Ludmilla and Angela, Syktyvkar airportAs usual the trip was full of surprises; the first one being that it is possible to get from home in the UK to Vortuka on the same day; well just, and not taking into account time differences. This involved an early morning flight for me and Angela from Heathrow, a trip around the Moscow ring road and a half hour transfer at Syktyvkar where we experienced the most rigorous custom examinations of the entire trip. They were especially interested in my exothermic hand heaters, I Ied them to believe that they didn’t contain any liquid and they seemed oblivious of the meters of metal poles and tubes behind me.

I had forgotten the quaint Russian custom of loading and unloading equipment onto the plane but was soon reacquainted with this and realised quite how much heavy stuff we had. By then we had met up with Vasily, Heikki and Sebastian and their associated equipment.

Luckily we arrived in Vorkuta safely, the same plane apparently making an emergency landing the next evening, and checked into the rather luxurious Hotel Vorkuta. We spent the next few days organising the field trip, actually myself, Heikki, Angela and Sebastian spent a lot of time buying plastic bags and eating while Vasily organised everything else.

Key: Town / City Study Site |

Valery's all-terrain vehicleThe first field area was to the NW of Vorkuta which we reached by a very special vehicle driven by Valery the director of the local fisheries inspectorate. The tyres can be inflated and deflated en route which means it can cope with all terrains from soft snow and water on the lakes to normal surfaced roads, however we did get stuck a few times. It was great to be out on the tundra and the journey was made even more special when we met a group of Nenets travelling under reindeer power.

Nenet's reindeerWe used a warm fisherman’s hut on the shores of Kharbei lake as a base and sampled long cores from two lakes (Nerussaveita code NERU and Kharinei code KHAR) as well as a short core from an extra lake (unnamed code VORK3) taken on the route back to Vorkuta. We think we sampled full Holocene sequences from two lakes, but they await analysis.

Sampling Kharinei lake was enlivened by the presence of Andree who lived alone in a hut on the shore and who was delighted to have the opportunity to invite guests for a memorable reindeer stew.

Once back in Vorkuta we relaxed with a sauna and were entertained by local ‘fixer’ Slav, who insisted on driving us a distance of about 50 m in a Mercedes with blacked out windows and buying Angela and I red roses at midnight; we were quite relieved to be leaving the next day on the evening train to Inta. Heikki had a surprise at the station when he bumped into some colleagues from the Geology Department in Bergen, they’d been coring in the Urals and had familiar tales (from our trip last year) of impounded equipment.

Helicopter arriving at VORK5Inta was then our base for the next few days and we visited two lakes by helicopter. The first lake (Sandevei code SANDIV) was our only lake that had been selected to be surrounded by forest. The site though must have been subjected to some dramatic hydrological change in the past since we cored through lake sediment and into peat at a present day water depth of over 7 meters. This was disappointing as we don't think we have a full Holocene record but the lake might still be a good site to examine more recent changes.

Angela and Viv with core, SandiveiThe next site, Mitrofanovske was chosen because Nadia and Vasily had cored there before and we wanted to get a full Holocene sequence to put the recent changes she had noticed into a longer timeframe. The day had rather poor visibility and the low contrast between the sky and snow together with the snow-covered landscape made it very difficult to spot any distinctive landscape features. However, Vasily was confident that we were at the right lake based on the GPS co-ordinates. The lake Nadia sampled was 17m deep and after 2 hours of ice-boring we still had not managed to find any water deeper than 2.5m. As the helicopter was coming to pick us up at a prearranged time, and we didn't want to spend the night in what was a very cold spot, we took a long core. This might be a good record but probably isnt from the lake we wanted, so we called this lake VORK5 to avoid any future confusion.

Angela and Sebastien subsampling in IntaWe spent the remaining time in Inta sub sampling the core, and also paid a visit to the local museum which was very interesting and then finished off the trip with an excellent sauna which was located rather surprisingly in the grounds of a power station. We then took the overnight train to Mikun and completed the rest of the journey to Syktyvkar by car. Ludmilla and Vasily had spent a lot of time preparing all the samples for customs. We then made a short trip to the customs officials who looked suitably impressed by our bags of mud and bottles of water and produced the correct documents for us.

Angela and I left Russia just like a couple of tourists and unlike last year, when we had samples confiscated, were not stopped even once. Heikki and Sebastian produced the documents prepared in Syktyvkar which satisfied the officials at the Finnish border, and they were able to proceed home without any problems.

The trip could not have taken place without the generous help of the following; Nadia Solovieva who organised much of the logistics from London, (actually the first surprise was her pregnancy!), Peter Solovieva who helped us negotiate Moscow, Vasily and his colleagues from the KSC who prepared everything and organised everything and worked tirelessly for us all. We were also helped in the field by Vasily’s friends and colleagues especially Sasha and Valery.

More photos here
http://www.carbonorth.net/image/tid/35