-Part I of a bold Trilogy-

(image: Yakutian Laika Dogs Sled pull training in the outskirts of Yakutsk.)

The Kingdom of Ice

While the northwestern territories of the Americas coined the title the “The Last Frontier”,
with Alaska priding itself on it the most, there is a place just across the Bearing strait. A land, so vast that a single lifetime won’t be enough to unearth all its secrets. A true frontier for the jaded and a graveyard for the naive explorers. The Siberian plateau, a purgatory stuck in perennial frost. Few have made it their home and many failed in the process. How can such a hostile environment provide warmth? How can anybody survive here? And what does it mean to be the sons and daughters of the frost in Earth’s coldest inhabited regions?

The Capital

(image: a vehicle rushing down the streets as the icy haze creeps in.)

January 27th, 2025. After a seven-hour flight crossing six different time zones, we found ourselves in Yakutsk earth’s coldest inhabited city and the gateway into the pole of cold. A faint northern gale gave us a taste of what we were walking into, here the average temperature is -42°C in the cold months of winter. A numbing cold that pierces deep into your bones and leaves you soulless.

Yakutsk is the capital of the Sakha Republic, Russia’s largest Oblast. Home to less than a million people, the entire city is built over a fragile shell of permafrost, a hard layer of frozen soil that is difficult to work with. This led to peculiar architectural designs with buildings standing on thin pegs some 10-15 meters high, with sewer and water delivery systems running overhead with an integrated heating network to prevent the pipes from freezing.

(image: The sun casting rays from between the Brezhnevkas.)

We got the chance to visit the underground laboratory at the Permafrost Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, one of the few facilities dedicated to the field of geocryology. Here we met Professor Mikhail Vasiliev a senior researcher at the institute’s laboratory.

(image: Professor Mikhail Vasiliev standing at the beginning of the underground laboratory 12 meters deep under the permafrost.)

A 12 meters deep at a constant temperature of -9°C. Built in the 1960s the laboratory was the only facility dedicated to the study of permafrost, nowadays it’s mainly used to preserve fossils and biomaterials like mammoth carcasses.

Mikhail has worries about what is yet to come, for in the past couple of years with the rising of global temperatures. The entire top layer of permafrost covering the northern hemisphere has started to melt, and entire villages have been swollen whole with rivers flooding fiercely. We have no solution other than to adapt and prevail in the face of these unprecedented challenges.

For the city folk of Yakutsk what happens underneath their feet is far from their minds, for them their only concern is how to make a living and survive with each passing winter. Scenes like a woman standing in the cold eyelashes white frosted, cheeks burned by the icing cold standing over a stall of raw meat left in the open air, for the air temperature out here is colder than an industrial freezer. Another woman standing over a stall of freshly caught fish, due to the cold they turn into hard logs of frozen meat and bones, strong enough to drive a nail into hardwood. Astonishingly the streets were full of people carrying about their businesses. Children are covered from head to toe in a thick layer of clothes that they can barely walk, like astronauts walking on the lunar surface they stumble every few steps.

(image: Yakutsk’s open-air arctic market. A woman standing next to fish stall.)

Babushkas covered in fur coats waiting on the city bus inside a heated bus-shelter. Men carrying their suitcases and hastily entering an office building. The Mall was full of teenage kids hanging around the food court. Everybody was out and about in their own of adapting to the cold. For they cannot allow cold to disrupt their lives and put it on hold.

The greatest challenge the cold presents is in keeping the facilities and machines from freezing over. Every couple of residential blocks have their own small thermal plant supplying boiling water through pipes running into adjacent buildings these insulated pipes retain and distribute the heat in the buildings they enter keeping them warm.

(image: A man walking as long winter night set on.)

As for the vehicles, it’s a different story, it’s cheaper to let them freeze over till spring than drive them in winter. For in winter, the vehicle needs to go over a major rehaul, windows have to be replaced with thick double-layered acrylic sheets, engines have to be rehauled and insulated with thick layer of felt, radiator fans have to be disabled and custom gas furnace has to be installed to keep you warm inside the vehicle.

With all that said and done the car can not be turned off and left in a single spot for too long, if done so the tires will deform and square off and the oil in the engine will freeze solid. And only expert can bring their vehicle back to life.

(image: Cold starting a vehicle with hot air blowers placed beneath the vehicle’s undercarriage.)

When a car dies, bringing it back to life is no easy feat. It’s a long process spanning over several hours. Two large hot air blowers are placed beneath the vehicle’s undercarriage, one under the engine’s oil pan and the other under the transmission case.

The engine is then covered by a thick layer of felt and tires are supported by jacks on solid ground, preventing the softened ice from bucking under the vehicle’s load. After some time the oil dipstick is pulled to check out the viscosity of the oil, if viscous enough, and flows freely. The felt cover is removed exposing the engine and a newly fully charged battery is connected to the started solenoid.

The air intake system is then supplied by pure ether with the vehicle in the cranking position. The first try always ends up in failure and after multiple unrelenting cranks, the vehicle is brought back to life. As a beast woken up from its long slumber it roars and a thick layer of smog covers the surroundings. For trucks, the process is more complex and demanding.

(image: A vehicle covered by a Natasha.)

It will only take an hour for the engine to freeze over if the vehicle ignition is turned off, therefore; Yakutians always keep their vehicles running even when they turn in to bed. It’s really taxing on their financials with all the fuel needed. So in 2010, a new invention was introduced “Natasha” a thermal blanket that covers the entire vehicle. When I asked why do you call it Natasha? Our local fixer answered “Warm as Natasha” smirkingly. Even with Natasha, the vehicle cannot be left in the cold for too long.

As people seek warmth in this frosted land, others seek to tough out the cold in their own way. These madmen and women call themselves the Walrus Club. Every morning as thesun arches on the horizon barely rising above the tree line, the members of the Walrus Club gather on the banks of the Lena River. They hack into the 1-meter ice exposing the ice-cold waters underneath. One by one they take a cold plung. Just looking at them gave me shivers that rushed through every follicle in my body. For them this daily route is what keeps them in perfect shape, the icy waters induce a a cold shock response, the mammalian diving reflex.

(image: A member of the Walrus club climbing out of the ice cold waters.)

This hyperventilation gasp reflex induces a spike in heart rate and a rushing blood pressure and ends with a reduction in the heart rate and blood flow to the extremities. How does this stressful experience help the body, I honestly don’t know. All I know is that all the members of the Walrus Club I have seen are in perfect shape, especially for their old age. “Today is warmer than yesterday by a couple of degrees. Yesterday’s registered low was -41°C, today it’s -38°C” our guides excitingly informed us. For us this difference in scale has no meaning to us whatsoever, it’s still freaking cold and that’s all.

The rivers are the arteries that connect the peninsula with the Lena as the aorta, and come winter they turn into solidified causeways. These ice roads connect scattered towns and remote villages that can otherwise be only accessible by boat during the warm summer months. During summer, merchant ships and ferries are the only lifeline supplying these towns and villages. However, when the river freezes they turn to their yearly winter slumber on the dockyards of Yakutsk on the western banks of the Lena.

(image: Aerial view of Yakutsk’s winter docks)

The frozen ice crushes the ships on all sides shackling these giant metallic beasts in place. The long slumber provides the perfect opportunity to maintain and service these iron beasts. The ice is hacked, exposing the beast’s underbelly allowing shipwrights to perform their magic. With the work carried outdoors, they grind as everything freezes around them. They can not rest for the only source of warmth they get is from their overworked bodies and sweat. If they stop the effects of this hostile environment will worsen and the cold will creep in. Here work is not a choice, it is the only way to survive.

(image: Aerial view of Yakutsk’s winter docks)

Behind these slumbering giants. Just across the Lena lies our path into the heart of the Peninsula. Veiled behind the dense boreal frosts and thick taiga lies the infamous R504 “Kolyma highway” and our path in the search of the pole of cold...

Part II Coming Soon ! Don’t miss the next chaprter in Exploraris

Text and photos by Dhari Alfawzan