Kayaking Kamchatka

after 10 hours in my kayak, i wiggled to try to find a comfortable position and played mind games to pass

the time. counting out loud, i took 10 strong paddle strokes, then a quick rest, followed by another 10 strokes ...

When we had launched the kayaks that morning into a calm sea, Uzon Volcano filled our view to the west. In the clear air of Kamchatka, massive Uzon (elev. 7117 feet) had seemed to follow us for the first five hours of easy paddling. As we bobbed in the kayaks eating lunch, a breeze from the North chilled my cheek. Within an hour, the breeze had intensified into a diabolical headwind. Our progress seemed infinitesimal. I longed to go to shore and wait for the wind to stop.

Far ahead, I saw my husband, Jon, paddling his yellow kayak with the steady stroke of a robot. Misha, our Russian companion, noticed that I was falling behind and slowed his pace. “You very tired?” he asked, “Not need paddle fast, just many strokes, I know you strong woman, you paddled hard for two weeks. Kronoki very close, soon there are many houses and people!” His chatting encouraged me through another 45 minutes, and by then I could finally see the houses at Kronoki. Twilight’s golden glow touched the collection of small, tarpaper-covered cabins and the white and green plastered walls of a weather station. The large swells of the North Pacific met the shallow bay in a series of small breaking waves.

Two men stood on the beach. I hadn’t spotted the men until I heard Misha hoot, then saw his paddle pointing in their direction. Their camouflage-green pants and their ragged, olive-green jackets blended with the muted grays, greens, blues, and browns of Kamchatka in early June. They had spotted our brightly colored kayaks and jackets while we were still 15 minutes from their black sand beach. Jon paddled in first, then Misha, and finally I stroked toward shore.

The men, who introduced themselves as Sergei and Constantine, chivalrously pulled my kayak up onto the beach to keep my feet dry. They worked at a vulcanology research camp, and had been driving along the beach in a huge Soviet army truck to collect seaweed. Tangles of the washed-up sea cabbage would feed their horses and fertilize the garden. Sergei jumped into the bed of the truck and raked their slimy cargo out of the way to make a place for our gear and kayaks.

Jon, Misha, and I were in our first month of a sea kayak journey that would take me 600 miles along the coast of Kamchatka. I was part of a two-year expedition spearheaded by my husband, Jon Turk, to follow the probable path of Stone Age mariners as they paddled and sailed from Japan to North America over 10 thousand years ago. Jon had completed the first leg of this adventure from Hokkaido to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in 1999. There he had the good fortune to meet Mikhail Petrov—“Misha.” Jon’s plan to continue the expedition the following summer had sparked a desire in Misha. He has a strong love for the wild nature of Kamchatka and is intimately familiar with much of the coastline from his 15 summers of fieldwork in hydrogeology.

Jon and Misha rode in the bed of the truck with the gear and the three kayaks, but Sergei and Constantine insisted that I climb in the cab with them. As the old truck bumped up the rutted road and ground through patches of soft sand on the three-minute drive to the weather station, I exhausted my limited vocabulary, which consisted of “hello” and a response to the familiar “kooda” (where are you going) with, “We are paddling to Alaska.” A three-month old girl sat on a blanket in front of the plaster building we had seen from the water, soaking up the last of the afternoon sun. Alexander, a meteorologist, walked out to welcome us to his home.

We changed out of our cold, wet clothes in a small mud room, and then stepped out into a hallway to meet Natasha, who was moving all of the vegetable starts for her garden out of the spare room. As she mopped its wooden floor, Natasha motioned to a place on the floor and put her two hands under her cheek to show me where to roll out our sleeping bags. Then she scooped up her confused, toddler son on one hip and ushered us into the kitchen where a large kettle steamed. The rich aroma of fresh bread enveloped us as we entered the small room. Natasha settled her toddler—Nikita—on Misha’s lap, went out to pick up her crying daughter, and returned to serve us thick-cut slices of bread, strong tea in deep metal cups, and plenty of sugar.

After tea, Natasha settled Lena, the baby girl, on my lap, and ladled our plates full of canned meat and tomatoes. As she bustled about, she peppered Misha with questions about us. By this time, I had begun to understand Misha’s tale. During our first two weeks of travel he had told this story to the officials in Petropavlovsk, border guards in Nalaychevo, the fishermen at the Zhupanovo River, and the lighthouse keeper at Cape Zhupanovo. Misha’s story went like this: We were two American adventurers who had traveled by small boats, bicycles, or skis to remote parts of the globe. He told them that Jon had paddled around Cape Horn in a kayak and that the two of us had paddled from Canada to Greenland.

By the time Misha had finished our biography, Alexander had finished transmitting the weather and joined us in the small kitchen. A form of musical chairs ensued as the two children were passed from lap to lap so that Natasha, Sergei, Constantine, and Alexander all got a chance to see the snapshot collection of our life in Montana. They marveled at the similarities—a house in the woods, a wood-burning stove, larch and pine trees like those that grow in the interior of Kamchatka. A photo of myself in front of a Singer sewing machine delighted them. They all recognized and sounded out this famous American firm.

Misha translated their story for us. Since perestroika, the Russian Far East—which depended on subsidies from the central government—has suffered widespread economic collapse. The euphoria of freedom was quickly replaced by the realization that almost everyone was out of work, and services like utilities, public transportation, education, and health care were no longer supported. Natasha and Alexander faced the challenges of this new era by choosing to live at Kronoki. Even though the pay is only about $75 US per month, the government provides them with housing and a helicopter brings food and supplies once a year. Yet, without their efforts at growing potatoes, cabbages, carrots and other vegetables, their diet would be meager and limited. Despite the hardships and isolation, they felt that life at Kronoki would be a better, safer place to raise their children than in Petropavlovsk or another large Russian city.

Natasha started a fresh batch of bread while we chatted. She asked questions about life in America. Was it as dangerous as portrayed in the news? Did we own our home? Where were our children? As the sun finally set at 10 PM, Natasha showed us how to use the shower, and prepared yet another meal of rice and canned fish.

by the time we had packed up our sleeping gear the

next morning and entered the kitchen, Natasha had stacked up a large pile of onions, potatoes, and canned goods for us. We sipped tea and dripped sugared milk onto slices of bread. Sergei and Constantine arrived at eight and drove us to the beach. Alexander walked down to watch as we stowed all of the gear and food in the kayaks. In the flurry of packing and moving the boats, I had forgotten to say goodbye to Natasha and walked back toward the house. I met her hurrying down the hill, carrying the hastily clad baby in one arm and holding Nikita’s small hand with the other. We shook hands all around and thanked everyone for their generosity and help. Then we got into our kayaks, paddled out through the surf, and waved back at the party on the beach. After 10 minutes, I looked back and faintly saw them still standing there. I waved my paddle in the air as a final goodbye and turned my attention toward Cape Olga.

After an hour we pulled the kayaks up on a shoal and got out to stretch our legs and discuss our route around the Cape. We sat on rocks surrounding a tide pool and watched a grizzly bear lumbering along the beach toward us. Once we had decided he was more interested in the sea cabbage than us, we relaxed. I commented on the kindness and hospitality we had received in Kronoki, and Misha looked at me quizzically, then explained that such hospitality is not exceptional, but at the core of Russian culture.

jon, misha, and i had set out from petropavlovsk-

Kamchatsky on the 19th of May. We had stuffed our plastic kayaks with as much food as possible, but realized that we would need to replenish our supplies at the few villages on our route. Misha’s friendly nature and strength, along with an almost instinctual skill at dealing with the intricacies of Russian bureaucracy, became an absolute necessity to our survival: less than a day’s paddle north of Petropavlovsk, the Kamchatka coast is almost untouched by human settlement. In our first two weeks of paddling we had met only a dozen people scattered along the coast in remote outpost camps like Kronoki.

We had, however, encountered a plethora of wild life. Paddling was a three-ring circus of rookeries of sea birds, Kamchatka brown bears, Stellar sea eagles, foxes, and whales. Curious seals and otters popped up to watch for as long as they dared before splashing back down to safety.

Kamchatka’s relatively young coastline was created by the tectonic collision of the Pacific Plate with the North American Plate. The resulting uplift is so rapid that the high rock cliffs and bluffs are punctuated with flowing strings of white waterfalls. These rocky outcrops form capes that are separated by miles of low, crescent-shaped sand beaches. Shoal rocks and sea stacks guard the capes. But if we rounded a cape on a flat, calm day, we could wander through the passages between sea stacks to watch the birds and sea lions on the rocks. On these rare days, an easy swell lapped against the rocks while water-carved pinnacles reminded us of the battering force of waves and wind.

one week after leaving kronoki, we

reached Ust-Kamchatsk, Kamchatka’s largest city north of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. Thirty years ago the strong Soviet central government developed the city’s abundant natural resources into large-scale timber, dairy, and fishing industries. In the boom of the 1970s, Ust-Kamchatsk’s population grew to 18 thousand. A new city was built beside the old one, but just as the new apartment houses and post office were completed, perestroika sent the economy into turmoil. Without capital to run the mills, factories and ships, the entire town slowly shut down.

During the winter of 1993, there wasn’t enough money to produce energy, so the utilities simply pulled the plug. The residents struggled without heat or light through the cold, dark winter. Temperatures in Ust-Kamchatsk routinely reach -30° Celsius (-22 F). By the following winter, thousands of people had left Kamchatka and the ones who stayed scrambled to make stovepipe out of scrap metal and dismantled abandoned apartment buildings for firewood. Most of the cows were killed and eaten. Huge stacks of logs rotted alongside rusting cranes and defunct sawmills. Fishermen were unequipped to fish without the supplies that were formerly provided by the government.

By 1998, the city’s population had dwindled by over 70%, to less than five thousand. Ust-Kamchatsk is still rich in resources, but its market economy is hogtied by corruption, an inefficient bureaucracy, and an absence of economic or legal ground rules. As with the rest of the peninsula, the town has become subject to frontier economics that will deplete its resources.

And yet, the survivors of this chaos have begun to pull Ust-Kamchatsk out of its skid. Careful management of energy supplies has created a fairly reliable power supply. When we paddled into town, we met Victor, an enterprising fisherman who has started a state-of-the-art fishing company. Victor gave us a tour of his operation, starting with the fishermen who catch salmon from the Kamchatka River, to the modern fast-freezing plant that prepares the catch to be sent to foreign markets. New businesses like Victor’s have helped to pump money into the destroyed town and Ust-Kamchatsk is now starting to grow slightly. Still, unemployment is high and many people are challenged to find any kind of job. Most residents have no savings and pensions for civil servants and the elderly are practically worthless. The state of Ust-Kamchatsk makes it abundantly clear why Natasha and Alexander had chosen to live in Kronoki.

as we paddled onward along the coast to ossora, we

continued to witness the difficulties posed by the new market economy. The people of Kamchatka are struggling to survive, but their hardship has not diminished their hospitality nor their curiosity about the world around them. The reception we received in Kronoki was repeated at every outpost camp or village we visited. When we pulled up to the beach in Ossora four weeks later, we were greeted by another Victor, proprietor of a small guide service for foreign bear hunters. Such adventure tourism offers a potential source of revenue for Kamchatka, but bureaucratic hurdles make travel here problematic. For our expedition we needed a stack of some 15 different permits aside from our tourist visas.

Between Ossora and the Alaskan coast was another 1400 miles of difficult paddling. Unfortunately, I had to cut short my participation in the expedition because my wrists had become inflamed. As I flew back to Petropavlosk, I looked out the plane window and wondered how Kamchatka will be able to meet the challenges it faces. Below me, stretched miles of untouched forest and streams, while from the forward cabin wall a faded poster of Lenin stared back at me. Despite the difficulties of the past century, Kamchatka possesses great wealth. Not just in its natural beauty, but also in oil, gas, and minerals. Yet its greatest asset is the strong, hard working people like those I met on my journey. It is they who must save this Japan-sized peninsula. They face a formidable task. But I feel a ray of hope glimmering like the rivers below me on the plane; above all else, these people are resilient.  RL

Christine Seashore is a freelance writer who makes her home in Darby, Montana. Her husband, John Turk, completed his trans-Pacific paddle, together with Mikhail Petrov, with a landing at the town of Gambell, Alaska on September 13, 2000. To read more about his journey, visit the Cold Oceans website at: http://www.goals.com/coldoceans/home.asp