he twin-engine Navaho left the runway loaded to capacity: Louise in the co-piot’s seat, myself, Dick and Doug seated hehind her. Eight bags of gear, each weighing between 50 and 75 pounds–four of them containing the two folding expedition doubles–filled the remaining available space on the other side of the plane. Within seconds, we were over the Bering Strait. Still clibing, our pilot ran down the safety checklist: “If we should land in the water, your seat cushion cab be used as a floatation device.” I thought, “If we had to land in the Bering Sea in a small plane, we can probably kiss our butts goodbye.”
head, steep dark maountains streaked from top to bottom with narrow patches of snow ran down to the sea. Their barren, cratered tops made the landscape seem moon-like. Thinking about the paddling expedition ahead of us, I realized that if the seas kicked up, trying to land by kayak would be impossible for miles at a time.
he flight, across the Strait to Proavideniya on the Chukotskiy Peninsula, is only made when clouds unveil the top of the mountain at the end of Provideniya Bay. The American pilot radios over and the Russionas say, “Not now!” or “Yes, now–quick!” They must have said “Now–quick!” The plane cleared the mountain, and we dropped toward a shor runway on a narrow spit of land jammed between a large brackish lake and Provideniya Harbor. As we taxied down the gravel runway, we passed broken military jets scattered about the runway’s edge. We coasted past a rudder and a tail section, its big red star still prominent. The plane halted before a low cement building, and we were greeted by a Russian soldier dressed in a calf-length brown woolen coat, black leather boots and a round, brimmed learther cap that sported a Star and Sickle medal.
wo more young soldiers appeared, rifles slung over their shoulders. They escorted us to a small, tidy waiting room, where a man dressed in jeans and a worn brown leather jacket stepped forward and introduced himself. He was Oleg, our English-speaking Russian contact from the Siberian expedition company Dick had been working with to gain the necessary permits and permission for the expedition. Oleg had helped us arrange for hotels and transportation. We waited for over an hour while the uniformed men sorted through our passports and visas. 
e were disappointed when then did not hand them back to us; they told us that they would hold onto them, returning them once we had finalized our travel plans. Passing our baggage through the x-ray machine, our VHF radios and GPS showed up. They asked us to open the bags slowly and remove the devices. A rapid-fire discussion between Oleg and the soldiers. Oleg finally convinced the tall soldier in charge that we were not spies, and would not send vital information back to the U.S. for our planned invasion of Siberia.
he official welcome over, we hoisted our duffels onto a dented blue and white school bus Oleg had arranged to take us into town, and we all clambered in. The driver pulled at an old green curain strung on a string to separate us from him, and took off at a high speed for Provideniya on the other side of the harbor. Before the breakup of the Soviet Union, Provideniya had been the major distribution center for that military that was stationed up and down the Siberian coast. The city once had a population of over 4000; it was now home to perhaps 600. In the long shadows of the late afternoon, most of the cement apartment buildings were abandoned, the windows vacant. Everthing was a shade of gray, covered in coal dust. The streets were quitet, empty of people or vehicles. The driver dropped us at the only hotel in town, and Oleg went inside to confirm our reservations.
he trip was Dick’s idea. A skilled paddler and an excellent sailor–he raced both sailboats and ice boats, Dick has a deep love of new experiences. At 72, he had more energy than do most men half his age.
Our plan was to leave from Provideniya and paddle north 250 nautical miles with the prevailing winds and current to Uelen, located just below the Arctic Circle, where the Bering Sea meets the Chukchi Sea, at the easternmost point of the Asian Continent. At Uelen, we’d cross the Strait to land at Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska–a distance of some 44 nautical miles.
e decided it would be best to go with two doubles. We asked Louise Masailo to join the team. Louise is a strong paddler who has a knack for logistics, but we still needed a fourth member, and two boats. About a month before the trip, Doug Simpson of Feathercraft kayaks joined the team. What luck! Not only did Doug bring his extensive expedition experience to the team, he also brought two expedition doubles.
n late July, as we were waiting at the Anchorage airport to board the flight to Nome, we received some disappointing news. In a phone call to the Anchorage office of the Siberian expedition company that was assisting us in planning our trip, we learned that the Russians had closed access to the Bering Strait. Permission to cross in our kayaks had been rescinded. This far into the trip, turning back wasn’t an option. We decided to continue on to Provideniya to make alternative plans for our expedition. Once in Provideniya, we learned from the expedition company that Dan Guravitch, a noted polar bear photographer from the U.S., had commissioned a 280-foot Russian ice breaker to take him and 12 other photographers to Wrangel Island above the Arctic Circle. The ship was leaving Provideniya in a few days’ time. Quickly considering our options, we decided to have the ship drop us off in Uelen. From Uelen, instead of crossing the Bering Strait, we would paddle south, exploring the Chukotskiy (Chukchi) coastline and returning to Provideniya. It meant we’d be paddling 250 nautical miles against the prevailing southwest wind and currents, but we’d still be able to do much of the route we’d spent so many months in planning. We were all eager to get this expedition underway so, rather than wait any longer in Provideniya, we decided to get onto the water. We would paddle to Mys Chaplina, about three days to the north, and have the ship pick us up there.
t dawn two days later, we assembled our expedition doubles at the harbor’s edge, next to rusting ship hulls that were stuck forever in the mud. Then we waited for Gennady, our “Russian guide.” The Russian authorities had said we had to take a Russian with us on the trip. Oleg promised he’d provide us with an “Olympic caliber” paddler. I was totally unaware the Russians sent their Olympic sprinters to the Bering Sea to train. One could develop great balance and confidence in a K2 in those conditions. Great concept!
e waited. Gennady never showed. Doug radioed to Oleg to check on what was going on, and got the reply: “No passports today.” Evidently, the Russian intelligence was still debating if we were intelligent enough to be a threat. Next morning we were back with our boats, this time with passports in hand. Across the harbor, a single kayaker with a long paddle and a high stroke approached us. Was this the way the Russians trained their paddlers? Yes, it was Gennady, in a skinny English sea kayak left from an earlier Bering Strait crossing.
ll he carried besides a few articles of clothing were a sleeping bag, a large pair of binoculars, a handsaw, a knife, a coil of large copper wire to repair his rudder regularly, and plenty of matches. These were to guarantee a fire at the end of each day to dry his gear. When we saw him wringing out his sleeping bag days later, we were humbled and gave him dry bags. He never complained; I’m sure he had lived with far worse conditions. As we were to learn later, Gennady grew up in inland Siberia near Lake Baikal. He was a land person, and had few opportunities to paddle kayaks.
e left Provideniya under a low cloud cover, straight into a 10-knot headwind. The heavily laden doubles handled well. Outside the harbor, the seas were confused and choppy, a combination of the wind and reflecting waves off the steep coastline. We didn’t care; at last we were on the water! We paddled all day alongside towering, dark gray cliffs before reaching a suitable landing site: a steep, round stone beach reached through short breaking surf. We were to find later that these conditions were typical of most of the dings on this trip. Over the next days found campsites near rivers, where the cliffs gave way to tundra. We established a routine for landing: Doug and Louise first, Gennady next, then me and Dick. Timing was critical. We’d surf a wave in, the bow would reach the steep beach, then the stern would rise, and we’d quickly jump out of the boat and drag it up with the next wave.
hree days out we rounded Mys Chaplina, a military base with an impressive amount of radar. The base was located at the apex of a triangular spit of land that in places was no more than 150 yards wide, and that stretched seven miles in each direction. We landed a quarter mile beyond the base, on the north side of the triangle. The beach was formed of fist-sized flat oval stones, and the interior held a foggy, brackish lake.
Dick and Gennady hiked along the beach to the command quarters in hopes of radioing back to Provideniya to tell Oleg we’d arrived. They caught the military by surprise. They hadn’t seen us on their radar screen, and they certainly weren’t expecting a knock on the door. Hours later, we saw Dick and Gennady striding back to the boats escorted by a thin blond commander and his young communications sergeant, who carried a radio telecommunications pack on his back. They had come to examine our “stealth boats.” Although the young sergeant tried to appear stern-faced and serious, we could see the light in his eyes as he looked at our gear and listened to Gennady’s explanation of who we were and what we were doing.
e set up camp on the second tier of the gravel spit. It was fairly well protected from the water and sheltered from the wind. We reached Oleg by radio, and he reported that the ship would arrive within a few days. We spent a couple of days repairing gear. On the third day, Doug and I paddled through thick fog to the lake’s far shore to get water from an incoming river. Navigating by compass, we found the river, then hiked up to a sun-drenched tundra. Breaking through the fog into bright sunlight was like going from night into day. We radioed back to camp. No answer. Concerned that the ship could come while we were hiking, we quickly descended and paddled back to camp.
ure enough, Oleg and three other men were waiting on the beach, having taken a launch from the ship. We broke down camp in about twelve minutes. While one man kept the launch motor running, Oleg and his companions slogged through the water in high rubber boots and helped load all our gear and kayaks. We got in last, and motored a mile out to the waiting ship, barely discernable in the heavy fog. The ship set off for Uelen, where the Bering Sea meets the Chukchi Sea. We arrived the next morning. The wind was blowing and the water was all whitecaps and ice floes. Military radar towers dotted the shore and surrounding mountains. At a coal-fired power plant nearby, a couple of rusted 40-foot stacks anchored down by numerous wires were belching smoke. Mountains of coal surrounded the plant.
Disembarking, we took a couple of hours to acquire supplies and assemble the boats. There was ice on the puddles in town. With the aid of Gennady, we located a family with some goods to sell: salted fish, bread and fresh, ball-shaped donuts. Gennady explained that the residents of this town are mostly native Chukchis who subsist on what they catch from the sea. For most of the year, this town and the entire coastline is locked in ice.
e were all eager to resume paddling. After loading the kayaks, we launched and headed south, paddling through fast-moving ice floes and small bergs. We were forced to plan each move to avoid getting trapped or crushed by the ice. Once we rounded the easternmost point of the Chukchi Peninsula and entered the Bering Strait, the southwest headwind grew to 25 knots and five-foot seas rebounded off the cliffs. I was glad to have Dick in front of me to break the waves, though I could have done without the spray of his paddle. Doug and Louise were a couple of boat-lengths ahead of US. I turned to check on Gennady. He was over, clinging to the hull of his boat, already 100 feet away. He hadn’t said a word, but his eyes were desperate. I yelled to Doug and Louise: “Gennady’s over!” As he and his kayak drifted dangerously close to the overhang of a small iceberg, Dick and I powered to him. We reached him with only seconds to spare. With no time to empty his kayak, I held it alongside ours and we got Gennady back into his boat. He paddled hard on the right and Dick paddled powerfully on the left, while I steered us away from the iceberg. Gennady’s face was the color of the ice. There had been no time to be scared–only to act. As we grinned reassuringly at Gennady, he affected nonchalance.
Doug spotted a landing site just a quarter mile away. It was a small, cup-shaped cove surrounded by sheer cliffs. We had an easy landing in the sheltered cove. Gennady dumped all of the water out of his boat. He was cold, but not dangerously so–he had been protected from the extreme cold by the early model dry suit he was wearing, loaned to him by the expedition company. Outside the cove, the seas grew as the wind reached gale force. Only six miles out of Uelen, we were landbound.
o stretch our legs, we decided to do some exploring. We looked for a route up through the cliffs to reach the mountaintops. The 3000-foot mountains rising up from the sea made distance deceiving. Everything was big. I found that land that looked three miles away, once checked on the chart, was often closer to ten.
he only scalable route to the top was up an unstable rock slide at the southern edge of the cove. Doug and Gennady were in the lead as we scrambled up the slide. Climbing up the slide was loosening the rocks, and we quickly saw that it was dangerous to be climbing below anyone else. Dick, Louise and I decided to descend; it was too dangerous. Doug and Gennady would get the view this time.
ack at camp, I curled up on a sun-warmed rock and dozed. Clattering rocks awakened me. What started as a clatter became a rumble. I looked up to ee stones, rocks and armchair-sized boulders bouncing and crashing down the same slide we’d gone up earlier. There, on top of the biggest rock in the slide was Doug–and he was picking up speed. The five-foot boulder started to roll with Doug on it, and as it did, Doug jumped quick as a cat, up and over it. From my vantage point it looked as though it could have rolled right over his legs. I sent him a questioning thumbs up sign, and he returned it. I breathed a sigh of relief.
here was enough space to construct two tent platforms using the round rocks we found on the shore. We had almost finished assembling one tent when a big gust of wind launched it 50 feet up the sheer cliff, like an oversized box kite cut loose from its string. We stood with our necks craned back as the wind, howling up the cliff, kept the tent hovering in empty space. Then the tent floated straight down, scraping along the cliff a bit, but still intact.
t four the next morning, the sun was up, the seas had calmed, and the wind was light. We took advantage of the conditions and did an 11-mile crossing across a bay at the southern end of Mys Dezhneva. Fifteen or 20 gray whales steamrollered by, churning the water. A pair of orca appeared just off our port; we kept a comfortable distance.
everal miles out to sea, the band of fog lifted. Big Diomede Island, rising 1,700 feet, was just 20 nautical miles off to our left. The international date line runs between Russia’s Big Diomede Island and the U.S.’s Little Diomede Island, just two miles from the big island. The rising fog and the low light sparkling on the water made the horizontal gray rock appear to float. It looked so close! We rafted together and discussed making an unauthorized crossing to Alaska. Then we heard a hum in the distance that grew louder until a Russian chopper pounded over They appeared to be aware of our deliberation. We turned our bows toward the Siberian coastline. That big red star on the side of the airship sent a clear message: “On your or else!” They kept an eye on us, hovering between us and Big Diomede Island until we were well down the Strait.
he paddling conditions were easy, rolling seas and a 10-knot wind–so we pushed long and hard. After 32 nautical miles, we had to land next to a river visible on the chart. Approaching the mouth river, we noticed a dead whale beach with what appeared to be mound of seaweed on its back. We paddled within 15 yards. It wasn’t seaweed–it was fur. A Kodiak grizzly sleep inside the whale where he had been feeding. We tried to drift silently past in the knee-deep water, but he smelled us and awoke. Bolting out of the whale, he rose to his full 8-foot height. He raised his arms straight up in the air and, with claws bared gave an ear-splitting roar. We paddled out as fast as we could. The bear dropped, turned and ran. We paddled about five miles farther before making camp at an abandoned military outpost.
During the next few days, we paddled in fog, hugging the coast. We had to strike a balance between being able to see the shoreline and being far enough out to avoid the waves reflecting off the steep cliffs. Thousands of puffins, auklets, and kittiwakes flew in circling clouds, their raucous calls echoing off the face of the cliff. The rocky granite cliffs sparkled in places, with striations of quartz. Around every bend were dark entrances of caves and tunnels. We paddled under some of the arches, enjoying the surge of the waves through the cool, briny passageways.
t the town of Lavrentiya, we were greeted by young uniformed soldiers. Gennady assured them that we were not there to steal military secrets and they returned to their post. A group of boys and girls, faces and jackets dirty from play and coal soot, flocked over to see our kayaks and meet us. They giggled and talked animatedly to each other, touching the boats, examining the paddles. It was sad to see their rotting teeth, but we gave them candy anyway. Next time we’ll take toothbrushes.
he local bakery was shut down by a bug infestation, but somehow Gennady managed to obtain two loaves of dark, heavy bread from the small local hospital. Wanting to make Akkani by nightfall, we headed off in the late afternoon, with statues of Stalin gazing at us from the shore.
he sun was nearly down as we neared Akkani–which means “cold place”–about 200 miles south of Uelen. Three figures appeared in silhouette on the hill overlooking the water. They waved us around the point to a safer landing in a cove. An older man wearing a well-worn sealskin jacket walked slowly down a path toward us. His face was weathered but kind. He introduced himself as Alexander, and invited us up for tea. We could spend the night in a large tin shed next to their house. C)ver mugs of hot tea, we learned that Alexander and his wife Nina lived on Akkani year round, in the only house left in a whaling village that once numbered 50 homes. The other houses had all been abandoned since the Cold War, and all that was left were imprints in the tundra of where they had once been. His children, Tatiana and Rosland, were home for the summer from college in Leningrad. Alexander supported his family by hunting and fishing.
n the early hours of the morning, after a full night of chatting, I left the coziness of their small house and walked wearily toward the shed. A band of thick dark clouds was rolling in from the northeast, blanketing the land. It rose up over the house and compound, then resumed its ground-hugging crawl. Around 5 a.m. we heard pounding on our shed door. Three belligerent soldiers, reeking of vodka, had come from Lavrentiya. They claimed we hadn’t paid a duty in town. The duty was one dollar in rubles per person, and they insisted that we would have to go back to Lavrentiya to pay it. Lavrentiya was a twelve-mile hike across the tundra, in horizontal rain and fog. As we discussed our dilemma, Gennady said thathe felt responsible and he wouldn’t let anyone else go withhim. We watchedas he trudged away, disappearing intothe driving rain with probably just a knife and matches. Oh yeah–and abuck for each of us.
hile we waited for Gennady’s return, Alexander showed us his Umiaks and drying polar bear hides. In turn, Doug showed him our kayaks.That evening we traded stories while d@g on Nina’s homemade bread and mushroom soup. At around eight that night, we heard a knock at the door. Gennady had made it back. He’d had a tough hike through the storm and, once he got there, he had to wait for the sol-diers to awaken and sober up before he could take care of the transaction. He was tired and his down clothing was soaked through but, after putting on dry clothes and having a few sips of vodka, he soon revived.
he storm howled over Akkani for three days. Gale-force winds drove sheets of cold rain through the cracks of the shed and the door. It was hard to keep any gear dry, even with the old coal stove blazing away, filled to capacity. We rested and repaired gear. Gennady worked with Alexander to repair an old generator that looked like it hadn’t been used for months, maybe even years; electricity was a rarity here. They ran a wire to our shed and anoth-er to the house. At 5 p.m. on our last day there, after serious pulling on the generator’s pull start, light bulbs glowed in the house and the shed. We had electricity! Alexander pulled out an old Russian-made electric razor, plugged it into an outlet at the end of the line, and shaved while grinning broadly. Throughout the rest of the evening, he kept running his hands over his chin and smiling to himself. Rosland lifted an old reel-to-reel tape player from a chest and we listened to American and Russian tunes. Seated around the low table on whale vertebra stools, under a single yellow lightbulb in the small house on the tundra, we all fell silent as we listened to Louis Armstrong singing “What a Wonderful World.”
Early the next moniing, in the fog, we gathered around Doug’s chart and voted on a 33-nautical-mile crossing across the bay from Akkani, to make up for lost paddling days. Soon after we left shore, the fog began to lift. We turned and got a last look at Alexander’s home. Soon this place would be frozen solid and once again he and his family would have to watch for polar bear as they stepped out the door.
he weather cleared and we could see a mountaintop poking out of the water. That was our heading. Ten miles into the crossing, the winds increased on our port. The beam seas grew to five feet, then six, and began breaking. I noticed that Gennady was paddling nervously, tentatively. We decided to make a 90-degree change and head for the nearest land. However, the following sea proved to be even more difficult for Gennady, so we resumed our original course across the bay. We paddled beside him, trying to break the seas with our boat. I kept telling him, “It’s just a few more miles, Gennady, we’re almost there.” I did this for about six more hours. I’m not sure he believed it, but I’m sure he hoped it was true. He kept at it. Our zig-zag course across the bay added extra miles, each wave requiring a balancing act for Gennady. He was getting worn out, but land was finally within striking distance. We headed toward a fairly smooth, pebbled beach at about mid-tide. Doug and Louise surfed in first, hauling their boat above the waterline. Dick and I followed. We caught Gennady’s boat as he rode the next wave in.
efore setting up the tents for the evening, we had a few sips of vodka and congratulated Gennady on his accomplishment. He was proud of having performed so well in such tough conditions, yet very happy to be on land again. He was becoming an “experienced” paddler. We camped farther up the shore, using large driftwood logs and rusted 55-gallon oil drums (plentiful along the Siberian coast) as a wind-break for our fire.
he next day we punched through choppy seas and high winds up to 25 knots for 13 hard-fought miles. By mid-afternoon we hauled the boats out of the water to make an early camp. En the morning, the seas had settled. We paddled 26 miles down the coast to Yanrakynnot, a small village of single-story log houses. As we beached our boats, we were greeted at the shore by the local constable, a young man who looked as if he had just thrown on his official uniform to greet us; his fly was down. He said that all the men in town were drunk. My guess was that he meant to say that they were drinking vodka. An intoxicated native on a motorcycle with a sidecar stopped and motioned to us to get in. Doug hopped in. They took off down the dirt street, past the helicopter pad, and out along the brackish lagoon. A few minutes later, Doug came back alive, without a hat, and with hair like Lyle Lovett. I hopped in for the extended ride, bouncing and hurtling over the tundra. When I yelled, “Slow Down!” he thought I wanted him to go faster. After my back-jarring ride, the constable invited us to drink with him, but we declined. We decided instead to paddle out to Arakamchechen Island and make camp there.
small native boy, perhaps 4 or 5, the son of a reindeer herder, greeted us on the island. He had a slingshot in his hand and wore two left rubber boots, one two sizes larger than the other. He didn’t speak, but led us to his family’s yerangi (similar to a yurt), next to the beach. We exchanged greetings through Gennady, and his father presented us with a fish. The father explained to Gennady that he’d lost his reindeer herd. We suggested that maybe Santa Claus had kidnapped them, and they’d be home for Christmas. Gennady failed to translate.
he boy spent the rest of the afternoon with us, watching everything, never saying a word. Dick sat him down in one of the kayaks and showed him how to paddle. He stayed for dinner and couldn’t get enough of the macaroni and cheese. We stopped serving him after three bowls and sent him home at dusk with a full belly and a loaf of bread.
e set off at first light into light chop, heading down the coast of Arakamchechen Island. At the end of the island we made the crossing to Yttygran Island. As we approached the shore, the twisted shapes of whale vertebrae, some four feet across, came into view. This island had served as a Chukchi whaling base for centuries. We found a beach to land on, and got out to inspect the bones. The place had a feeling of mystery about it. There were odd stone foundations, one- or two-foot-high walls placed around the lichen-covered vertebrae. I walked around white jawbones, 20 feet tall, stuck vertically in the tundra. Some were placed individually, others in groups of two or three. Two were placed opposite each other, the curves of the jawbone fomiing an arch. Since the next day was our rendezvous date, we wanted to make the mainland before nightfall. We launched into a 20-knot headwind. Back on the mainland, we found a comfortable campsite on a tundra plateau. That night, we sat around a roaring fire and indulged ourselves with the extra rations we wouldn’t be needing, and the last few sips of vodka.
t was only a few more miles of pad-dling on fairly protected waters the next mon-iing to reach our final take-out point. Just after we landed, we heard the low sound of a truck engine winding down the mountain: An all-terrain military vehicle had arrived to pick us up. Our driver, a burly Russian with a full beard, pulled up and jumped down from the cab, a big grin on his face. After loading our kayaks and gear aboard, Dick and Doug climbed into the cab, while Gennady, Louise and I climbed atop our gear on the truck bed for a long, cold ride over the mountain pass to Provideniya.
s we bounced along the dirt track through the barren landscape, I looked over at Gennady. His arm was cradled protectively around his kayak, and he had a wide smile on his face. Gennady’s tenacity and ability to survive were tremendous. He’d been out in seas that most people wouldn’t have ventured out in, and refused to give up. Gennady had won our respect–he’d be my friend for life.
Equipment used:
K-2 Expedition kayaks by Feathercraft
Gore-tex Dry suits by Kokatat
