots, specialists, vitro, Kururovo, and so on Subsequent retention of salary). The elite did not experience restrictions in the quantity, and the expenses for the drunk head later very slyly distributed so that the chief mechanic and a radio operator or did not pay anything, or paid a little, much less actually drunk. And the pilots in general drank always for nothing. It was so established in the Arctic that pilots were considered the most important people, from which there are so many that only an idiot or a green novice could ask them for vodka or to spoil relations with them in any other way. If still it happened, the aircraft to such idiot began to fly badly, because the crew commander in the Arctic, despite the strict rules, eventually decided himself when and where to fly. And if the flight plan for the day, compiled by the commander of his detachment, included the flight to geologists, from which he always received fish and deer whirls, and then to the drillings, where he once spent the night and was not invited to the table, then grief drillings - after The flight to geologists or was spoiled by the weather, or Zajaned the second pilot or small malfunctions were found in the plane ... But we must pay tribute - "San Flights", when someone got sickly, broke a bone or started to give birth, the same pilots were performed safely and instantly fly away Wherever you want to anyone, when you want and in any way of the weather.

So, all buudes, and in the midst of Gudezh, they remembered that they forgot to call the commander of the company. They called, but he said that his car was already gone. The main mechanic said that his friend would not leave his friend and he would bring him on his petrol worker, quickly dressed, pulled out a benzo-beznator from a warm garage and carried away along the Winner along the Spit to the north, to warriors.

One of the pilots, not yet staggering, but not quite solid on his feet, came out soon of the drunk cabin in Galun, calm, and then decided to look out and block fresh air. The night was beautiful and crystal cold, a frosty ring was lit around the moon, crossed the cross, four false moon blurred on the crossing of the cross with the ring. Over the northern hills, the ghostly stripes of the northern lights were slowly grew and overflowed.

The pilot took the eyes of the red tail lights of the petrol station, which hung towards the bright Faradram of the car Variat, who went to meet, and turned, enjoyed, back to the house. Opening the door, he heard from the north a deaf blow, looked back, and no headlights or tail lights saw no headlights.

Like this. Two cars, the only one on the island with a total area of \u200b\u200bseven thousand square kilometers, faced forehead in the forehead with clear weather (as Pilots said in the Arctic - "Visibility Million per million"). Creek and the mat that followed the collision, stood terrible and did not subside for several hours, the charges flew back and forth. But then they decided that the drinking should continue in no way, but everything else.

After a day, filled with that dead sleep, then waking up from headaches and repeated fancy, the booze subsided by itself. Drinking up with milk, which was specifically for this purpose, the wise cook, who passed through this many times, many times, the interested parties made up two acts, one for the airport, another for the warriors and pulled the broken machines on the relevant garages to the tractors.

On the hottest trails of this sad incident, the head of the airport and the mechanic were still full of good intentions to repair the car as soon as possible. But then, as in history with a tractor in the lagoon, employment enthusiasm quickly dried. Whether there were too serious damage, whether I did not want to initiate suspicion of the authorities on the mainland with a long list of necessary spare parts, whether the problem of vodka for overtime appeared again - the exact reason for the fall of interest to the repair of the car unknown. Most likely, it was just to do not care. But in one way or another, the swollen benzodver broke the garage for a long time, gradually deprived of parts, seats, devices and other purposes necessary for other purposes.

This incident, as it were, marked the end of the car vehicle's transport period on the island of the boiler room and the beginning of another period that can be called everywhere.

The name of Gerasima Zharikova or simply heroes, as he was known on the island, is closely connected with the recent history of the island of the boiler house in general, and with a wherever period, in particular. Actually, this period from it began.

Under what exact circumstances, the hero appeared on the island for a year in sixty-eight, no one really knew. He told me that he would come from Baku, grown there, and from there and thundered into the army. As is known, parts of the Soviet Army were never replenished with recruits from the place where these parts were located, but, on the contrary, soldiers in Tajikistan came from Arkhangelsk, and soldiers, for example, to Belarus from the Tyumen region. This was not done because of the desire of the army, it is better to familiarize young people with the geography of the native country, but in purely humanitarian reasons: if there is a rebellion or other folk riots, if possible, to save young people from the need to shoot members of their family or in familiar - soldiers And to refuse (at the same time it was allowed that no one would refuse to shoot in unfamiliar). So it was quite logical that the Herk, originally from Baku, was in Tiksi, on the shores of the Ice Ocean, where he spent all two years in aviation, flying a radio lane on strategic bombers.

Then he was demobilized, received all the laid paper and money in Tiksi and, as it often happens in the north, found a drinking companion and tightly thugged in the only Tiksi restaurant. So firmly that in three days I woke up the hell knows where, in some barrack, some whores, in the mud and, naturally, without a penny of money. There, his fate brought with some semipal Yakut who rushed across the barrack and praised the whiskers. Those from him dishwashed, but he did not get up and tried to interest them with sex, saying: "Those who are not thought? There is a kui. Tokco Sibko Pokyki Onnako ... ". This yakut turned out to be a hunter from the island of boiler room. He brought a bunch of sands for sale. He sold everyone and, as often happens in the north, thugged and found himself in the same position in the same barrack as hero. Yakut did not remain anything, as dragged into the aerial enterprise and fly back to the pace with the first side. And here he turned up her arc ...

... According to youth, I categorically denied the role of providence or predestination and believed that everything in my life depends on me. Having lived a little more and faced with some incomprehensible things to me and coincidences, I was forced to admit myself to myself that there are still some secret forces, fate, or, generally speaking, some kind of events. But not wanting to completely give up my own role, I began to assume that all this is valid until a certain point, to some point in space and time, and then fate, or what is there, as if says "Everything, I led You before this development. And where to go further and what to do is yours. Now it all depends on you, and how you will decide, so it will be. " So it was with me autumn day twenty years ago, when I needed to decide - to stay in Russia or throw everything to hell and run without looking back. I realized that the moment came when fate brought me to the scatter, poured on the shoulder, and threw one. And it was impossible to hope that everything is somehow formed by itself or someone else will decide for me. No, it was necessary to solve himself and take it into my hands. And I decided and ran without care. In Canada ...

So it was with the coin. When that Yakut suggested that he flies on the island of the boile and become a hunter, Herka realized that he was on the fork. In half an hour, they already caught a levak to the airport, and the next day flew with passing An-2 to the pace.

To his surprise, the gerco joined the new life very easily and quickly. At first he was as if the assistant of the Yakut and gained experience. It was necessary to learn three very important things. First, how to ride dogs. Secondly, how to build traps for sands (so-called "grazing"). And thirdly - how not to get lost in the monotonous tundra and do not freeze. All of these three wisdom he has compiled for the first winter. In the summer he himself signed up in Tiksi as a hunter, received a plot and scored in a local factor of everything necessary for life and hunting - products, trays, tools, carbines with cartridges, fishing nets, medicines, a walk and so on. All this he took without money, in debt, for future songs, which he had to take the same factor. Everybody was recorded in the debt book, and it was clear to any sensible person that all this good would not pay for all my life, even with a very successful hunt. But herso did not care anything at all, for the summary of the results and the return of debts were still in a very distant future. In addition, the ears in the debt, all the hunters, and Russians, and Yakuts lived, and no one would become especially killed about this, and every year they recruited all the newest and most expensive.

Herka decided to hunt one. First of all, he had to build a hut to live. He found dry place At the mouth of the stream, which flows into the sea where many fins were applied - the main construction and heating material on the island and worked as round days, the Sun did not fit at all. Pre-Got Herkin Huts a little over the ground and generally reminded the dugout of the time of war - the ranks of the logs tilted to the center, the knocked roof, the plywood door, which opens in And turf to hold heat. Herka, as a person served in aviation and coming to technical progress, decided to use acquired knowledge for the device of his life. So, his stove, although it was made of a cropped iron bar, was universal and could devour all kinds of fuels available on the island: firewood, diesel fuel, old rubber boots, Trotic checkers and coal (by the way, on the island there was a coal deposit and even Plans to develop it to maintain navigation). The stove was so low that barely outlooked above the floor, but quickly heated the hut. The ignition process of this stove was not for the faint of heart. At first, dry firewood prepared in advance, half a liter of the insane. Then the lit newspaper was thrown there. After that, from the stove, it was necessary to bounce aside, because a deafening explosion was heard and the flame beat into all the cracks. The flame of the explosion flying into the pipe, carried out the air from the hut, creating a temporary vacuum there, because of which the door itself was opened inside, and then when the vaccum was filled, she slammed him back. After that, outside, as a team, longing for the heat inaccessible to them, the dogs started outside. And only then, under the vibrating buzz of the flame, he quickly began to break the heat, and it was possible to put the kettle with snow, throw off the hood and smoke ...

In addition, the Herka has established a walkie-talkie and put a high antenna on rope stretch marks, so he had at least some connection with the outside world and he could give to know about himself, if something happens to him. Above it, on the top of the antenna, he hung a red lamp, shot in a flying strip in the pace, fed a primitive flasher, joined it with the battery and connected to the light. The lantern flasher and showed the coerca road home in the dark and the cold of the polar night.

In addition to the hut, the coin it was necessary to spread the cabins and build a dozen of the song traps. The trap, or the mouth, as she was known throughout Siberia, was always put on the tubercles, because the lemmings, the main food of the sands, only there their minks and the sands, running along the tundra in search of food, did not let any bumps. The hunters invented grazing before the appearance of steel traps, so they made entirely of wood. It was possible to build a mouth in the Arctic only in the summer when it hops the earth. In addition, the whole building should weave over the summer from the slightest smell of man - otherwise the sands, curious, but very cautious animal, will not go to the mouth.

At first, a narrow blind groove with the walls inclined inside the walls was swaming. The walls were strengthened with chopsticks or skids, and from above along the grooves unbalanced by a heavy log in one end on a transverse wand outside the groove so that not being sub-ended at the other end, it would fall inside the grooves. Therefore, when the hunter "charged" to fall, he supported the other end of the log in the peg, and the peg tied the fatty meat baking.

Pasta was charged in January, when the sand skuff became thick and white, while the hunter had to do everything possible so as not to leave behind the smell - he dressed a special bathrobe and gloves that were always hanging outside, in the wind. Lescent chuckled bait, and to get her, climbed her head inside the grazing, pulled out for the bait, pulled out the peg of the nest and the heavy log fell on him. Because on the bottom, the groove was done barely wider than the logs, the animal could not get out of the logs and, after half an hour, fleshy, but hopeless struggle, tired and frozen. The hunter on dogs climbed around the mouth, took out dead sands and charged the mouth again. That's all the wisdom.

The drone hunt was less troublesome - in the summer I threw the trap in the tundra, tied it with a chain to the peg driven, I remembered the place, I charged the bait - and collect the sands. However, the sands are usually worse in captains than in the mouth. In addition, the cabins spoiled the skin.

Summer in the Arctic is a short outbreak of light, water and life, when the sun does not enter and when no one sleeps. For six to eight weeks, the new generation of birds should learn to fly, the deer - grow up on the legs, wagine - learn to kill, lemmings - to apply two litters of small shaggy rodents. And the hunter, if, of course, he is serious about the hunt - set up a paste, scatter a labase (so in Siberia they call temporary warehouses of products, located so as to carry less with them), stock fuel. I did not have time - at the end of August, a bright day is shortened until five o'clock, in early September Tundra is freezing to reinforced concrete strength, and in mid-September we are waiting for the Purgi, and winter hunting disappeared.

And heroes did not sleep, together with the whole Arctic. He saw the whole tundra was littered with prosperous lemming colonies and knew that, as a result, there would be a lot of sands. He was not mistaken. The hunt was successful and in the spring he had about one hundred first-alone skins, the theoretical value of about twenty thousand rubles - at that time, quite a decent amount. At the same time, closer to the spring, hero, as a person practical, began to ask himself a question: is it lighter than this horsepower, the way to make money on the island of the boiler room? Unlike its Yakut fellow hunt, Gerka loved reading and often took books from libraries of polar stations. Once he read the book about the Gold Fever on the Yukon - Klondike, Dawson City, Karmak, Eldorado - and quickly discovered that much more people then got rich, cooking coffee on the chylkitsky passage and frying pancakes in Dawson City than Dawslot Dusl Mud in search of gold. Herka quickly narrowed the range of possible options to one - he was needed by transport. Having at its disposal a vehicle, the coerca would have turned into a very important person, the king of the tundra would be, because he could offer the hunters to do the hardest work for them - to deliver logs for the paste, bring them products, scatter the tundra labazy, Hunt all year round on deer and supply hunters with meat. For all these services, hunters would be paid to the sands with him, whom he, coin, already as a real hunter, would pass the state to the state.

Then in the Soviet Arctic existed, and it continues to exist now, only two main types terrestrial transport - Tractor and all-terrain vehicle. . This is in the north of Canada, I was able to see a variety of varied machines - from giant formation trucks or nindelle to tiny tracked tarats on one or two people capable of winter (in summer, every riding on the tundra in Canada is prohibited) to drive anywhere. The tractor Herk was not satisfied due to the slowness of the course and the need to carry Sani - otherwise there would be a cargo destined by hunters. No, the cozers arranged only the all-terrain vehicle, who could provide him with rapid and comfortable movement on the island all year round. However, unfortunately, there were no hide in the island at all, and the tractor had a warriy and at the pace at the airport. Therefore, the sober-looking Herka decided to deal with what is, and began to look for approaches to the head of the part and to the head of the pace, offering complex schemes of joint ventures and income generation. To his disappointment, none of the potential partners for collusion with the coar did not go. Both chiefs who listen to the Herkin sweet speeches, felt that, they agree with him, their tractors would often disappear and for a long time in mysterious hectic trips throughout the archipelago, and they themselves will have to compose justification when there will have nothing to carry goods from airplanes or ships in navigation. The annoyed Herka was already tuned to fly to Tiksi, where he was going to pass the sands, as you should walk, and at the same time, and put it on the knowing people about some written off the all-wheel drive, rusting from someone on the backyards, which could be sent to the island to navigation and then, Repaired, put into business. It was already quite packed, as an interesting news came here: an expedition of topographers with their own transport arrives at the island and the airport chief received an indication of a two kilometer in bay in the bay of two kilometers long for receiving large en-12 transport aircraft in a ski version. Herka realized that the events take an interesting turn and that he was not yet flying to Tiksi.

He himself took a very active participation in the clearing and markup of the strip and stood with all the workers at her beginning, when a silver plane with four motors, like a puzzy seagull, struck low layered clouds over the sea, made a circle above the tempo, aiming and smoothly sat on the ice Short, growing out of belly legs. The plane slipped into the far end of the strip, turned and shoved in reverse sidewhere they were waiting. The arrivals were introduced by the head of the airport - they had to be built on the island a whole network of iron pyramidal steps and accurately determine their coordinates, for which the helicopter arrives at the island, but as long as they brought with them two all-terrain vehicles. And indeed, the rear doors revealed the plane, the inclined ladder dropped and on the ice, one for one, two all-terrain goods of GAZ-47 were revealed, painted in a protective greenish color ...

Now I would not be without laughter to look at these cars, from which, as, hopelessly outdated, the army refused and removed them with weapons. Small, close, with a sick engine with a power of just sixty horsepower, they could accelerate to thirty kilometers per hour on a road with a solid coating, and then under the hill, and on the tundra and snow for which they were intended, with a nutritional roar crawled at six to seven speeds. The iron and unwapped body of the body with difficulty sat down, according to the instructions, on two side benches are just eight people. But it is now, and then ...

And then it was for the population of the island of the boiler house in general, and for heroes in particular, a miracle of technology. On this machine it was possible to go anywhere and ever. For two there was a place in a warm cockpit. In the body, with all his cramped, it was possible to fill more than a ton of all kind, and if you remove the tarpaulin roof, then more. The feed of Togo, the all-terrain vessel could stick on the water, if there were no holes in his package, and the streams, rivers and lagoon could be cross. In a word, all the problems of life and work in the Arctic were solved. And hero decided that the truths or untrue, but one all-terrain vehicle would be it.

His dream was destined to come true rather than he thought. In May, the helicopter flew to the topographers and they began to fly around the island, while planting the building brigades that were built by iron pyramids on the vertices of the horses. The bosses settled at the pace and managed from there with all the works on the radio, as it should be bosses. The coin, it's possible, spinning around, establishing the necessary links and preparing the soil to negotiate the fate of one of the all-terrain vehicles. At the end of June, he suddenly warmly, quickly began to melt the snow, the lagoon began to fill with water and on one sunny day and, as always, unpredictably, broke the "buzz" and water with a roar of Laptev's sea, once again carrying a long-suffering fleet and breaking Message between the fleet of air defense and airport. And then, just the topographers of something needed from the warrior, and the Herke offered his services to drive to the warriors on the all-terrain vehicle, assuring that she would cross through the burst without problems. The all-terrain vehicle and heroes in the cabin flew to the knife on the Kalenny Spit and slip into the water, following the heroes. Herka correctly calculated, where a strong course will take a car when she crossbars. But the Herka could not foresee that the Tarwellocho shore was so cool and he became so cool that the all-terrain vehicle, though he managed to catch the caterpillars ashore, could not get out of him. The position quickly became very bad: a strong course launched the all-terrain vehicle and, rotating clockwise, it suffered from the lagoon to the sea.

Gasuya to the limit and whipping the water with ravenly flying caterpants, they managed to once again chant the all-terrain vehicles to the shore and they realized that if they could not get to the shore and the all-terrain route would take again, then with the next full turn, they will be in the sea. Werethod roared, but everything was in vain - the shore was too cool. And when the car started his fatal turnover, both, both the driver, and hero, - without claiming, jumped ashore. A completely unmanaged all-terrain vehicle, helplessly spinning, flew out of the lagoon, burst into the edge of the ice field, tied up under the pressure of water leaving under the ice, burned the water and slowly sank. Herka realized that he had come his starry hour. He quickly sit in mind the place of immersion of all pass towards coast signs, and they spent the warriors to report on the challenge by phone at the tempo and at the same time and find a way to move back through a burst.

As in the case of two colliding cars, the conversation on the phone resulted in half an hour of Materia, mutual accusations and threats to keep the cost of all the salary of these two unfortunate razolbayev. But two days later, when the Herk and the all-terrainer built a new flesh and moved to the airport side of the buzz, Gerka had a long conversation with the head of the topographic party and soon a commission was made to write off the all-wheel drive, which the act was drawn up, which began the sacramental phrase of all Soviet acts "This act is compiled in that ...". The meaning of the act was the fact that all-terrain vehicles drowned and resting at the bottom of the sea, where it is impossible to get it, and therefore the all-terrain vehicle does not belong. And generally does not belong to anyone. This cozer and sought.

Topographers honestly worked on the island all summer and posed the ten pyramids pieces. In early September, they flew behind them a big helicopter and took them all in Tiksi, leaving two workers to wintering at the pace - to guard left there until the next summer. In the pace, it became quietly and gerke began to embody his dreams.

Laptev Sea in this part is released from ice by mid August and remains clean until November, after which it gradually freezes again. Water in the sea does not heat up above ten degrees in the warmest time, and in September it is about five to six somewhere. Herka prepared everything very carefully. He swallowed with a partner along and across an inflatable rubber boat, saw the outline of the all-terrain outline, noted the place of Bew, determined the depth that did not exceed four meters there and the distance from the coast - thirty meters. Having chosen a calm glad day, the Herka drove the tractor with a long thick rope from the prime on the braid, spread two fires on the shore, loaded the bottle of vodka and the end of the rope on the boat and swam to buoy, supported by the pile of spectators on both sides of the vessel. There, he was undressed, she fell as lard, she dressed the conflicts and a shirt, so-soaked in advance with the same lady, took the end of the rope from the loop and rushed to the icy water. He was not tween seconds during which he found a tow hook, opened the latch, put on the loop of the rope and slammed the latch back, after which he flew to the surface, was drawn into the boat, caught a glass of vodka and covered with a blanket. Reaching the shore, Gerka gave the team and the tractor began to steal back. The rope stretched and, under the joyful screams, shaking cohesions from the cold, the all-terrain vehicle was pulled on the braid.

For three months, the Herke worked on the all-terrain vehicle, without getting out of the garage, changing the electric wiring, patted with salt sea water, turning out the engine, gearbox and onboard transmissions. And the day came when the coaches gently drove out of the garage, roared the engine, turned on the spot, trying to work the work of on-board frictions and, clatter with steel trackers, rushed into the tundra to test a two-way all-terrain vehicle. So his dream came true and he became the king of the tundra.

As befits the king, the first thing he began to get acquainted with the territory subject to it outside the narrow coastal strip, to which it was tied, having only dogs as a means of movement. Now the whole huge island was at his disposal. Herka and was now curious as a cat, forever trying to climb into the remote corners of the island in search of something unusual, and there was no restrictions for him. All the rest of the Light Time, he was rushed along the island, like a peeled, scattering labases and tacking fuels in the most diverse points on the island, which Herk considered strategically important. And he knew what he was doing. One of his warehouses appeared in the center of the island, not far from the exit to the surface of coal layers, so he, if he decides to stay there, could burn coal in the stove, without spare. Another Labaz, he threw on the Ballyta River, where the sinks of the island unexpectedly fell into the flat sandy desert of the Bunge, silvery salts were fine here. The third place was chosen with such a calculation that no flock of deer passes by. And so on.

And when winter began, then our king has already spent quite a bit of time with his dog harness, checking his own mouth. It was much more time he spent, circling hunting hut and concluding contracts with hunters for car vessels, products and other things necessary, taking as payment for the heavy work of snow-white sandsie sands. And when there was nothing to carry, he just came to visit hunters, but not to everyone in a row, but preferring Yakut hunters.

In the Arctic, guests are always happy. It is worth seeing in a close and dark hut for two or three months in a polar millet, no one seeking, besides his dogs and wives, if it is to appreciate the moment when the dogs suddenly be worried and start to double, and the hunter will come out of the hut to figure out What, and in the dead frosty silence distinguish the distant sparkling motor, and then the headlights of the all-terrain vehicles will bother on the horizon, such darrowfully bright in black nights. And Yakut shrieks his wife, to be preparing for guests, and she will throw the oven, and then, with an ax, in the cold sense - chop ice cream and get out of the bags of ice cream fish. And himself still stands out the courtyard, looking at the hill, ghostly lit by polar shine, greedily sipping the cigarette, smoking on dogs and reaching how much time it is necessary to get all-terrain to get away.

Typical hechine visits began grayly and noble. The hostess fussed at the stove, threw meat into the pan, planed strikanin and ran with the kettle outside the snow. The owner with the guests stepped out at the table and exchanged news and plans, and the owner usually emphasized that the songs are now in price and that he, a hunter, is not going to give them to the gift. Then the hero, as if without challenging, took the bottle of alcohol and wandered it exactly in half water, so from one bottle of alcohol fortress ninety-six degrees left two bottles of vodka fortress forty-eight degrees. The first glass was chinno under the rown, until she melted (for everyone knows that there is nothing worse than the fisherous ice cream), and then hesitated the meat, which in the northern rules, is boiled in boiling water for five minutes and is fed by half, although hot, and further Everything went under the meat. After the first bottle, the second was approved on the table, and when she came to an end, the Herka did the kind, they say, everything, the holiday ended and sat, calmly smoke, led the conversation and waited for the alcohol to the body of the owner of Yakut and starts his destroying work.

Herka knew perfectly, as everyone knew in the Arctic, that all northern nations, including Yakuts, there are no protective organisms against the "fiery water". And the eunena, and Chukchi, and Khanty, and the Nenets, all of them, bumps vodka, can not stop until all that is, and if there are a lot of vodks, then there will be a lot and will be drunk. And when there is no vodka, everything will be disconnected, which will distantly smell like a alcohol, as it happened on the same factory on Kolyma, where the eaven drank all the bottles of the Czech to Legs, begging will share with him our stocks - the mosquito season came in a week. Because of this, all over the northern coast of Siberia, Chukotka and Kamchatka declared a dry law for the whole summer, when navigation and fish Putin went - otherwise all the north rose. Vodka delivered on the ships was immediately locked in warehouses under the seven locks and get it at that time it was possible only on a very large blat. But when the last caravan was leaving and the dry law was canceled, half-blooded hell began on the coasts. I remember how we got out of the tundra into the coastal Chukotka village and went between the dirt houses, in which drunk chukchi was lying. From one house crawled, holding the sister, disheveled Chukchanka with saliva on the chin and stalking, looked at us for a long time, as on the aliens from another world. "... Airlie came ..." she murmured. "Ebasa brought ..." - and asslaved at the threshold ....

So the hero was sitting and waited. Yakut, of course, could not stand the first and said that it was necessary to drink some more, however. What Gerka objected that he had alcohol, however, but he still needed an Efim hunter to leave, and then on the island of Belkovsky to Nikolai, so it is necessary to calculate so much so that everyone needs it, however. But his companion, already broken, and knowing that Vodka had Herki, argued that "I don't come on another pallis, I'll eat, eat, eat." And the coke was winding his head negatively and beat the bone of the table, the outstanding brain. But Yakut has already poured on the curves of his legs in Song, digging there in the bags and, returning, threw a snow-white lush sandy skirt on the table. Herka with knowledge of business missed the skirt of the blizzard fingers, assessing the quality of the fur and climb into the cabin of the wholeness of the bottle. And already quietly began to cry in the corner of the hut semi-mannenaya Yakutka-wife, knowing in advance, which is to have and what the case will end. And the case will end, of course, a long drunken, during which the Yakut hunter will be tearfully and drunk, will give two sands for the bottle, will climb the rifle to shoot bad people, keep in the eye trying to stop his wife, sell the coch The bear behind the gasoline canister and the bottle of alcohol and, in the end, will fall asleep in the corner on the floor, the hero will fall ash, and the hunter's wife, the stove will go out, and in the hut it will become cold and dark, it will smell alcohol, Kuris and twilot ...

One way or another, but the shelhes of the case went cool to the mountain. Tens of thousands of rubles appeared in Tiksi in Tiksi, his debt book on the factory replenished with many expensive things - batteries, an electric generator for their infection, hunting carbines with optical sight and a rather powerful radio station. He even managed to push the preventive house of the national team on the northern side of the lagoon from the polar station on the north side of the lagoon, near the warrior and settled there with European comfort. Hence he went to distant trips throughout the archipelago and brought his prey there. In addition to the songs, he could have been in the house in the house there was a huge wrist of the Mammont, which Herka cut off the ax from permafrost, to which he left, according to his stories, as many as two days. According to his stories, he also found the old cellar, in which even before the revolution, the hunters folded the toddler before sending them to the "mainland" - then there was a lot of wrist on the island that they were exported by barges and sold for good money - and that in this cellar is kept Hundreds of legs, but the cellar will be covered with water and now there is ice, and you only need a couple of checkers to blow the ice and then you can get rich on only the bezles. He also claimed that he had a bottle from under the Soviet champagne in his house, his fair-filled with golden sand and nuggets, which he was launched in his famous place and he offered to organize a prospector artel on gold mining. He left these plans only after he was explained that the sand in his bottle was not gold, and nobody had an unnecessary pyrite - the so-called "gold fools". Herka was very disappointed, but not long, and came with a partner to the island of New Siberia, from where he returned in a couple of months, full of stories about miracles on the island, where there were a lot of sands, burned underground coal layers, warming the ground so that you could warm your feet And your hands in the worst cold, as his partner, still managed to frow her fingers on her legs, began Gangrena and he had to chop a couple of fingers with an ax. Herka 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 with electric light. So lasted a couple of years.

And then the all-terrain vehicle burned down. At night, when the hero drank with the commander of the company. Both were drunk so much that none of them remembered nothing and did not hear. Only in the morning, he dispersed his eyes, he saw her cozer with horror next to the house, on a hill, smoking the frame.

Marveling and leaning from half an hour, he realized that all of the Russian hunters had fallen out of the Russian hunters, who had long been angry with him, envied, beat him on a drunk case a couple of times and, in the end, decided to religious competitor in Russian - fire. Gerka realized that the all-terrain vessel was no longer restored, and that the reign of the king of the tundra ended in irrevocably. He also realized that there was no humus without good and a couple of days am an act of fire. The commission as part of the head of the airport, the main mechanic and the commander of the air defense company witnessed with their signatures that three carbasine, radio station, batteries, generator, duct sleeping bags, tents, indentible amount of products were burned out with the all-terrain vehicle. The act was sent to Tiksi and the cost of these expensive items, which, in fact, did not think to burn, and lay in the heroic house, was written off with an hectic account. Commission members took themselves who wanted - who carabas who sleeping bag. And the Herk himself, like a fisherman at the blue sea, returned again to his dogs and became a simple hunter, as before. And again on the boiler room became quiet. Until we appeared.

We are geophysics of the Research Institute of the Geology of the Arctic, or, just Niiga, that on washing, house 120, in St. Petersburg, then Leningrad. To work on the island we needed three all-terrainaries, but there was no money for a large plane for bulkheads in the pace, as the topographers did, there were no at the institute. This meant that all-terrain vehicles had to be driven to the island with their own move. From the village of Chokurdah in Tundra, then through the strait to the island of Big Lyakhovsky, past the Small Lyakhovsky, through another strait to the southern end of the boiler room and, already on the boiler house in the pace. Just 700 kilometers ...

Our caravan came out of Chokurdach in the May of May, when it's not so cold and light around the clock. In the morning, it was clear and snow sparkled under the sun, but only we left behind the last shackles of Chokurdach and his extensive landfill and rolled out in an open tundra, how a thick fog fell on us. It was very close way, because it is very important to accurately find your place on the map and take a sure course at the very beginning of the path, and I only saw a cupful bushes of a dwarf polar birch under the very nose of all-terrain vehicles, and then everything disappeared in the fog. I led the caravan on the speedometer and the compass. This meant that every fifteen-twenty minutes I stopped the all-terrain vehicle, wrote down the speedometer numbers, I pop out from the cab, left for ten meters for ten, so that its iron mass does not affect the compass arrow, and determined the direction where to go. In clear weather, it was necessary only to see where the compass pointed out and notice some admission to the farm, a bush, cloud in the sky, and assign to this accept without stopping. In the fog, I could not do this, so in the intervals between the stops I had to withstand the course, using all the tricks known to me. It helped that in the Arctic, the wind blows weeks with enviable constancy and the snow drives in the same direction and I tried to direct the all-terrain vehicle at the desired angle to the gym. Sometimes it was possible to see a ghostly bell-free solar circle through a foggy veil, and then I kept him, again, under the desired angle, mentally moving the sun of fifteen degrees per hour to the west. Sometimes they just trusted the ability to feel some inconvenience and anxiety, when it was going to go there. From constant peering in the fog and lack of a clear line of the horizon, sometimes it seemed to me that the all-terrain route turns onto the back and rides upside down. Then I poured myself more coffee into a lid from the thermos and lit another, unserved, cigarette.

Flashed the shadow of something alive, then the other. I decided that these are deer, meters fifty from us, and the driver ordered the driver to measure - no one in the north, if not crazy, would not miss the opportunity to kill the deer, because it is meat, and therefore life. Grabbabine, I rolled out of the cockpit in the snow and began to aim from the knee. Something in these deer confused me: they looked somehow abnormally. I garely peered - two partridges, not stirring, sitting on a bodie three meters from me. I spat and got back to the cockpit, once again amazing how you can make a mistake with sizes and distances in the fog.

We went to the shore of the Laptev Strait three days after they left chocures. We stopped at the very edge of the coastal cliff. It was an early morning and everything around was tightened, not a fog, no, but the special arctic frosty haired, when the air is thickly saturated with tiny ice crystals. We were nowhere to hurry, and I decided to wait, hoping that the rising sun would turn a frosty torment and improve visibility. We gladly disgregate a good fire from the fin and, sitting around him, in the holy tradition of all the stray and field people, drank tea, smoked and talked. There was two hours. Unexpectedly, the mound was broken, turned into a low cloudiness, and they suddenly appeared gaps, through which the pale blue sky was influenced. In one of these winds, it broke on the right of us rising Sun And, according to some optical magic, all - and the snow tundra, and the ice of the Strait, and the lower edges of the clouds - a thick rich pink light. All silenced. This ghostly pink world existed for ten minutes, then slowly disappeared together with the clouds in the sky.

Pink light went out, but the Ice Plain of the Strait opened before us, completely, to the horizon itself, pulled by toothy torus.

And there, far in the north, where the ice merged with the sky, we saw our goal - rounded the snowy top of the highest mountain on the island of the Great Lyakhovsky, ghostly growing out of trembling molding air. Probably, somewhere here, or in another, very similar, the place, stood two hundred years ago, the free Cossack Lyakhov with his gang of dashing people and intently watched the same strait and on the same top, knowing that she was not a mirage that was there Unknown New Earth. Everything was the same as now - the same climbed ledge of the tundra plain, the same snow-covered beach with the fins of the fin, the same strait, the same torus. Only, instead of reservedly rumbling all-terrain vehicles, there are nervous dogs next to them. And these people were dressed differently. Better us. Not in the vintage, boots with galoshes or ever-free heavy unts, and light and warm fur. And, probably, just like that Cossack then I waved my hand, and the cars gently descended on the ice.

We needed to cross the strait of about sixty kilometers wide. We spoke on ice in search of the passage between the torus, but now, with clear weather, I was much easier for me, because I saw this snowy peak in front of him and I didn't have to pop up with a compass from the all-terrain vehicle, but simply, passing through the outline ridge , Expand the car with a nose in the right direction. Now the difficulties were others - find smooth ice or at least such a place in the ridges of broken blue ice, through which our all-terrain vehicles could get. But no matter how hard I tried, then in one, then the other car has steel caterpillars from the guides of the rinks and they, as they say, "destroyed." Sometimes steel tracks of the caterpillars could not withstand the load and burst when the all-terrain vehicle hang out on the sharp face of the floe, as on the tip of the knife. Inogdeing machines were stuck in deep snowy drifts between the torus. But, having escaped on smooth ice, drivers, with a sigh of relief, stuck up the fourth gear and flew forward with the speed of Already thirty kilometers per hour, until they stuck in the next ridge. Whatever it was, but after eight o'clock we rolled out to the southern bank of the island of Big Lyakhovsky, right at the houses of the polar station, at the foot of that very snowy mountain.

We spent on a polar station all day, dumbling on soft beds with bed linen, dining in a cabin company, playing backgammon (after chess - the most popular game in the north) and browsing old newspapers and magazines. Drivers faced a little with the machines, but did not find any serious trouble, so we were "in the morning" on the way. We reinforced the mountain from the east and crossing the island of the mastock to the northwest, literally rushed across the tundra, choosing the most swampy places in which fortunately there was no lack of an island, and who, almost impassable in the summer, were for us now, as Concrete highway. Any self-respecting navigator should know at any time where it is, so I, despite my excellent visibility, kept my finger on the map and only managed to record the speedometer in the notebook at the most noticeable reference points.

A few hours later we stood on the north shore of the island and looked again on another already strait, now named after Caiura Sannikov, who separated the island of Big Lyakhovsky from the island of the boiler room. It looked like this strait as well as the one that we crossed yesterday - the same blue-green torosa, the same snow and the pale blue sky above it. Probably, all frozen straits in the Arctic look equally. Another bonfire, another kettle with a strong brewing, bread with meat stew, one more look at the compass - the hills of the boiler house on the horizon did not look at the horizon, and I wanted to get exactly the most southern tip of the island, where another polar station was located - And we again moved to the north, as carefully, but still a little bit faster than the day before - after all, something learned something, they acquired some experience and it was better to think where it was possible, and Kuda could not. Clear weather also helped, because I could use the sun as a compass. Although the sun at this time of the year no longer sits down, but still at the night clock lowered low, it becomes clearly colder and the fog is almost always thickened. So it happened with us, but already not far from the island. Drivers have been nervous due to congenital driver hatred for ride in the fog, but I was calm - my inner compass told me that we were on the right track, and when the speed meter showed that the shore remains five kilometers, I stopped cars and told everyone about it . People hung.

We reached the shore of the island with a mistake of five hundred meters. But the fog was so dense that I could not accurately decide exactly where we got to the shore and in which side the Polar Station Sannikova is located, where I was going to give everything, and myself, too, rest for a couple of days. In order not to burn in vain of gasoline, shaving in the fog on an unfamiliar island, I ordered to drown out the motors and under the gazes of men, already guessing what was getting into the body, where, in terrible cramped, among the barrels with gasoline, managed to open a mounted castle on My commander's package box and extracted four bottles of vodka from there. Bread and stew and vodka snapped into the circles instantly appeared instantly. The most difficult thing is to transition through the ice straits - it was behind.

Then everything was simple. After drinking on the beds of the polar station and sowing normally cooked soups and stew, I paid off with the head of the station for his hospitality the most expensive gift on the island: I allowed him to take a picture of my topographic 2-kilometer card, sewing a stamp "secret" in the upper right corner. Us, geophysics and geologists, these cards were issued by the secret department of the institute for the strictest receipts and prohibitions not to show them to anyone, and at the simple mortals who constantly lived and worked on the islands, in Tundra, there were never such cards and how they did without them I still can not imagine. Then we moved along the shore north.

I stopped my luck on the rocky cliff, at the High Black Cross on the grave of the doctor's doctor, who deceased on the boiler room.

I stood next to the cross and looked to the west, in the mallous ice eternity of the frozen sea. As then, at the beginning of the run on south Bank Strait Laptev, I thought about those people who were here at this place, but only seventy years ago, put the stones on the body of the doctor, and then, approving the Cross on the grave, stood, removing the caps for a while or throwing the hoods and looked there , In the same MGLU. I did not know who they were, as they looked like were dressed. I only knew for sure that just as now, then the mowed is a mesmer, but the energetic cold. wind. I could be quite sure because the wind always blows in the Arctic. And if, as in the game in associating, when they call something and need to quickly call the word associated with this, ask me - "Arctic", I will answer - "Wind". Not snow, not ice, not cold - the wind. The wind in the Arctic blows always, days and weeks in the same direction, in summer and winter, then moderately, then strongly, then hurricane, but always. It was worth only to break the camp, like the wind began his whistlingly guided song in stretching tents, in the masts of the antennas and in chimneys, clapped with tarpaulin and quilted along the tundra black and brown smoke from the sneakers in the furnaces. The winds born and the sounds associated with him became so habitual accompaniment of the polar life that they stopped noticeing, but when the wind suddenly subsided and the sounds died, it became a little in itself from the coming silence. But this usually lasted not long - maybe, an hour or two, then the wind blew up with the same force, but on the other hand, and the sounds of Japanese again. Such winds of winds, as a rule, did not lead to anything good and ended with snow, or protracted fogs and rains.

So now, in this ordinary polar May day, a thousand nine hundred and seventy-third years, the wind instilled in the crossbars of the Orthodox funeral cross and pass the drowned rumbling alongside me and the heat of the engine of the all-terrain engine operating at idle. It returned me back to the present. It was necessary to move on. The pace was not far. Regard not far compared with what we have already passed.

I caught myself many times on what you should put a point on the map and, thus, designate a place where you need to get in any affordable way, on horseback, on horseback, on deer, on the all-terrain veins, how this point acquired the mysterious strength of attraction and I It sought to get to this point, very good knowing that this is just a point on the map and there is nothing special there - neither the hut nor tents or food. But still you are already involved in the process of achieving the goal, you look at the card and with pleasure, mark the diminutive distance. So now. I knew perfectly well that at the pace I was not waiting for me, except for the hard work for having abandoned with the fall of the camp, Novas, when the hills suddenly broke up and I saw a white plane of a frozen lagoon, batheled in the snow barley buried in the snow , Radomatic and stationary windmill airport, I sighed with relief. In front of me was the very point on the map to which I sought. The distance ended and everything was fine.

We did not have time to dig up the entrances of the tents from the two-meter snow drifts and toggle the stoves, as guests put in our camp, and not someone just like that, and the head of the airport and the captain commander of the air defense company, already notified about our distillation by Radruts from Chokurdach. I was flattered and surprised by such attention to simple geophysics and first, it was pleased for the deadly boredom of the polar night and winter, when he was glad to anyone. But after a short acquaintance and the exchange of news on the table there were two bottles of vodka, and I realized that the case was not in joy from the appearance on the island of new people and contemplation of my person, but in something more serious. So it turned out.

Spring and the inhabitants of the Arctic joined the most difficult time when the nerves were tensioned to the limit from the monotony of polar night, the permanent contemplation of the same persons, the hearing of the same stories, the lookout of the same films and eating the same food. And here, at the time, following the eternal call, the temporal herd of deer was suitable for the tempo and everyone so wanted bloody chops in three fingers thick, quickly roasted tenderloin, fresh liver with a bow on a holy frying pan, and a fatty fragrant soup with slices of tender boiled venison and brain bones. Yes, and just break out in the tundra and ride in fresh, untouched, clean snow, not fastened fuel oil and dogs! But, as follows from all that has already been said in this story, for this we needed a means of movement, and with them, as already mentioned .... In short, my guests were pleased with my personally appearing on the island, but what am I managed to drag here all-terrain vehicles here, and they needed not so much, how many two of mine best cars with drivers. Therefore, there was vodka on the table.

It was impossible to refuse, and it would be just stupidly - it is impossible to neglect people with people in the Arctic, having access to aviation, fuel and spare parts. And I could not know what position I would find and what I need it at least in a week. So, after drinking a day after the ran and superficially checking the state of the machines and the levels of various liquids in them, we were picked up at the airport of two men appointed by the head for hunting and, under their leadership, slipped past the tractor to the ice, crossed the lagoon and climbed to the opposite shore . There we drove past an abandoned house, next to whom the skeleton of the burnt all-terrain vehicle was standing, - the remnants of Herkin Glory - they rolled out on a running road and two kilometers stopped at the checkpoint of the air defense company. Nothing more stupid than this gearbox, I have not seen in my life. In the middle of a hilly tundra on the white snow there was a striped booth with a long inclined black and white striped stick, slammingly sticking over a buggy road, and nothing else - no fear, no barbed wire, to somehow mark the border of the territory of the company, which should be protected. Just a booth in the middle of the tundra. But in the booth, as relying on every self-respecting gearbox, was sitting by a young soldier-hour in a sheepskin Tulup. He asked us who we were and filming with a piece of paper on the wall of the booth, waved her hand. We obediently moved to those who were visible away by the barracks.

At the longest barrack, in which all officers lived, we were already waiting for me on a recent visit to the commander of the part and east two, one with a mustache, another with a golden tooth, all dressed in spotted boys. Each armpit was shaking SCS - Self-charged Carabinity Simonov, the subject of my dreams. We, wildfields, gave the old, military times, carbines with shot down sights and so worn out trunks that sometimes a bullet could simply shove in the blow. And here in the hands of officers sparkled by Funny Steel Novekhonki, just from the pyramid and licked military service, reliable and comfortable machines for shooting and murder. Probably, my envy was written in my face, because the commander nodded to the officer, the officer nodded to someone else, he ran somewhere, and I was awarded the SCS.

Commanded hunting as the most knowledgeable, men from the airport. They drove together in the cabin, and I, gladly giving up responsibility, I climbed into the body along with the rest of the hunters. We smoked, grabbed each other at the turns, twisted under the ceiling on Ughab and tried not to talk because of the fear to plunge their tongue.

Unexpectedly, the engine roared even louder and the driver took the right to the right, from which we all collapsed on the left side, then rushed cool upwards, sending us to the back wall, and then, with a grinding, I knew the transfer, leaned forward and rushed down the slope, throwing us on The front wall separated by the body from the motor. At the end of these walled maneuvers, the all-terrain vessels unexpectedly sharply slowed down and the aggravated beep sounded in the body. After throwing a tarp canopy, we could quickly fall out of the body in the snow.

The all-terrain vessel stood in a canopy spray between two hills, in the floodplain float, marked with miserable shoots of the low-spirited polar birch. Among these bushes, the meters fifty from us, there was a real estate flock of deer, the goals are ten - fifteen, in full confusion, staring at us. The hatch was thrown back in the roof of the cab, from where he thundered the first shot, strangely muted, as if in a low voice - as I understood, then all these carbines sounded - and the pallet began. Deer darted first to the left, then right. Something in their behavior seemed to me not quite ordinary - they did everything too slow. Something was wrong and in themselves, they looked somehow not quite so ... And then it came to me that these were all the wrenches, pregnant women, on demolitions, found this splashes with bushes to give birth - It was already time, the spring fell ...

I shot with everyone, like a stupid, not releasing the trigger and leading the trunk from left to right, noting the next hit, when the bullet beat the wool in the side and the coil wool took off with a gray cloud into the air, until he was suddenly in the slot of my sight then the hat-troops. Some miracle my finger froze on the jurka. Another second, and I would put the head in the shreds, on which this hat was hoping. As it turned out, I, from the whole clock, remained just one cartridge. The wrenches rushed on one side of the spin on the other and fell alone after another. There was no salvation for them. I saw the edge of the eye that one of the survivors darted up the slope, trying to jump out of this West. I led the trunk and the shot interrupted her front left leg. The Vazhenka collapsed the muzzle in the snow, but immediately jumped up and, on three legs, rushed further, and the rolling leg dangled on the run like a rag. The golden officer from the knee laid it on the slope. Stream shot. No wage, and there were only twelve, did not leave.

We walked among the dead bodies and finished still living - officers and airports - from the Karabinov, and we with the driver, in a habit of saving the cartridges - the old faithful hunting way - the knife is the edge of the skull, where it has connected with the neck. Only a light trembling, then convulsions in the feet thrown down, and the animal's eyes stopped and quickly delayed with a muddy film. Azart hunt, as always in such an environment, slept sharply and we drank tea from thermos, smoked, and discussed what to do next. I insisted that you need to handle and divide the carcasses right now, while they are warm and skins them easily, because I knew the experience as hard it would do then when the frost spikes it all in the ordinous ice cream ships. Two carcasses per person - we would not have taken more than two hours. But the captain only shrugged:

What is there ... Soldiers in the kitchen dress are divided. And we only get tooths. It is necessary, so lucky all the wrenches with puffs. -

A genuine joy was written on the face of Captain. Then suddenly, as if the cloud shook on his happy face and he asked if we were not needed torself, at which I was with a destroyer, as participants in the hunt and the owners of the all-terrain vehicles, had full rights. I looked at the driver. He moved negatively head.

No - I said - we do not need torture, but we take meat. Two carcasses. And yet - if the brutery can smoke, then you need to take a clipping and liver at the same time. And then while your soldiers are separated, my saliva guys will be out. -

The captain and other two officers were clearly satisfied with the fact that we refused tortowki - they obviously wanted to get them all.

We took the case. The belly from the most rear, legs were quickly sustained, the two fingers were surrounded by the back of the back, on them the knife was placed up, so as not to the guts and not blur the meat with litter, and the entire stomach was swept along the midline, then, then, With effort, a soft breast was cut into the throat, I found it, I was cut and tied the knot of the esophagus, the carcass turned on the side and smagled insides were falling on the snow. The faster movement was swept the uterus and flew dead on the snow, but still warm, the dewricter - quite ready for self-life of deer, with folded neat legs, ready three hours after childbirth, awkwardly walk and even run, covered with thick silk light a brown wavy wool, which, be born, would protect him from frost and wind, and which now was intended for the caps, - in a word, already completely ready to appear on the light, and the born, late we are with hunting for a day or mishaps we are past this spin But instead killed with my mother ...

Then, along both sides of the ridge from within a carca, a gentle and delicious clipping was separated, and a dark border liver was extracted from a heap of warm gauge, from which I immediately cut off a piece and sent himself to my mouth. Having learned this from Evenov and Chukchi, I did not miss the case there is a crude liver on each hunt, igniteing the lack of vitamins in a typical field diet, consisting of cereals, canned and dried fruits. I also loved, breaking the foot bone, suck from there with a raw bone marrow, but now there was no time for this.

In half an hour, all the work was finished and all the snow in the disintegration was stained with blood and was littered with already frozen gutters. Oleni Maski, now thin and flat, without round driving stubbles, with glazed eyes and scrubbed languages, were thrown into the all-terrain vehicle, we sat down outside on the engine grilles, cling to what could and came back. I was shaking on the frozen tundra, I felt the weak points of conscience for some time caused by our barbarism and this mass murder of defenseless wrench. But all this quickly passed, buried considerations about the benefits of established contacts with the military and the inevitability of such disgrace, which I don't care, even if I wanted to stop, and which would have happened sooner or later and without my participation. Having calmed yourself in this way, I was all conspicuous on how to see during such a shaking ride and at the same time not to fall under the caterpillars, because both hands were needed to protect the match from the wind.

I, in naught, expected that we quickly unload the carcasses, we will take our share and return to the camp. But I was very mistaken and I only got into the camp in a day. In the officer barrack everything was ready, the table was already covered, the slab was lying down with fire, only us was waiting. Cutting and liver flew in Thai, they were picked up officer wives, stumbled in a frying pan with a bow, on the table with a knock rose a bottle and had already gone first for successful hunting, then the second for geophysicists, then the third for the valiant Soviet army, Then the fourth for the beautiful ladies, then the fifth for all arrogants, then .... I remember that it was catastrophically quickly drunk. It was so much like me, I was always very strong on hops. But here, whether he had a multi-day distillation with his constant tension, whether the hunt, or everything together, - I just relaxed and what is called, swam. I remember that the alcohol came and went to the move a rapid bridge, which was prepared in a washing machine, where a few hours before the use were loaded in the desired proportion water, sugar and yeast, the button was pressed, the car began to ripe and made it seems to be a fastening product, but which, Connecting with drunk earlier, led to a rapid and completely ugly intoxication, which, by the way, was required of this product. The drink greatly gave non-volatile yeast, but it was so conceived that the process of fermentation and processing of sugar into alcohol would be slowed down in the stomach of the consumer. It was terrible, but it did not stop anyone and we trampled his mug of a mug. After that, everything was prevented in a drunken disorder - we shouted songs, argued something to each other, someone squeezed someone's giggling wife, someone climbed to kiss me, my driver during clarification of relations suddenly feats and slipped under the table , Captain, holding the chair and barely holding his feet, announced that the opponent comes to the location of the air defense company, and we occupy defense, for which everyone go to shoot from quad-part anti-aircraft guns, and someone really went with him and I heard short mutual The queues and wild laughter in the intervals between them, then I myself came to mind myself, and I suddenly gathered to go somewhere on the all-terrain vehicle and hung up to keep me, and I was all rushing, and made everyone in the corridor ...

... I woke up in some Chulana, covered with sheepskin Tulup, with a stupid headache and strong thirst in the mouth, so strong that jaws are reduced like a convulsion. I went on a dark abandoned corridor, bumping into a pile of some kind of rubbish and, in search of water, pushed the door at random, but they were all locked - there, probably, family officers lived, which wives managed to drag off the table and locked the rooms. The only unlocked door was the door to the crushed room, where three or four slept on the floor, and my all-terrain was sitting at the table, two from the airport and anyone, and jammed yesterday's rage-ravine. Seeing me, everyone was terribly delighted and handed me a mug with a mug, but from one of her sigh spirit my guts were inside out, and I clung to a liter jar with snowy water standing on the table. The thickening thirst was hazard, except for the direct, also a side effect - the water diluted the blood thickening and alcohol saturated with alcohol, she ran faster, got to the head - and I, without drinking not a drop, was again inxical. I woke up appetite and I clung to the cold remains of yesterday's meat feast. Then the entrance door was raised and the commander of the company was pumped into an embrace with just who had just arrived through the lagoon the head of the airport, which also wanted roasted liver and cutting, and which brought alcohol, and it all started first ...

Drunk dragged on, as it relys in the Arctic, then quietly, then flashes with a new force. I realized that if I stayed, I would walk with everyone already before the dead state, which I have long been, from the student years, did not reach. But my protective mechanisms that I have never let me down and separated me from my inevitably spidabble friends, worked and now, and waiting when the people are afraid of Sziece and Prii once again, I crushed the driver and we moved back to our camp on the spit . It was necessary to start that, for which I rolled here - the geophysical shooting of the island of the boiler room.

Our work with the appearance was surprisingly simple. We needed to carry on the island of gravimeters - such very sensitive and expensive instruments for measuring gravity, similar to narrow high milk bidones on three legs. I had to, giving instructions to the driver, go on the all-terrain vehicle strictly in a straight line or, as scientifically called - "by profile". Every two kilometers I stopped the car and pressed the signal button into the body. After heating the signal from there, two of my helper-operator with gravimeters were falling out, put them on the stand, turned different coins and looked into the microscope, measuring deviations in the power of gravity. It went on five to ten minutes. Then the guys climbed back into the body and gave me a signal to the cabin that everything is ready and you can go further, until the next stop two kilometers .. By moving to the end of the planned profile, it was necessary to turn at right angles, to drive five kilometers and start Riding in the opposite direction on another profile, which was parallel to the previous one, again strictly in a straight line, and again stopping every two kilometer. That seems to be all the simple work. According to the plan, it was necessary to make 700 measurements, and if you do twenty-twenty-five measurements a day, then there will be only a month of work without drunk and weekend and home, to the mainland, to wives, women and friends. In fact, everything was not so simple.

Everyone knows that everywhere, and in the Arctic, especially in order to successfully fly from one place to another by plane, it is necessary to simultaneously, and in the same place, there would be three necessary and sufficient conditions in the presence - a plane in the operating condition, the pilot in sober state and weather is minimally acceptable. Most often it turns out as one Yakut hunter told about his return from the mainland to the island: "Sizu in Tiksi. Day of Size, two Sizaw, Size week - the aircraft eats, the pilot eats, no weather. Yesse Week Size - eats weather, the pilot eats, there is no aircraft. Then Sizu - the weather eats, the aircraft eats, the pilot is not - I went to drink the pie, the bilyad such, the Sibko was drunk, onnak ... ". And we, too, as this hunter, it was necessary to match the three conditions for successful work,.

First, the weather was also important. Not because we were going to fly on our all-terrains, but because I had to know during the ride, at any time I really know where I am, so that when I gave the team to stop, I could put it on the card with An accuracy of up to fifty meters, otherwise all our measurements would not have been suitable. To do this, it was necessary to drive a trip strictly at the specified course, which, in turn, demanded an error-free orientation on the ground, so I didn't even descend the eye from the card or aerial view, all the time I wrote down the speedometer readings and then I pop out from the cab Compass direction. The thick fogs, oblique rains and snow charges did all this impossible and we were often forced to sit in the camp, having losing bad weather.

Secondly, it was necessary that our fabricated devices worked regularly, which, as people with an unstable psyche, leaving themselves in the slightest trifles, reacted greatly to any external changes. For example, because of your sensitivity, they did not like the wind, and the wind, as I said, blowing in the Arctic always. In addition, they did not like shaking. And if we somehow could protect them from fluctuations in temperature or from the wind, then we could not save them from the shaking. As a result, the devices are also started to show some kind of nonsense and it was necessary to stop all the work and put them in order. To top it all, during each working day, it was necessary every fifteen minutes to measure pressure, temperature and humidity of the air, otherwise our whole work would go to the Nammark.

And, though thirdly, but most importantly, it was necessary to work our all-terrain vehicles, because, as you already understood, our whole job was to carry out the devices in all required placesFor which it was necessary to smear throughout the island of boiler house, in total, somewhere about two and a half thousand kilometers. That's where all our problems began, because our cars were somewhat and it was out of order. As we then calculated, for every working day, on average, there were three days of fixing, checks, expectations of spare parts and other valid reasons, so that we quickly, already in the first weeks of work understood that our field season would be much longer than that Theoretically calculated month.

Werepades written off by age from the army, before getting into our hands, they have already worked out all imaginable and unthinkable terms and have long been to be completely destroyed. But they were not replaced, and therefore, at the beginning of each season, their latali, brewed the holes, moved the engines and replaced the wires scattered from the old age. But the cars still broke, and the farther, the more often. And at the same time, breakdowns, according to a well-known fundamental law, occurred unexpectedly and, of course, in the most inappropriate places.

We were afraid of these breakdowns like fire. And when there were suddenly some alien mechanical knocks and crunches among the superfered by a low-power and constantly overloaded motor, and when the engine began to sneeze, to be knocked down from the rhythm and then completely shut down, and when the driver stuck neutral transmission, turned off the ignition and, spitting with annoyance, pronounced Something like: "All, pizdets, arrived! "- We all immediately understood that we had a walk back to the camp. For one simple reason, there were no radio on any of our all-terrains. Therefore, we could not let our other detachment or those who stayed in the camp, where we and what happened to us. And instead of sitting in the all-terrain vehicle, where it was possible, at least to hide from the wind, fry the deer meat in a pan, cook a strong tea, smoking and rolling different field stories waiting for the arrival of another all-terrain vehicle, we rewound the ports, facilitated clothes, The devices hung on the back (they had to be sure to drag back to the camp, otherwise the whole work made before the breakdown would be wasted) and the ponro flew along the traces of their caterpillars back.

It was noted that both of our all-terrants rarely when they broke closer than ten kilometers from the camp. To pass even these ten kilometers in the tundra, by Kochkarnik or on a viscous loam, with constant cold wind, without stopping (still nothing to sit for, and it is dangerous - you can get down and not wake up), it left at least three hours. Cooks sitting in the camp and pressure observer and temperature usually knew about when we expect us back. And when it took place a few hours later than the marked hour, they already knew that another muck had happened and what we should wait for the horizon to appear on the horizon, disgusting, unlike geologists, from walking work and, envy them, blow Stove and brew fresh tea.

Once it is extremely lucky. We rose to the top of the hills, where the topographers still a year earlier we were built with a steel tripogue, under which I had to take measurements by our devices. Selecting closer, I saw at the foot of the tower, on the background of the darquer of the pre-sac, a bright stain of a tent and a black string of smoke, a stealing pipe along the injected tundra. When only a kilometer remained to the tent, my all-terrain route was unexpectedly "lost a spark" (emphasis on "y", if the driver) and got up like the inspected. But after fifteen minutes, we sat warm and drank tea with the guys from Moscow, who were abandoned here a couple of weeks ago to determine the coordinates of these pyramids. They, of course, were radio and we quickly contacted the pace and reported our base about the next breakdown. Zaughz, leaning, promised to fall to Muscovites in his legs and chubby send them a helicopter with a spare "rubber", which, as the driver found out, just crumbled on pieces from old age. Soon they found the desired to paint a "bullet", just for interest. I rejected the proposal, found Tomik Solovyov about the Epoch of the Biron and began to read, breaking down on the folding lodge, but very soon, sprawled with warmth and slapped by the mononic bubption of preferencers: "... pass ... in the tambourines .... Vist ... Pass ... open ... sticking like scrap in shit ... "- slowly sailed into oblivion, far, and for a long time ... By the way, from this tent to our camp there were twenty kilometers and do not make Muscovites there, we would have to stack these kilometers on tundra. So that's how lucky.

I didn't have any more such luck. Two weeks, at the very end of August, when it was already seen that the autumn ends and winter will come soon, I tried the camp to the east, where the island of the boiler was finished and the land of Bunge began. The all-terrain vessel, as always on the move, was so pounded by our field junk, food and fuel, that our unfortunate cook, on nicknamed asthmatic - he smoked without a breather, hoarsely and could hardly walk, - barely felt in the body in a very coherent condition. I decided to go along the backway river, the water in which dramatically fell sharply with the onset of cold weather and it was possible to quickly run forward on the fourth even transmission through pebble braids and small dugs. So it was longer than directly on the tundra, but it was faster and easier for the car and me, because it is easier to navigate along the river. I relaxed, comfortably settled in a close booth, smoked myself and quietly looked around.

The adventures began shortly after we drove the noticeable limestone rocks, painted by the low sun in a pinkish-gray, at the foot of which geologists were there before in the summer, and now canned cans and other trash of abandoned camps. I put the point on the map and, in a habit, recorded the testimony of the speedometer. Looking at the driver Vasya, I noticed that he was somehow unusually pale. After some time, the driver became green and the whole was covered later. Ten minutes passed and he became already blue, stopped the all-terrain vehicle, rolled out from the cockpit and twisted squatting, opening his mouth and letting her eyes on me. I was looking at him with anxiety, going through my miserable knowledge in medicine and remembering what medicine I have in the first-aid kit.

Then, when the poor man went a little, the following was found. On the eve before moving, when I arranged a day of rest and fees, Vasya, too, decided not to waste time and brewed in the bidonchik, rage-rarely, using his own "snack" of sugar and yeast. He did not sleep almost all night, supported the fire in the church, so that the pilot was warm, turned the bidonchik from the side on the side and, to speed up the process, turned it energetically. But still, the browse did not sleep and at the time of his departure was a turbid sweet liquid with the strongest odor of yeast. But it was not that my all-party Vasya was to allow the abyss of such a product with a potential content of alcohol. Not knowing where there is still a case, he drank the entire bidonchik. And then it was necessary to go on the road. And the inevitable happened - from 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 at the same time a lot of carbon dioxide is distinguished (in normal conditions, braga lovers take these gases through the tube into the water, where they are burly and bouffacent, from where they went - bummage). And he did not have the tubes and the gases spread his stomach and intestine and the strongest pain began. So the diagnosis was installed - bullshit gases. I had only a laxative - Purgen .. and since I couldn't wait a lot of time, I couldn't wait for a poor thing to be a hurt of this Purgen and we sat down to drink tea, which he should also facilitate his suffering.

Somewhere in twenty you, as they say on the chauffery jargon, "punched the gasket." He threw a mug and on semi-bent legs lay down with small margins in the tundra, where he sat down with the eagle with the sutured pants on the bar and sat there from half an hour. Then he said that he was easier, but that he was so weak that he could not lead the all-terrain vehicle. The asthmatic slipped the mugs and, groachty and burly lungs, climbed into his close nest in the body, Vasya took my place, I sat down at the driver's seat, started the engine, stuck the transfer and we have shown further east.

Each has passed two hours after a vasine attack, and we all cheerfully put the tracks along the valley of the river and I wanted a speedometer with satisfaction on each noteworthy guideline, noting our stubborn advancement forward. Motor reliably and evenly buzzed. Vasya tristed in relief. Suddenly the car has led to the left. I pulled behind the right lever and added gas to expand the car to the right. Instead, the all-terrain rose just got up. Vasya woke up and carefully looked at me. I checked the transfer - the lever was on the third gear. I stuck first gear and let the car forward. She was leaving left again. I opened the door, and looking at the left caterpillar, I again pulled the right lever. As soon as I did it, the left caterpillar froze and did not move. Motor worked, but the caterpillar did not move. "Everything, pizdets, arrived! "- I said and got out of the cockpit.

The so-called left side gear flew - such a box and gears transmitting rotation from the motor to a large gear wheel, which pulls the steel caterpillar with these teeth. This box, albeit a whole to see, was riveted to the touch and from it rushed with a pawned metal. In it, as it turned out, there was not a drop of oil. Vasya, engaged in the maiden-rage, forgot to check and attach. So simple. The all-terrain vessel could now move only in a circle, counterclockwise.

I was sitting in the cockpit and walked with a circulation on the map, measuring distances. There is no radio in my car, not to call for help. Need to go. There are spare parts only at the pace. There, west, one hundred and twenty kilometers. To the destination, to the east, where we walked and where our seismic explorations stood - fifty kilometers. There are no spare parts, but there are radio and you can contact the pace. Decision is made. It is necessary to go alone, in violation of all security rules, but asthmatic would not have passed a kilometer, and Vasya will be needed here - to install a new onboard when they brought. It is necessary to go flat - a sleeping bag made of dog fur weighed five kilograms, the smallest tent in our gear - twelve kilograms, and all the same nothing will stretch it, do not drag the same wooden frames and stakes. Map, Compass, Match, Knife, Carabiner, Two Spare Couples, A pair of jar of stews, a jammy milk bank, a bunch of bread, a piece of oil, a tutu of tea, two packs of cigarettes. Thermos does not have anyone, my one crashed on the distillation. We put a tent on the spit, lit the stove and got a bread with canned food. I rested on the folding glance from half an hour, then got drunk the tightened tea, put on a backpack, threw a carbine on my back, and stalled along the river a slow geological step to the east, in the thick twilight. I had to walk in such a step, at least fifteen hours, so there was no place to hurry.

The first twenty kilometers, I walked along the valley of the same river, gradually selected to its origins. According to the solid flood, it was easy and I covered about four kilometers per hour. The day ended and the twilight became all Gray. I knew that at the end of August there would be no complete darkness, but with almost complete sunset, it is necessary to wait for the deterioration of the weather. So it turned out. When the sun fell over the assholes, half an hour later a translucent fog was inflicted, and then, with the oncoming wind, a drizzling rain went. My jacket with a tarp riding and the pants began to wet and noticeably added weight. But, fortunately, soon it was cold and my clothes were covered with an ice crust and it became much warmer.

So, hurt with his icing clothes, I fumbled a kilometers up on the river, which, approaching my origins, gradually turned into a narrow stream. Then he disappeared and I began to climb the waterfront. It became more difficult to go - under the legs were no hardening pebbles, but a sublinous tundra, who had not yet hardened from frosts, and the boots were drowning in it and robbed a lumpy dirt. Seven hours of non-stop walking passed, and I felt that it was time to rest, eat and smoke until I was tired at all. In a naked tundra, where the fire can not be diluted and to warm up by the fire, you need to try, as far as possible, do not bring yourself to emotion - an exhaustable person has no internal energy to resist external cold. Dunda comes, then sleep, then - death. Ten years ago, in Chukotka, after two days of search, we found the body of a lost geologist in three kilometers from the camp. He sat on his backpack from the cliff on the slope of the hill, with extinct cigarette in his hands. From this place, he could clearly see the tents and, most likely, after two days of wandering in the fog, was delighted and sat down to relax. It happened in the middle of August and the temperature was slightly above zero. Just the whole day was the ice rain ...

Half-atighing on the carbine and the downtown on the legs (so that it was not too convenient and not relax), I took from the wind behind the earthly hill, pushed out of the permafrost, and had a cold stew and bread, thickly polished with a condensed milk, and then climbed the long-awaited cigarette . I was pleased with my promotion. Everything went according to plan. The only thing that has complicated my further path - I didn't have a card on this piece and I only knew about the seismic camp. But it did not scare me - the compass and the sun will lead me to the valley of another river current to the east, and this river will lead me to the camp. It began to brighten. The energetic breeze squeezed the loose pale yellow polar poppies on the Earthly Bugre and scorched the carbine in the dule. Because of the neighboring bulb, the novice foxes jumped up. Having arched back, he somehow ran up to me on a safe, in his opinion, the distance and schos stared at me, obviously assessing his chances of a hearty meat lunch. I click on it my cigarettes and sands, bouncing, ran into a hill. I was time to move on.

After three hours, when the sun rose above the horizon and turned fog into low-hanging clouds, I passed through a gentle watershed and walked on the swampy floodplain of the precious river, which separated the island of the boiler from the Bunge. The river was named so local hunters who were on her shores spiral shells of the ammonites of the Jurassic period, about a hundred million years old, but so well preserved that the craftsmen of them did beautiful pearl ornaments. It became much warmer, the ice crust on my vapor melted and steam fell from it. I did not feel very tired, but after a sleepless night, in the warmth of the coming day and under the measuring rhythm of the walk, I was drawn to sleep. I drove it with cigarettes and effort will, knowing that there is still ahead of at least four hours walking.

Soon, after a couple of hours, I increasingly began to come across fresh traces of the all-terrain vehicles, which I was delighted as a person rejoiced to rails railway After a long wander in the forest. For me, these traces were like a faithful sign of close housing and that I am on the right track. Then I came across a wooden dynamite box, which exploded our seismices to obtain a reflected echo from the deep layers of the Earth. It was a real gift. I settled in the cozy deepening of the coastal slope, broke the box with a carabiner, got a match box from a condom, spread a neat firebread and boiled a circle of water in which the long-awaited tea was brewed, in the fortress approaching the legendary camp "Chifi" - (pack of tea on a mug of cold Waters, and slowly digest, cover with a cap or mitten, until it boils). Here I absorb myself to relax, threw some more skulls into the fire, and tristed under the crackle of the Koster, putting a backpack under the head.

The cold breeze woke me after half an hour. Bonfire denounced. From somewhere in the valley, the fog stretched, through which he shone to the yellow non-gentle sunny circle. I folded the remnants of the sheets and abdicted canned food in the backpack, rummaged a condom on the matchbox, hid him in the bag and moved further along the river. Five minutes later, the fog scattered and in a kilometer from me I saw something thin, dark and straight, like a twitch sticking over a distant hill. I looked like. It was Radioanten. There was a camp. I fought a fire, cooked tea and dreamed in a kilometer from him ...

As I then defined, I reached forty kilometers over twelve hours. At the end of August, it was the record of our expedition. A week later, my achievement almost was born by my partners on the ground Bunge.

Earth Bung

Nothing strange and mystically, I have never seen anything else and anywhere on globe. About ten thousand years ago, the small sea between the island of the boiler house and the island of Faddeevsky retreated and exposed his bottom, which turned into a completely flat sandy desert of a hundred kilometers wide from the north to the south and from the west to the east. The only noticeable signs on it were only pitiful beams of grass, growing on the nodes a height of no higher knee, and so flat was this desert that even these bumps were visible for several kilometers. Many years later, I worked in the desert in the south of the Arabian semi-brightness and even looked at the edge of the eyes to hell, the famous ru-al-Hali, the most terrible desert on Earth. But I have never experienced such a feeling of complete twistedness from the rest of the pane, helplessness and nude defenselessness, as I felt then, sticking, as if he was doing a sheet, open to all winds, in the midst of the sands of the Bunge.

We were four in all-terrain vessels, besides me and my all-party Vasi Tuzova, when we went to the intersection of the Bunge. Vasya Tuzov loved to talk, but always spoke only about two items, which he needed to give him due, knew perfectly: drinking and whores. And the latter, according to him, did not give him a passage, no ride, and because of them, he earned so little, working as a trucker driver, because he spent more time, lying on them than behind the Branca. By the way, at the same time he was poured, glue wallpaper in the Pulkovo Observatory and there charm his stories of the Strugatsky brothers, who inscribed it, under the name of the driver Tuzik, in one of his novels. Boria, a thin and educated intellectual, read us Pasternak and internally suffered from inconvenience and rudeness of field life, which would have long ago, if it were not for the district salary coefficient and field satisfaction. The old polar wolf (older than all of us for seven years) and the head of our party, the smartest and insensible Vadim, except Geophysics, was still in dissidents and told us such about all sorts of dark Soviet affairs that the hair became endless on our unwashed heads and backs.

We left the same camp where I dragged a week ago. In addition to ordinary field things, our all-terrain vessel was still packed with water bidones, because on Earth Bunge, as it believes the real desert, there was no water at all, even the smallest, puddle, especially in its central part. We are successful, although slower than expected (because of raw sand, in which the westing of the caterpillars), crossed the land of the Bunge from the west to the East on the profile marked in advance, rested a bit and taking a little to the north, began the return path to the West, home , To camp.

Suddenly sharply frowning, wet sand frozen and, literally before our eyes, the land of the Bunge was transformed. Instead of a boring yellowish-brown sandy plain in front of us lay an immense icy mirror, sparkling under the sun coming in the west. The sand became hard as concrete, and our caterpillars did not leave any traces on it. It was possible to fly forward, and we flew, with a long-being forgotten rate, already under forty kilometers per hour, towards dark gray, with gold-plated cut, clouds hanging above the flat, sharply outlined desert horizon. Looking into the rearview mirror, I found a lonely bright star on the darkest eastern horizon and only corrected the driver, waving his palm to the left-right, trying to keep this star in the same position and irritating from the need to stop every two kilometers - the work was still not Finished.

After one of such stops, when Boris finished his measurements and climbed back into the body, I gave you a sign that you can go further. Vasya started the engine, but not yet tried from the scene, suddenly knocked on the device showing the pressure of the oil, immediately turned off the motor and said the sacramental phrase: "Everything, pizdets, arrived! ". Oil pressure sensor stood on zero. In a minute, another work, the engine would grow out of friction and his rotational parts would have jammed in a dead grip with each other., Knowing that the worn out old engine absorbs oil, like a cat Smetano, Vasya cooked a spare canister with her, but forgot to take her with him And she stayed in the camp. From this place to the camp there were exactly forty-eight kilometers.

A short meeting ended with an obvious decision. Need to go. Vasya should be left alone. Boria and Vadim understood perfectly well that now, after that I had just excavated my forty kilometers, I had a turn along the desert. It was seen on them that they did not experience great pleasure from this and, being geophysics of clean water and not having that quenching, which I got on geological work, when fifteen to twenty kilometers a day in the Taiga Mountains was considered the usual thing in the depths of the soul Waited that I will offer my services. But I did not have the slightest desire to do it.

The action plan was simple. They needed to go to the West, and I insisted that they take a little left and would have come out to our own traces, which now, after cooling, were frozen in the sand until spring, and go along the traces, without turning anywhere. Then, even if it happens that, they will look along fresh traces. According to our calculations, taking into account the flat and firm road, to the camp there was a trip of thirteen-fourteen, from strength - fifteen. After throwing a couple of hours on vacation and fees, Vadim (Boria suffered from an acute form of topographic cretinism and could not be completely focused on the terrain) will have to take the all-terrain vehicle seismic and return with oil to us with Vasya, which will leave two more. Total revenue could come for us in twenty, for a round account - after a day. In case of unforeseen circumstances, I said that I would sit with Vasya here, in the all-terrain vehicle, three days until the meat is over, heating up with gasoline tiles and candles (I was not worried about the water, hoping on snowfall). If, after three days, no one will come for us, let's go, if the weather is allowed. However, if the weather does not allow, let's go, because there will be nothing to eat.

We roasted Bore and Vadim's thick pieces of venison on the road and they stumbled to the West. Vasya and I carefully pulled the weakened tarpaulin over the body and tried to legish all the cracks, which could have to keep as much heat as possible in the body, in which we now had to spend unknown how much time. Something about an hour has passed since Boria and Vadim began their way, but so flat was the land of the Bunge that I still saw their silhouettes on the background of sunset.

We sat in the body with a candle light and boiled tea on gasoline tiles. Vasya began a long history about how he drove Kamaz to Kiev and how he took a fellow traveler, and how she had no money to pay, and how she offered himself instead of money, and how he turned to the country road, and how ... the air in the body was heated But it was some kind of unhealthy, fume warm and I climbed out, on fresh air, and began to walk around the all-terrain vehicle, checking my head. In the third circle, I saw how two bright fire flashed on the horizon. These were the headlights of all the way going to us.

Then Boria told that, having passed the kilometers ten already in his old tracks, Vadim began to rub his leg and sat down to relax and rewind the ports. There, they saw the headlights going to meet the all-terrainist, who led our main geophysicist Alexei, to refine the third, and the last, profile through the land of the Bunge. He dutil along the traces left by us and was surprised to an eyelary, when at one moment in the rays of headlights, instead of the monotonous sea of \u200b\u200bfrozen sand and rare bumps, suddenly jerked and shook his hands two human figures. So lucky Bore and Vadim and so my record remained non-contact.

Our troubles with all vessels were not limited to what they were broken. They are sometimes drowning when they had to cross all sorts of rivers and lakes. Theoretically, as the machines of the military, they could stay on the water and even move forward using, instead of a screw, rake traffic of the caterpillars. But, again, a polar law enforced here, requiring simultaneous coincidence of several conditions. Only in contrast to aviation, where this law required the coincidence of weather, aircraft and pilot, for successful crossing on our all-terrain vessels were needed - an ambiguous building, calm and ground shores.

The importance of the absence of holes in the housing is not necessary, but rarely which of our all-terrains, especially after the constriction and driving with a load of three times more allowed, they would not have. The wind, especially transverse, prevented, because the waves bred, which stuck water in the body and also because if he blew along the river, then gradually, but inexorably unfolded all-terrain vehicles around the center of gravity so that the car eventually turned out to be floating against the wind And along the river, not across, as needed. If the shore was steep on the descent on the water, then the all-terrain vehicle dived immediately with his nose into the water and poured the candles, from which the motor immediately GLAH, with all the consequences arising from here.

The slab departure was important because the all-terrain route, which on land could overcome various obstacles, became rather helpless on the water, it became easier because of the Archimedes Act and could not cling to the caterpillars for the orstive bottom of the polar rivers.

In my case, and I shattered with the all-terrain vehicle twice, let down the shore. One time was to blame for my all-go - he flew to the river and, without stopping, he hugged into the water from Bear, who looked like not so bad, but turned out to be cool as the wall of the trench. Water poured through the hood on the motor, the motor, naturally stalled, and the all-terrain vehicle sat down on the bottom of the nameless river on the island of the boiler. After a few seconds, I was already sitting on the belt in ice water. I myself was to blame for the second time, because I did not calculate the opposite shore and carelessly waved the driver with my hand - they say, come on, boldly, forward. We safely crossed the river the width of meters twenty, no more. However, boiling to the shore, I felt something wrong - the shore flasher turned out to be a steep clay slope. Werethod buckled a nose to the strand, sending the front wave of muddy water to the grinding slope, abundantly smoeming the already slippery clay, all-goed gases, but the caterpillars could not care, but only a ditch and drank themselves. The nose of all-terrain trampled is all higher, and the back of the body, on the contrary, descended and lower, while the water, naturally, did not pour through the back board in the body, from where the treasures of my operators were heard.

Alexey's chief geophysicist, after meeting with us on Earth Bunge, drowned more seriously. Sharing oils with us for the engine, he went out on the third profile and began to move to the West after us. In the impending darkness, he burst into the fill of the only freshwater lake on the ground of the Bunge - the fill was two hundred meters wide, if across, but long with a couple of kilometers, if you go back. Alexey decided that, judging by the plane of the surrounding territory, the lake would be shallow and the all-terrain movement would cross the Ferod's fill. He gave the team ahead and the car, clattered caterpillars, slowly went to the water. Strong meters they really went through the bottom, not popling, and then suddenly the bottom went down and the all-terrain vehicle surfaced and cast on the water, driven forward by the running tracks. . "Back! "- Alexey screamed, clearly remembering that in the right side of the all-terrain vehicle, like Titanic, gaping a half-meter shel, which is running in Metal Eshe at the beginning of the season. The driver gave reverse and added gas, but while this progressive movement went out and the all-terrain vessel began to take back, the water had already rejected the all-terrain vehicle so that he began to sink smoothly and by the time everything, half the wet, rushing in ice water, got into the roof, He sat on the bottom at a depth of about two meters.

In the morning, when seismicians who accidentally noticed a dark point in the middle of the water stroit, and with the risk of drowning and their own all-terrain vehicle, swam to the drowned car, they saw the following picture. On the roof of the all-terrain vehicle, twenty centimeters from the water, for the outstanding roller, folded from wet sleeping bags and backpacks, lay closely embracing, three semi-clad people from the cold of people in the ice covered with ice. Alexey then admitted that he was already forgiven with life and figured that they would frozen death six to eight hours if helped ...

But despite all the breakdowns, sumps, repair, long-term forced walks along the tundra, wait for bad weather and other troubles, we continued to wear two kilometers on the tundra on the grid. We stuck out the whole island with tracked tracks and noted all our camps with empty barrels from under gasoline and diesel fuel and all that people left the camp behind them. We continued to do our job, despite the fact that winter has already seen the island and the whole world affordable to us again became black and white. The sun now very rarely looked through low-hanging layered clouds and the light time remained less and less. Mercury in the thermometer confidently kept on the top ten degrees below zero and stoves in our tents, a thin layer of tarpaulin separating us from the Koching Arctic, burned nonstop. Only cracking these stoves is hot, it was possible to warm up a small space around them, but already in three steps, where our clamshells stood, we kept hiding from the hungry sands, our reserves of Olenine ice cream, and she was not thawed there. It was possible to split the stoves with only completely opening the fuel crap so that the diesel fuel was flowing on the flame continuously. Because of this, our reserves of the Saloary were quickly depleted and at the middle of September ended at all. Posted before the choice - or freeze, or risk to burn - we began to burn aviation gasoline in our chickens, several broods of which remained scattered on the tundra since the spring, when we did the restaurant benefles of the island on the helicopter .. first we were very careful, but then when we were very careful, but then when we were very careful, but then when we were very careful It was understood that on such colds, gasoline does not form dangerous explosives, osmellies and began to burn him without regard.

.... Having on his account something about twenty field seasons on the mountains of Tien Shan, in Kamchatka, on Kolyma and in the Arctic, I did not stop, and I never cease now, to surprise the sacrament of the transformation of the empty space into a cherished place. It is only worth pulling the tents, put and flood the stove, drag inside the bags with "shredniki" (so we called our personal junk) and inflate the rubber inflatable mattresses, like a piece of tundra, absolutely no different from millions of other such pieces, suddenly, suddenly acquired completely different quality. He became home. And when the daily route ended, the last measurement was taken and the latter point was put on the card, I waved the driver with my hand in the right direction, I was folded on the back of the seating and said: "Home!". And we were clawing caterpillars in a broken darkness, knowing that soon I will see a glowing cube of the tent and moving the silhouette of our partner who performs the digestible work of the cook in the distance from the inside. In the tent it will be closely, everything will be saturated with a mixed smell of diesel fuel, volgar clothing and fried meat, but it will be warm and light, and you can remove the charter and unts and fall apart on the folding glass with a mug of hot tea and smoke - in a word, you can do everything that Make at home. But the next cold morning the tent will be removed and folded, everything will be packed over bags and drawers and abandoned in the body of the all-terrain vehicle. Then the snow quickly wakes up a square piece of the Earth, on which the tent stood and which I called the house yesterday, and this place will return to your eternally empty state. And we will be touched on the next camp, where this mystery of the transformation will repeat again ...

Every day it was becoming harder to work harder - by the end of September, there was only four hours. To fulfill your daily rate, I left the camp early in the morning in complete darkness. Even in the afternoon it was very difficult to focus on the monotonous snowy tundra, but when it had to be done also at the light of headlights, the process of finding out where I still find it, turned into a real puzzle. In addition, products, especially tea and sugar, were terminated, the reserves of which were undermined at the beginning of the season with enhanced bragovasculation. But the most important thing is that we all felt that our all-terrain vehicle was close to literally fall apart. Welded seams that kept all together, from old age and severe merchaise, they diverged here, then there, and we could not do anything with it. Sitting in the cockpit, I observed anxiously, how I was moving and creaked the roof, and the floor was fencked by the fights under my feet.

In one of the rare quiet and sunny daysWe met with the detachment of seismicians who ended the work on the land of the Bunge and, according to them, returned to the pace. It was somewhat embarrassed by me, because, judging by the one who looked the nose of their all-terrain vehicle, they went in the right opposite direction back to the east, on the ground Bunge, what I informed them to the head of Jore. That was surprised, because he was in complete confidence that she was going to the pace, west. But a quick glance at the compass convinced him in my rightness, and, unfolding one hundred eighty degrees, happy seismics rushed in the right way to the direction, hoping to arrive at the rate of hours in four, and I spent their eyes with envy until they disappeared behind the slope of the hill . It was the last all-terrain vehicle, not counting mine, from those three that I led to the island in the spring, which could still move on my own. The car on which Alexey drowned, was tightly delivered to the eternal parking at the pace due to the lack of spare parts.

A day after day, the turn of my all-terrain vehicle. There was a cloudy day and the eternal polar wind drove the snow to us. We overturned through a low stony ridge and when the all-terrain vendor, hinting for a moment on a sharp range, nodded down under the slope, unexpectedly with a crash flew and crumbled on small pieces of windshield. I knew that this sooner or later would end, because the cabin had long walked around all the seams and at each bugger, cut it and so, but I still didn't understand it from surprise what happened, and some time was still sitting sprinkled with glass fragments. Then I came to my senses and long since the annoyance. I had to finish the day work and then lead the car back to the camp at a distance of twenty kilometers, against the oncoming wind with snow in the face with frost about fifteen below zero. Mistering for an opportunity, I calmed down and gave the team to move home. Vasya Tuzov looked at me with compassion, as I covered my face with my palm and sought the right signs through the spreading fingers. In the cockpit, it was quite warm from the engine who worked and I was not afraid to frowned, but snow sec face like sand and knocked out tears from the eyes.

As it turned out, it was only the beginning of our troubles. When we finished the last measurement already in a thick MGL, and went out into a familiar valley, at the end of which our camp stood, I relaxed a little, because Vasya had already knew the road and found a camp without my help. I hit my head inside the cabin and hid my head in the palm of my face, wandering to calm the pain in the eyes weemed. Then Vasya patted me on the shoulder. I thought that he wanted to check whether he was going right and I began to burst into the snow again, now even more blinding in the light of the headlight. But Vasya pinched me again on the shoulder and poked his finger into the ammeter on the dashboard, showing the state of the battery and the operation of the generator, which gave a current to charge this battery. The arrow of the device fell to the left and sat there dead, not moving and not responding to an increase in engine speed. "Generator Pizdets, Head." - diagnosed with experienced Vasya. I frown. This meant that the motor takes the current from the battery to maintain its work, but no current from the dead generator does not enter the battery and sooner or later it will "die", the engine will lose the ignition, and the long silence will come ...

I ordered you to drive the car to the camp as quickly as possible, and he obediently pressed on gas. Thank God that at least the engine worked fine, there was plenty of gasoline in the tanks and the spare canister with butter was this time. I again hid my face from the wind and began to think what to do next. First of all, it was necessary to get to the camp. Then immediately, until everyone was falling to bed there, it will be necessary to contact the radio with the pace and say that the generator soldered in the morning, they were taken out of the glass from any inactive car and would send Zhorin all-terrain vehicle, who had to come to the pace, to us to camp on revenue. If you fail to contact now, you need to contact in the morning, and the motor is not showering all night - no one knew how much life remained in the battery and we could start it later. If you fail to contact in the morning - throw the camp and even press the pace until all gasoline burned.

We got to the camp without adventure and I immediately, leaving the engine at idle, rushed to the radio. There were ten o'clock in the evening. All my squad got into a handful of a microphone and listened carefully. The tempo answered almost immediately. I quickly explained the state of affairs with glass and the generator and the tempo I very much advocated. Then I wrapped around what it should come from, and the tempo said, which will certainly do. But when I ordered to send to us Zhorin all-terrainaries early, very early in the morning, there was a painful silence on the ether. And then we had a rather strange conversation:

Temp, tempo! Why are silent? How do you hear me? Receive! - I ask.

I hear you well. Reception - without the slightest delight answered the pace.

I repeat. Tomorrow early in the morning, I repeat, early in the morning, send Zhorin all-terrain vehicle with spare parts for me to the camp. The camp is located on the river Stone-ten kilometers up from the swamp in her. How did you understand? Receive! -

You understood. The camp is located on the river Stone-ten kilometers up from the swamp in her. Reception. -

I repeat. Tomorrow early in the morning, I repeat, early in the morning, send Zhorin the all-terrain vehicle with spare parts for me to the camp at the specified place. How did you understand? Receive! -

You understood. But Zhorin can not send anywhere. It is not. Reception - Mystery answered the tempo.

I did not understand, I did not understand! I met Jore yesterday in the route. He walked into the pace. Not quite accurate, but went to the pace. Reception. -

Werethod came to the pace. But now it is not. Reception. -

Do not understand! Did he leave the pace?. If approved, where and when will it come back? Reception. -

The pace was silent a little and answered:

Werethod at the pace. But it is not. I can not send it to you. It is not. End of communication. -

Silence has come on the air. We all stared at each other and nobody understood anything. It was clear that at the pace there was something unpleasant, which was not necessary to speak outdoor text on the air. We were clear only one thing - there will be no help from the pace.

I sat down on a clamshell. I suddenly felt that I didn't have any more strength, no will fight problems, which somehow suddenly began to pounce on me from all sides. I realized that all that happened is the sign that the end of our work and our stay on the island comes. It was necessary to make a decision. And I accepted it. We are removing from here, and not in the morning, but right now, and we remove the dogs of the dog. That is - in the pace. It was impossible to work anymore.

Not the shower of the motor, with the light of the headlight, under the inclined secing snowfall, we rushed to collect the camp, mercilessly throwing everything too much and half a half, from which they used to get rid of it, knowing that there would be no replacement. Everyone worked except Wasi, who was released from everything, was sitting in the cockpit and supported the speed of a little more idle so that only God would not dwell. Otherwise, it would be necessary to put the camp again, sit in it and wait for the helicopter for emergency evacuation. It was impossible to go on foot - fifty kilometers in the snow and in the frost meant almost true death. At about midnight, we poured the last gasoline from the barrels in the vessels of the all-terrain vehicle, the guys settled as they could - who is in the body, who is outside, clinging for stretching and rushing into the tarpars and sleeping bags - and we went to the west.

At the dawn of the next day, we rolled out on east coast Laguna. I looked at the same distant, but already available, cozy homemade hassles of our tents and simply physically felt how the stress of the last weeks disappears. Now everything was behind. We descended down and, having encouraged the lagoon, went to the coastal braid.

On the approach to a large tent tent Seismicov, I saw the escape of the burnt dotley all-terrain vehicle. I first decided that someone with some mysterious goal dragged here the ceremony of the herogeroad, burned shortly before our appearance on the island, but then I was distinguished by familiar, although distorted by fire almost beyond recognition, the outlines of aluminum racks and blocks of the seismic station, Which I myself helped in the spring to install in the body. It turned out that this burner Iron skeleton was a Zhorinic all-terrain vehicle, which at the pace, but not, as I was trying to explain on the radio.

As I told me, Zhora arrived at the tempo of the clock six after meeting with us, slightly clutching a couple more times on the road. His arrival was waiting with impatience, because Braga, put by his guys, was easily sitting at the pace, had already slept and slept and got very strong, but bitter. Therefore, the table was covered overnight and forty liters of the perishes went on mugs and chips without stopping. Everyone knows that even in normal conditions, the drinking braga produces some particularly bad and severe intoxication. And here, after a long abstinence, when the body is cleaned and disadvantages from alcohol, with a bad, preservative snack and lack of vegetables and vitamins, this Syuvushny sowed struck everything on brains with such a force that everything turned into some kind of wildness. The hour has not passed, as the general clarification of relationships began, tearful explanations in love, claims to bosses, finding out who asshole, and who is not, and all that, usual for field drunken. Someone has already beaten someone in the corner of the tent, when there was a writhing cry: "Everybody burns !!". Everyone flew out. White dazzling flame beat a candle vertically up, snatching from the Arctic darkness of a brightly refined circle, in which helplessly rushed and fell in snow hopelessly drunk people, and someone continued to beat someone, but already in the snow. Then the gasoline tanks were rushed and the swarming was rushed. About to save the all-terrain vehicle, could not be speech. It burned out everything inside, all station, photo lab, weapons, tents. Fortunately, before sit down at the table, Zhora pulled out from the all-terrain vehicle and brought all the folders with the results to the tent and they would have burned down and they would disappear the work of the whole season and the jora would be waiting for serious trouble, even quite likely, the court.

Nobody found out who set fire to the all-terrain vehicle. Suspusage Palo at the explosive on the nicknamed radish, which was accidentally found, drunk dead, in the snow for a tent. He lay face down, and in his cotton pants there was a smoking hole, and on the ass - a strong burn. It was decided that he, having mastered the brothers before amazement, for some reason he opened the cabin the door, lit up, dropped the cigarette cake, climbed there himself, sat down on the cigarette and fell asleep and when his pants were burned to meat on the ass, woke up from pain, And got out of the fresh air, where he calmly fell asleep almost to death, and the fire continued his business in the oiled seating, until it broke out.

So it was, or not so, no one knew and would not know. All the same, our presence on the island, and at the same time and the means of transport on the island of the boiler room, the end approached.

I still completed the remaining routes, working from the tempo. I finished them only because it was necessary to fulfill the plan for a hundred percent, otherwise the expedition would be deprived of the cash premium.

I returned from the last Marshut at the very end of September and someone snorted me together with another geophysicist as soon as I got out the cabins.

This photo and now hangs on my wall in my Canadian house - tired swimming eyes, black beard, baul over the shoulder, armpit carbine, rubber boots, snow on a pebble spit and tent in the background. Then I did not know that it would be my last photo on the island of the boiler room, in the Soviet Arctic, in my country. Then I was just very tired and really wanted home to Leningrad.

And then, Li-2 flew behind us and we all happily drove in an empty cargo compartment, where it was almost as cold as outdoors. But it was no longer important - we flew to the mainland. We settled, as they could, on our bags and Baulas, the plane broke away from the ground, our abandoned tents flashed under the wing, the closest hills of the island drowned in the frosty fog and under the wing drove the icy water of the Laptev Sea. We are relief, despite the strictest ban, dressed together, noting the long-awaited end of the season and the beginning of a long, gradual return to civilization.

Looking, as incredibly quickly and easily fly under the wing, the very places where I dragged a few days ago with a turtle speed in a basically roaring all-terrain vehicle, I sincerely rejoiced that everything was already behind and did not feel the slightest regret that I parted my stranger Cold space, where I managed to survive safely. But then I did not suspect that this cold and unlucky world is imperceptible, implaced and sadly, I was introduced into me and put in me invisible, but chain roots. Already later, warming up in the family warmth and comfort, returning to your table at the institute and pulling into an ordered normalized city life, began to catch myself on the fact that everything is more and more often I remember everything that was with me on the island of the boiler room, but without Poor, without fatigue, danger and helplessness, without cold and inconvenience. Just suddenly, the reality stepped aside and suddenly blurred the blue torches and snow of the Laptev Strait, sinking in pink light, long, gentlely colored sunsets or mirror-sparkling frozen sands of the Bunge. Gradually, I realized that I just love this inexplicably beautiful, semi-transparent, silent and shy world.

We then endowed a lot of harm. We broke into this world with our roar cars, wearing a row and forth, wounded the tundra with steel caterpiluses, sketched empty barrels, killed hundreds of deer and ruined dozens of unborn elsewhere, and, having robbed their unfortunate all-terrain vehicles, disappeared, as if we were there and not It was. Almost thirty years have passed since then. Approximately as much as you need to throw tracks of our all-terrain vehicles on the tundra - my favorite Arctic hesitates the wounds for a very long time, which she is so easy to apply.

I do not know what is happening there now. Maybe for lack of money in an inflated country, all the polar stations closed and have no place to rest after severe distillation. Maybe, as unnecessary, removed from the island of the air defense service, maybe empty and looked through the barracks of airfronts at the pace and no one to drink in a warm cabin company and see the old film for the uphearance of Purgi. I do not know. And I will not regret at all if it really is. Because we are not needed there. It is only necessary there to be quiet and everything returned to its initial, eternal state. Let my favorite Arctic sleep and calmly sleep.

I do not know whether I will ever be back in those places. Most likely - I will never come back. But from Canada so close, just to hate through the North Pole, but everything does not work, everything does not allow fate, and time goes. But if suddenly it turns out that I will come back, I promise that everything will be different. I promise that I will not go there on the tundra, noise and litter. I promise that it would be careful that only not to wake my favorite, and quietly sit somewhere in the corner. I already don't need anything special, I will only sit and watch, hoping that this is about to light up above the strait that pink light as much, many years ago. Most likely, I will not wait for it. Then I carefully, trying not to make noise, I leave back, where came from. And already forever.

Recently, among Russians, interest in their homeland is increasingly growing. Many give preference to rest within the country, and this is not only the resorts of the Krasnodar Territory, but also the mountains of the Urals and Altai, Taiga in Siberia, Lake Baikal, etc. And just recently there were lovers of traveling to hard-to-reach areas of Russia, for example, in the Arctic North . In this regard, in this article we will tell the reader about where the Novosibirsk Islands are located, introduce them to their feature and meaning for our homeland. So, proceed.

Novosibirsk Islands on the map

This archipelago is located in the Arctic Ocean. It serves as the border of the East Isibirsk Sea and the sea of \u200b\u200bLaptev. Administratively belongs to Yakutia. Novosibirsk islands consist of three groups. The first one is the most southernmost - Lyakhov. Strait D. Laptev they are separated from Eurasia, and - from Anji Islands. Boiler (Novosibirsk Islands Archipelago) and New Siberia make up the second group. Last, third de Long. They are northeast of the Anjo group and are small islands. Everyone will be able to find the Novosibirsk Islands on the map of Russia. Their coordinates: 75 degrees 16 minutes of northern latitude and 145 degrees 15 minutes of Eastern longitude.

Features

Novosibirsk Islands used to be part of the continent. They lie in the zone of the continental loop. Relief islands plain. The climate is arctic, it is characterized by cold winters, the duration of which is nine months. Summer is very cold, windy. On the archipelago there are large wetlands, a huge number of glacial lakes and small rivers, due to this, there was a relatively diverse ecosystem in the conditions of permafrost. The boiler island is different from the rest of the fact that the Bung Earth is here - the unique sandy little noteworthy is the fact that earlier (several millennia ago) climatic conditions at the Novosibirsk Islands were quite different - much softer modern. This is evidenced by numerous finds of paleontologists: the remains of mammoths, and ancient horses.

History opening

The archipelago Novosibirsk Islands was opened by the Cossack Ya. Permyakov in 1712 during his expedition from the mouth of the Lena River to the mouth of Kolyma. They found an island, which today is named Big Lyakhovsky. The subsequent study of the archipelago was carried out by the traveler I. Lyakhov in 1772-1773 and Ya. Sannikov in 1805. After almost 16 years, Peter Anjou (1821-1823) described in detail this archipelago, which were subsequently named with his name. And in 1879-1891, American de Long opened the third group. And in the twentieth century several remote islets of this archipelago were discovered.

What is there?

Novosibirsk Islands are under the patronage of the Ust-Lena Reserve. In the times of the Soviet Union, scientific settlements were here, however, they were left with the collapse of the USSR. Only the polar station functions. Today, tourist firms offer tourist firms for those who wish to get acquainted with this remote corner of our Motherland, where you will have the opportunity to explore the sights of the archipelago.

Why does not rushing interest in the Arctic?

It has a very stable winter, the snow lie almost all year round, there are swamps, lakes and rivers. There are minerals: coal, natural gas and others. What can attract a person in this harsh edge? Once upon a time, Novosibirsk Islands were interested in people as a source of bones of various fossil animals - mostly mammoths. For more than two hundred years with the archipelago they were exported by tons. According to the memories of one of the merchants, which fell in search of this product on Big Lyakhovsky, the island consisted of mammoth bones mixed with sand and ice. Beevenes simply bleeded from ice, which was composed of the archipelago.

The attention of the modern person to these islands is caused to more geopolitical situations - after all, the Arctic is included in the circle of strategic plans of the Russian Federation. Now the views of not only politicians, but also geologists and other scientists are chained to her shelf. This is due to geopolitical tasks - the need to divide the shelf. The problem of its partition and the continental slope includes environmental, and economic, and political aspects. It is explained by the fact that the expansion of the borders of the countries of the Arctic zone, including the Russian Federation, will allow in the near future to more confidently invest in geological surveys for new oil and gas fields.

Problems of research

Novosibirsk Islands for Russia are most removed and impregnable in any plan: in geological and geographical. Of course, they can not be called a white spot on the map of our country, but there are areas with white stains there. For example, in the de-Long group there is Zhannetta Island - it has no geological descriptions. The fact is that he has very steep shores, most likely, volcanic origin is very incisive. In addition, it does not have a suitable site for planting a helicopter. So while scientists researchers could not get to it. In August 2012, a scientific expedition was held on the Archipelago on a grant of the Russian Geographical Society. In particular, zoological studies were carried out on the islands. As a result of the expedition, the most valuable data on the distribution and species composition of marine mammals were collected. In addition to visual observations, scientists have assembled biomaterial samples for subsequent studies in laboratory conditions. In addition, information was collected about the life cycle of walrus and polar bears living in the Novosibirsk Islands. An important discovery was a meeting with this the first registered fact of the emergence of these animals in the water area of \u200b\u200bthis archipelago.