Rogovaya III camp site
Photo: Päivi Kaislahti-TillmanThe field work trip to Rogovaya III camp did not start as planned. We were supposed to start the trip from Vorkuta using a land vehicle, but that proved to be impossible. So we had to continue our trip to Seida campsite not knowing if the Rogovaya III trip would be possible at all. After long negotiations we were able to get two small land vehicles, which were supposed to leave on 3rd of August – a week after it was originally planned.

Land vehicle crossing the bridge built from willows
Photo: Steffen HolzkämperWe waited for the vehicles for the whole day. When they finally arrived it was already too late to leave, so we had to spend another night in Seida. The size of the vehicles was a shock to all of us and we were just barely able to fit nine of us and our minimized amount of luggage in them. Our group included two of us Finns from the University of Helsinki, one German, Finn and French and two Swedes from the University of Stockholm and two Russians from the Komi Science Center ... and two drivers.

The idea was that the ride to Rogovaya was supposed to take one day, so we would have four full working days out there. The ride through the wet tundra was very bumpy – and once in a while the whole group had to get out of the vehicles to push as they got stuck on the wet fens (and of course always in the wettest spots). In the evening around 10 pm we had to stop due to a river that seemed to be uncrossable. We still had almost 20 km to the camp site, which would have been an extremely long way to walk in the harsh environment with all our luggage, especially as we were already running out of working days and should have been at the Rogovaya III camp at the latest during the next day. We built our camp and spent the night in sub-zero temperatures dreaming about the option of having nice cosy indoor work in an office.

An old vehicle, stuck in the river
Photo: Päivi Kaislahti-TillmanThe next morning we decided to solve the problem of passing the river using Sasha’s idea, which was to build a bridge using willow bushes as material. It took almost three hours for eleven people, but it worked and we were finally able to continue our trip with the vehicles. The vehicles had to finally stop two km before the final destination, when we run into another river - with one of the land vehicles half sunk in there. So we walked the final two kilometres to the camp, which took about hour and a half in the harsh vegetation.

Evening meal on the tundra
Photo: Päivi Kaislahti-TillmanAs the travel to the site had took longer than expected, we had only 2.5 days time to do the actual work at the site. Considering the shortness of the working time each group was actually able to collect considerably good data. Our vegetation group spent one day running for the ground reference data and the rest of the time collecting biomass samples and forest inventory data. Also the Swedish soil group was able to collect data from two short transects with some extra points. The settings at Rogovaya river were good - the water is excellent for both swimming and drinking, and a big thanks also to Galina and Sasha, who took care of preparing the supper and keeping the fire burning for us during each cold evening.

Even though it was pretty cold, we were lucky with the weather until we had packed up our camp to walk back to the land vehicles. Then it started to rain heavily and continued to rain until we were back in Seida. This wouldn’t have been a problem if the vehicles had not got stuck in the fens about every 30 minutes. When this happened, everyone (except the writer who was sick and acted as a bag-holder) had to get out and push the vehicle.

The trip back to Seida took 20 hours with an hour or two of sleep during the darkest hours of the night. Even though the trip itself was pretty challenging, we were able to collect fairly good data considering the time limit and the trip proved to be worth all the trouble.