Polar Youth

Misha Smirnov has the day off. There are the traditional eggs for breakfast and the usual darkness out the window. Now, however, Misha’s black cat Macy is finally darker than the sky: a few days ago, this latitude saw its first sunrise after about two weeks of polar night. By now, the city of Kirovsk is enjoying a couple of hours of sunlight every day, or rather a delightfully prolonged pink sunrise that transitions seamlessly into sunset. On top of that, despite the early hour, the city is bathed in artificial “Northern lights”: the windows of the surrounding five-story buildings sparkle with blue, emerald, and pink strings of light that, in other parts of Russia, only come out for the New Year’s holiday. Polar night forces people to compensate for the lack of light and of chromatic variety.

“There’s not much light, hardly any. I’d been eagerly awaiting the polar sunrise so I could go up the mountain and see at least a sliver of sun again,” Misha looks back on that pre-New Year’s day, December 29, when the heavenly body made its first appearance after half a month.

“The older you get, the harder the Arctic is on your body. I’ve started to have insomnia. I can’t fall asleep even when I’m exhausted,” the 22-year-old laments, polishing off his breakfast.

People who live above the Arctic Circle, especially if they did not grow up there, often complain of fatigue and of having trouble rousing themselves in the morning: out the window, there’s nothing but never-ending night. “The most important thing is to take a lot of vitamins. Fish oil, for example, and vitamin C,” Misha advises. He has lived his entire life in Kirovsk.

Meanwhile, the city doesn’t have much time for yawning and stretching: Macy the cat is watching the yard-keepers clearing the entryways to buildings, which by late winter look like snow tunnels built out of snowdrifts three or four meters high. Car owners patiently work to liberate their vehicles from the snow that took them captive overnight.

Russians are still relative newcomers here, 200 kilometers from the Barents Sea (part of the Arctic Ocean basin): Kirovsk has yet to reach its centennial. Back in 1929, when the first mining settlements were built here, it was given the ancient Saami name of Kukisvumchorr.* Today, statistics tell us that the Saami represent fewer than one percent of the Kola Peninsula’s population.

Reaching toward the still twinkling stars, the Khibiny Mountains tower over the concrete prefab khrushchevki^† that house much of Kirovsk. The Khibiny are the highest mountains, not only on the Kola Peninsula, but across a vast stretch of the Arctic Circle’s wooded tundra. Only one slope shows signs of artificial illumination (and only its bottom half): huge snow groomers are clearing trails for the local ski resort. Polar skiing has its enthusiasts, despite the typical 20-below temperatures and periods of nearly perpetual darkness. The skiing season here lasts till late May, and prices for ski passes and rooms are many times lower than in Sochi, or at Russia’s other mountain resorts.

Misha and I head toward the mountains in his Zhiguli. He laughingly mentions that he recently bought the car for 40,000 rubles (a bit over $500). It doesn’t offer much room for skis, even when there are no passengers. Now, there are two, since Misha has invited along his best friend. Vovan (Vladimir, more formally) is a snowboarder and a member of a band called Bita Bandita (the band’s social media page describes it as “street hip-hop from deep in the Khibiny”).

We load our gear through a rear door so it rests on the front passenger seat, almost right up against the dashboard. There’s no choice: Misha’s skis are no simple matter and are designed for both freestyle and freeriding. In other words, they’re not your standard skis and can handle not only the groomed and avalanche-prone ungroomed slopes of the Khibiny, but also the various features of the surrounding landscape: snow-covered sheds, abandoned houses and garages.

There’s so much snow in Kirovsk that people don’t need to construct ski jumps – they appear naturally.
Any small structure that goes unused in winter can become an interesting challenge. Unused complexes of buildings and stairways can serve as ready-made open-air extreme-sports parks.

We head for the city’s outskirts. From behind the mountaintop, little rays of long-awaited sunlight are glimmering, and my new comrade exudes brio and derring-do as he anticipates the day’s acrobatic feats, starting with jumps from the gaping orifices of a long-abandoned House of Culture. Stalin-era architecture can be marvelously adapted to freestyle skiing, and not just for locals. We recalled how, several years back, some Finns captured a video clip* of ski jumping off Kirovsk’s abandoned train station, which was built in honor of a World Mining Congress (interestingly, there is no evidence the conference ever took place). Based on my newfound friend’s tone, I infer that train station stunts are cliché by now. Jumping off the ruins of a House of Culture – now that’s a trail still to be blazed and therefore worthy of interest. But there’s shoveling to be done to prepare the “outrun” and places to land (if we can call propelling yourself at high velocity into waist-deep snow, skis and all,
a “landing”).

In early Soviet times “Kilometer-25” was an independent settlement, with its own self-contained infrastructure and House of Culture. Today, however, mass culture has migrated to the internet and television, and the venues where people used to congregate for cultural events have been abandoned. We clamber over snowdrifts to reach the building’s entrance, and then, with skis over our shoulders, we climb what used to be the imposing front steps of this cultural palace. From a gaping hole that used to feature a panoramic window, a view of the green tower beyond the residential quarter opens up before us. The tower covers one of the shafts used by PhosAgro, a company headquartered in Moscow that mines phosphate minerals.

While we’re setting up our impromptu snow park, we can hear a low rumble radiating across the city – the sound of ore being blasted deep underground. Underground is where Vovan works as a crusher operator. The two friends complement one another like earth and sky. Between the two of them, they’ve got the local industry – underground and above-ground mining – covered: while Vovan toils away in cavernous darkness, Misha deals with above-ground ore in a gigantic open-pit mine that stretches across many kilometers.

“They blow up a section of rock, and we load it into gigantic BelAZ trucks and take it for processing,” Misha tells me as he adjusts the fasteners on his ski boots. “Walking through town, you can immediately recognize the people who work underground.” Vovan finishes the explanation: “They get used to looking down as they walk, to avoid the glare of oncoming headlamps getting in their eyes. They’re even called ‘moles.’”

In winter, the snow blanketing the Khibiny Mountains’ rocky peaks makes the mountaintops appear smooth, like hills, albeit hills that rise into the clouds. There isn’t much plant life, and trees grow only at the lower altitudes. The mountains’ white tops have been polished to a sheen by the lashing of polar blizzards – tall trees don’t stand a chance. Skiers testing fate on the most avalanche-prone slopes also don’t stand much of a chance. One official map of the local slopes is marked with dozens of little black crosses. The sports complex staff seems to understand that marking the spots where skiers and snowboarders have perished will make more of an impression than warning signs.

“When I’m zooming down from high altitude, I’m constantly looking over my shoulder,” Misha admits, reminding me of that gripping fear you feel when you’re coming down an ungroomed slope, where an avalanche can come out of nowhere. The intensity of snowstorms in the Khibiny is such that avalanches sometimes reach the edge of residential neighborhoods, which is why earthen ramparts or other barriers are still being put in place.

On one steep and exceptionally craggy slope facing Kirovsk’s Kilometer-25 neighborhood, there hangs a gigantic hunk of stone, looking as if it’s perched on a tiny step. This rock is the result of the huge dynamite blasts used when apatite (a type of phosphate mineral) was first mined back before the war, when Kirovsk was just being built.

“So, that titan has been hanging there since 1929. The people who live in that neighborhood are just waiting for it to finally come crashing down on them,” Misha laughs as he prepares for a jump in that direction.

“Maybe I’m still hanging on to a childhood dream, but it would be awesome to become a famous pro-rider and earn a living that way,” he admits. However, Misha clearly isn’t in it for the money. He looks much more like a true romantic who has not given up his youthful dreams and still allows himself to come up with new ones: “I’d also really like to study cinematography. They shot a film here and we were all extras in a skiing scene. I loved the hustle and bustle of filmmaking – everything about it was so interesting!”

But, for many of his fellow Kirovskians, Misha’s own job is enviable. It’s generally believed there that “only mining jobs offer stability.” Excavator operators like Misha have an added advantage: they have a two-days-on, two-days-off schedule, unlike the five-day workweek of a crusher operator working down in the mines, like Vovan. Also, having a job that’s categorized as highly hazardous, Misha gets 73 days of vacation per year, something beyond the wildest dreams of wage earners in Russia’s large cities.

Misha’s job sometimes involves rather odd duties. The weather, at times, makes for assignments that have nothing to do with mining. “In March, so much snow fell that once we had to leave the mine and take our shovels to clear snow from the grounds of a preschool, since the yard-keepers there just couldn’t keep up,” the young miner explained with a chuckle.

Misha was open about the drawbacks of his line of work, but now his tone turned serious. “There’s an orange smog that hangs over our pit. After a year of working there, you start to cough. And it’s not clear what there’s more of in that smog: emissions from all the machinery or dust. And that dust doesn’t leave the body; the only way to clear it is by drinking milk.”

And there are a few more mundane disadvantages: recently they stopped delivering hot lunches to the crews. Now he has to whip up his own instant mashed potatoes and frankfurters right there in the excavator (which conveniently has an electrical outlet).

Life in the Arctic isn’t cheap: groceries in Kirovsk are markedly more expensive than in Moscow or St. Petersburg, and energy expenses are many times higher. It’s not unusual for people to hold down two jobs. For example, Misha’s 46-year-old mother, Irina, works part of the week at the ski resort’s first-aid station, where rescue workers bring her injured skiers, and the rest as a paramedic at a mine, where injuries are no less frequent. Misha, thankfully, has managed to avoid injury both on the slopes and at his mine.

The fleeting polar sun has disappeared. As he straps together his skis, which have put in a good day’s work, Smirnov admits: “Sometimes I think I should hightail it out of here, since there are no prospects except in mining, but then, after a good night’s sleep, you understand: dude, it’s all fine, you just have to stay here and keep at it.”

I did not ask my new friend to clarify whether he means “keep at” his pro-riding dreams or his job at the mine.