110 zimnik, historical note
In 1974-1975, the winter was extremely warm, and therefore there were no ice road to cross Baikal and it was impossible to supply Baikal-Amur Mainline with the materials. One of four projects for building a surface road was accepted and built. It was designed as a temporary one, with the purpose just to deliver the supplies during this winter. And the road was open on February 1, 1975. The road was not easy even those days, so they have also built some sheds where the drivers could take a rest or wait for spare parts if the lorry was damaged.
BAM was eventually finished, and the road became unnecessary. It was used as the winter snow road for some time as the rivers and bogs get frozen and it is much easier to drive there. Anyway, the bridges were getting ruined with time, and the traffic has stopped. But the road started to become legendary.
Since that, tourists, and especially auto tourists fell in love with the road which was named "110 zimnik" after the only stud that survived until now
Intro
First off, when I ended up sitting in front of my computer to tell this story, I already had heard a lot of times that my car could only move there towed, and even with that it should have gone to wreck or fallen into pieces, and it had already been posted on a few forums that people had seen us and that my car had been going to have hard times as it was not prepared.
Well, "prepared" is a loose concept. I did not worry too much about the car because it had bottom protections, a winch and a snorkel and was just an "old sea-dog". I worried about myself. It's been 4 years that I have been a rigger, a navigator and a photographer, but it's been the first time I was going to pilot an off-road car in a real off-road expedition. However, the successful previous trophy ride named Capercaillie's Trail and the fact that the crew was already tested there let me believe in us.
As a result, we don't have a GPS track of where we've been (the rigger, the navigator and the photographer is to blame), we have a very few pictures and no video from this trip (because each car's crew included only two people, and we also had a 8-year-old who could not be a real photographer), and my goldfish memory is not a very reliable information source. Therefore, those who know how it was can correct me, and I should trust them and amend the text :)
In general, this trip impressed me by the amount of sights I've seen there. These included Transsib, Baikal-Amur Mainline, Lena river, Baikal lake and many smaller, but still interesting things. Building Baikal-Amur Mainline has always been in the news when I was a child, and I remembered names such as Taishet or Ust'-Kut probably from the kindergarten. Now I have not only old newspaper headlines related to these names in my head, but real places, landscapes and pictures.
Well, I must say that I have not been going to go to Baikal until the early summer. I was going to follow quite an opposite direction, to Turkmenistan and countries around it. So, I eventually went to "110 zimnik" without even a very rough idea of what it was and what was interesting about it...
So, the dramatis personae:
- SsangYong Kornado 2004, wheels: 31.7” (not even 32 as we usually say when it is good for us :)), one winch, a snorkel, full bottom protection. The crew: Julia Makoushina (aka Ju-), the pilot, Mikhail Chaikin (aka Mikha), the navigator etc. and Irina Makoushina (8 years old, the younger navigator and helper). By the way, we proved to be the first Korando who passed "110 zimnik". Not a big deal, but it's nice to be the first anyway :)
- Toyota LandCruiser 100, year not known, wheels: 35”, two winches, a snorkel, two fuel tanks, full bottom protection. The crew: Sergey Gavrilov (aka medved), the pilot, and Nadezhda Gavrilova, the navigator, helper etc.
The Beginning, July 14-16, 2012
We've started around 8 AM, but Baikal isn't next door. Because Medved was the only driver in his crew, we drove quite relaxed, stopped at cafes to eat and have a cup of coffee and step by step passed the largest part of Krasnoyarsk region. There we fell in love with Texas gas stations that sold quite good diesel at 23 roubles – highly recommended. Then we were close to crash a Niva in Kansk because I didn't notice slightly illogical yield sign in the twilight – not recommended… and seems like our hardship started from this small incident on the very first day.
Medved suggested to stay overnight close to Ilansky village, the navigator displayed a nice lake there. When we entered the village, the lake was at the very entrance, so the whole village could see us there. We tried to go round the lake and make a camp on its far shore, but the shore was not good. After that, we found another couple of lakes on the navigator's screen that were located behind the village and suggested to go there. The lakes proved to be rather stinking bogs, but we already haven't got any more time and strength, so we got down a hillock and pitched a camp. There was a small stream next to us, and Mikha said it's good enough although very slimy. Mikha has brought some firewood from the other bank of the stream and we had a nice fire and nice dinner with I-don't-remember-what. There were wild strawberries on the hillock that we camped behind. Lot of plants, but just a few berries though I could find some for Irina.
We had the first Mikha's omelette for breakfast (we ate loads of Mikha's omelettes during this trip). The road from the camp went through a small junkyard, and we found a broken Niva there that totally blocked the road. The surface around it was pretty boggy, but we could easily make our way through it and headed to Baikal again. We passed Taishet, Alzamai – and that's where the fun has started. Dusty dry unsurfaced road and lots of trucks… we had to outrun them "by touch", but we did it and didn't even get any new scratches. We stopped for a lunch at the very first cafe we saw in Nizhneudinsk. All the team was unhappy with the meal, but mine and Irina's was not bad. We've seen a lot of funny village names, but they are funny only for Russians, so there's no point to translate. In Tulun, the main road goes south-west to Irkutsk, but we went north… The road was not good, but anyway, we've reached Bratsk by the evening, and Mikha had a nice colleague there: he met us behind the hydroelectric dam and took us to nice lakes that appeared after Angara was drained. There are a lot of people and waste, but nevertheless it's not a problem to find a cozy piece of shore for a camp (at least we could easily do this), so we spent a night with the view to Bratsk hydroplant (which is behind us on the picture).
Bratsk and the hydroplant, historical note
Bratsk hydroplant is a concrete gravity dam on the Angara River. Bratsk was founded in the same time, initially as the workers village. Bratsk reservoire that appeared after Angara was locked is currently the 2nd in the world. More than 100 villages were sent to the bottom of the reservoire.
At a gas station near Bratsk, we had a sort of small press conference about «where is region 70 (which was on our cars number plates) and where we're going to». Some people noticed that they have never been to Baikal despite they have been living here for their whole lives. The others were just impressed. The guard at the gas station complained about bad ecology in their region and said that we're lucky that it is not stinking today. It really was not stinking, so probably we were really lucky.
The road after Bratsk was mainly unsurfaced, we reached Ust'-Kut having a lunch in a very nice cafe with a small hotel (yes, when you are hitting our roads, there are mostly cafes with hotels, not hotels with cafes) I-don't-remember-where :). We slightly lost our way in Ust'-Kut, but found the bridge and crossed Lena rather quickly. Lena is a really nice river, and Ust'-Kut is a real center of inland waterways carriage. We accidentally were on the same radio channel with the port workers, and they have loaded and unloaded lots of different things while we were in Ust'-Kut...
We were not always following each other, so when the mobile network has disappeared after Ulkan we had a good chance to spend the night separately, and we even tried to find a place (but it was boggy with lots of mosquitoes, so I decided to continue driving, and that was to the best), but eventually we started hearing each other on the radio and met at a suitable river bank. The road there is all surrounded by forests and bogs, so you can only pitch a camp almost at the roadside where the rivers cross it. BAM is very close to the road, and therefore the railway bridge is next to the road bridge, so you basically spend the night between two roads, or two bridges. One river looked really nice, but someone has already started a fire there, and there were not enough place for two groups of tourists. So, we passed by, but then it turned out that the fire was started by Gavrilov, so we got back to them and spent this night under BAM. In the morning, we compared how many trains each one could hear in the night. The maximum number was 3, but I've heard only 2.
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