A friend of mine, Vyacheslav Ipatiev, who is the founder and CEO of YakutiaTravel LLC, has developed a new unique route for extreme cold hunters.

He gives a chance to embark an adventure journey on reindeer sleds across the Valley of Oymyakon, one of the coldest parts of Yakutia, Siberia / Russia.

10-day sledding in the Siberian extreme cold weather. From the village of Uchugey to the village of Oymyakon. The temp is as low as -55 C or even less. And, yeah, night spending in nomads’ sleeping bags in nomads’ tents. In short, it’s the coolest expedition experience!

Cold hunting trip description is available here.

See more cold adventure pictures… Read the rest of this entry…

In the early November, Yakutsk-based Vladimir Potapov (fb profile) arranged the winter snowmobile expedition to the Arctic zone of the Republic of Sakha-Yakutia (Siberia/Russia).

The route was Ust Kujga (map) – Kazach’e (map) – Laptev Sea.

The mission was to deliver the remains of the Yuka Mammoth from the area of the Yukagir community, Laptev Sea, to Yakutsk. It is the same place, where the famous Yukagir mammoth head was discovered seven years ago.

The Yuka mammoth corpse was found in the well-preserved condition by Vasily Gorokhov’s community four years ago. It has four legs, proboscis, and wool.

The expedition was filmed by BBC TV Channel and scheduled to be on the air on February 25th, 2012. It will be a 60-min story.

See more Arctic expedition photographs taken by Egor Fedorov.

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Dersu (his blog) is great! Last August he and his friend, Sergey Ermak, completed another trekking expedition, but this time to Palatka Mountain, one of the biggest glaciers in East Yakutia, Siberia / Russia.

Dersu’s previous trekkings across Yakutia:

- Kyuellyakh Moustakh River Expedition, Yakutia/Siberia
- The Momsky Range, East Yakutia/Siberia

Palatka Mountain is located in Suntar-Khayata Range in the area of the upper Suntar River. Considered as the third highest point (2797 m) after Pobeda Peak (3147 m) and Mus Khaya Mountain (2959 m).

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If you wonder, what young people do in Ust Nera, the administrative center of Yakutia’s Oymyakon region, especially on a sunny winter day, here is the answer. They take snowboards and snowboarding gears, get to the closest mountain, climb, climb, climb, and enjoy riding on the snow from uphill.

Take a look at pictures taken by Egor Fedorov and his friends this past April. Read the rest of this entry…

Watch this video done by a friend of mine, Dmitry, also known as UF58, in Yakutia’s Chersky Range last summer, and you’ll get an idea of what to do first, when meeting a brown bear in the Siberian wildness.

UF58 is a Yakutsk-based mountain climber and trekker, and a great photographer. His travel reports (in Russian) are usually published at adv.yktv.ru.

Dmitry prefers to hike mountains alone. In August 2010, he was in the Chersky Range. When he saw a bear, he thought it was a lonely horse. So, in the beginning, he did nothing about animal. He lay on a grass resting, watching around and taking pictures… and then he realized that a big shaggy horse turned out to be a bear.

Here what you can do, when you come across the bear, but before reading tips, enjoy UF58′s photographs of the Chersky Range. To enlarge, click on images. Read the rest of this entry…

I have a friend of mine, Mikhael Mestnikov. He appeared to be an active traveler and a big fan of rafting and mountain trekking. Moreover, he prefers to do all his summer expeditions within the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). Mikhael is the chief of the Yakutsk-based travel club “Dokhsun.”

In summer of 2010, Mestnikov’s travel club arranged the combined expedition with rafting the Indigirka River and trekking the Chersky Range. The route was Ust-Nera – Kyuellyakh – Mustakh – Khonu.

Learn more about the expedition and see 69 fantastic travel photographs. Read the rest of this entry…

At the end of November, when the real Siberian winter was getting colder and colder, three young guys decided to ski from the village of Elanka to the famous Lena Pillars (stone pillars) located on the Lena River bank a few hundreds of km south from the city of Yakutsk. When they were doing skiing expedition, the outdoor temperature was minus 45 degrees Celsius. They say, it was pretty windy. Skiers overcame 50 km only, but spent 5 days on the way.

These guys look pretty ordinary, but they are not as such. First, they are real Siberian villagers. Harsh cold conditions are not big deal to them. Second, one of them, Timofei Vasiliev, is from the village of Moma located in the Momsky National Park and surrounded by mountains of the Verkhoyansky Range. Trekking last summer, Timofei and his friends managed to find the volcano without any GPS navigator. Third, they are leaders of the newly-fledged Yakutsk student adventure club called simply, “Extreme.”

Below, please, see Timofei’s photos and comments. Read the rest of this entry…

I had a sort of schedule… of what and when to publish… but Vitaly Toko ruined everything. He regreted that he didn’t make it to Yakutia’s Kolyma this autumn. He worked here for many, many, many years. Actually, he spent all his best years in Yakutia and he’s got a lot of photographs of the biggest Siberian region.

Two days ago Vitalya created a video slideshow using his pictures of Yakutia and Vyacheslav Butusov’s song “Moya Zvezda” (My Star). Why does he love this remote Northern area? What does he feel to it? Everything can be seen in that video.

Hope he will come the next year and we’ll have a drink together

Further find my rough translation of V. Butusov’s song lyric into English.

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Amazing how many photographs of Siberia’s Yakutia my St Petersburg friends have on their facebook page Russia. Travel across the country. Check it, you will like it for sure.

Meanwhile, here is the info about photographs. Read the rest of this entry…

Our Yakutia photo exhibit in Brooklyn, New York City. Photo by Gale Krylova.

Thomas Ross Miller, the curator of our joint “On the Road of Bones” photo exhibit in Brooklyn, NYC, informs that a couple of major New York newspapers have listed this Friday night’s open house reception at the Kris Waldherr Art and Words Studio Gallery in their events pages. Woo hoo! Many visitors and reporters are expected to come to that event on October 15th, 2010.

More NY exhibit details are available in the previous post. You might also wish to check out the exhibition schedule at http://ontheroadofbones.com/.

Meanwhile, hereby I present our curator Thomas Ross Miller’s statement in regards to the exhibition. What you are going to read further, convinced NYC-based culture editors to do what they did. Read the rest of this entry…