The Snowboarder's Journal - The Snowboarder's Journal 19.1
THE SLEEPING LAND: Powdersurfing the Trans-Siberian Railway
Words: Ben Dietermann 2021-09-27 14:52:39
November at the Novokuznetsk stop of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Novokuznetsk is the second-largest city of the Kemerovo Oblast region in southwestern Siberia. It’s a good spot to catch a ride to the Sheregesh region, home to one of Siberia’s biggest ski resorts, Sheregesh-Kemerovo. Photo: Louisa Marie Summer
Siberia encompasses five million square miles of freezing tundra spanning most of northern Asia. And what else? A nascent snowboard culture, perhaps? Friendly locals and untracked lines? Where there is snow and mountains there are usually folks enjoying the alpine. But Siberia remains an unknown entity—a vast, mysterious chunk on the map with little beta. A land waiting to be explored.
It’s November. Reports of heavy snowfall blanketing quaint towns along the Trans-Siberian Railway suggest a brighter picture than the region’s nickname of the “Sleeping Land” implies. It’s time to see what it holds and paint memories between the lines.
After long flights from Munich and Zurich, respectively, our crew assembles at the buzzing Moscow Domodedovo Airport before taking another six-hour soar to the city of Irkutsk, some 3,000 miles east of the Russian metropolis. Yeah, Siberia is a long way from home. The group consists of Daniel Schneider, the unofficial cook, Andreas Weiss and his positive vibes, photographer Louisa Marie Summer and me, the shaper of the powdersurfers we’re riding on this trip.
With a bit of luck, we arrange a last-minute ride in an all-terrain vehicle that will take us toward Mamay, the first destination on our itinerary. While the driver loads our gear and makes his final preparations, we sip a cup of chai tea with his mother. With a bit of body language and scattered French, we manage to strike up something that resembles a conversation about her life in Irkutsk, what brought us here and our daily lives back home. Although we are communicating across language barriers, we feel welcomed.
Soon we’re off to Mamay, a small valley in the nearly 220-mile-long Khamar-Daban mountain range next to Lake Baikal. At just under 400 miles long, Lake Baikal is the world’s oldest and deepest freshwater lake—a body of water so massive it’s easily identifiable from outer space. As we turn off the road that runs along its southeastern shore, the route becomes too muddy for motorized transport. We unload and hike the final few miles to the primitive log cabin that will serve as our home base for the next five days.
In the beginning of winter, before it has a chance to freeze over, Lake Baikal’s moisture brings abundant snow to the region, and the valley protects powder from the wind. As a result, Mamay Valley is becoming an increasingly popular touring destination and guided operations have appeared here during the past several years. It’s easy pickings, full of cold, untouched lines, some of which lead right to our cabin’s front door. Along with the fun tree runs around the huts, there are open bowls higher up, as well as pillows if you know where to look. The sun is out from about 8 in the morning to 5 p.m. and so are we, riding multiple runs per day for as long as the light allows.
We aren’t the only ones out here. About 70 cabins spread across the valley. But they’re mostly used for hunting during warmer months, so few are occupied now. Our cabin is only 9 feet by 13 feet and is without running water. Electricity lasts for a few fleeting moments each evening. We have a small gas stove to cook with, and another fed by wet wood to generate some warmth. Plain wooden boards make up the beds. It’s simple but boisterous throughout our stay. The evenings are full of unexpected visits and merry gatherings. Impromptu guests include local legends such as big mountain skier Sergey “Avalanche Man” Klimov, backcountry guides from the Elbrus region, beginner snowboarders from Moscow, a cook from the neighbouring hut, as well as other enthusiasts enjoying winter in the valley. We share stories and drinks late into most nights. A баня (banya)—the Russian-Eastern Slavic version of an onsen or sauna—is situated only a few feet from the cabin that is closest to the river. Its steam soothes our bodies and souls after long days of powdersurfing. After five days, everyone is inclined to stay longer, if only it weren’t for the train tickets we’d booked in advance.
We leave the Mamay Valley on foot and reach the Vydrino train station by car. Constant announcements pour out of a loudspeaker, but still we can’t understand Russian aside from a few phrases we’ve picked up. Somehow we find the right train car in time. After passing a strict passport-control protocol, we collapse into our third-class cabin. It’s nearly 83 degrees Fahrenheit and unbelievably cramped. There are beds next to beds, beds bunked on top of beds, and every one of them is spoken for. We will be traveling like this for the next 39 hours.
The landscape doesn’t really fly by on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Rather, the train moves slower than most urban subways. Maybe that’s why this train always departs on time—they save a bit of tempo for when they need it. Or maybe it’s due to the quality of the tracks. As bumpy as they are, the conductor probably goes easy on the accelerator. Railway construction workers, far from their home villages, do their thing in the snowstorm that is currently blanketing the sparse birch forests and tundra along the line.
Like our cabin in the woods, the train is full of life. It’s a diverse mix of soldiers, infants, seniors and other locals all squeezed into a hot box, yet everyone interacts using their best manners. Every stop is a spectacle, but several hours into the ride it almost feels normal to see a fellow passenger chewing away at a mutton skull or making hasty fish sales between stops—standard Siberian life. There aren’t other tourists, but we’re treated like anyone else, like we belong here.
We change trains at night and manage to reach Novokuznetsk in southwestern Siberia the next day. A driver in an unmarked taxi brings us to Sheregesh, a former mining town of 10,000 folks that is now home to one of Russia’s more popular ski resorts, Sheregesh-Kemerovo. Since the early 2000s, snowsports have boomed in Russia and the number of visitors coming to enjoy the scene at Sheregesh has grown from roughly 30,000 to more than 900,000 annually. Sandwiched between prisons and an active coal mine are the hotels, cafes, bars and restaurants of a typical resort village—with a power station planted in the middle of it all. If you google Sheregesh, you may find various absurdities such as videos of masses of people sliding down slopes in swimwear during the “Grelka” spring festival.
Luckily, we’d received trustworthy recommendations about Sheregresh from a mutual friend before coming here, and a group of locals awaited our arrival. Following our new friends, the mountain greeted us with blue skies, breathtaking views of Mongolia’s Altay Mountains to the southeast, and a heaping load of fresh, dry powder at our feet. We buy our first round of lift tickets and find good lines right next to the chairs on our powsurfers. The resort spreads over four peaks and sports more than 19 lifts, but since these lifts belong to several competing operators, no one buys season passes or even full-day tickets. Instead, you purchase a pass that’s good for a few hours from one operator, ride that area of the mountain, have a short break, and then buy another few-hours’ pass from another operator. You can hike out of the resort, ride down to the village, take the taxi back up, get another ticket and ride some more.
At about 1,570 feet Sheregresh isn’t the tallest mountain, but still the choices seem limitless and everything happens spontaneously. From the windy top of the resort our options are mellow runs to the bottom by linking several open, rolling pitches that cross over quick, manageable tree lines, or we can go deeper into the woods. One run called Japan Forest lives up to its name, with nicely spaced trees, myriad pillows and bountiful blower snow. Although Sheregesh’s alpine terrain is far from what you’ll find at some other resorts, there are a few cliff options and open faces up high, especially if you hike to the actual peak of the resort’s main mountain, Kurgan, or stop by the Camel Rocks, a fascinating formation along the ridgeline, on your way there.
Before Sheregesh becomes a busy winter destination for guests from all over Russia later in the season, it’s a popular meeting point for the truly dedicated winter aficionados of the east. Snow starts falling in November here, which is earlier than most other resorts in the country. A little later into the winter a lot of these snowboarders will migrate to other locales, but now is the time to rally and ride Siberian powder. Mountain guides from Kamchatka, professional snowboarders from Kazakhstan, powder veterans from the Caucasus region—all are glad to gather here and devote themselves to winter again. Every day the riders congregate in a service garage to tune their gear and share plans for the day. They seem happy to see new faces, ours included.
As there is plenty of snow all over the village, we make the most of the cloudier moments by searching for spots away from the resort. Behind some apartment blocks we come across schoolkids putting on a show jumping off trees, garage roofs and balconies into the snow. Like many of Shregresh’s locals, they haven’t seen bindingless boards before, but don’t hesitate when given the chance to try ours. A small path shared with locals bringing home their groceries suddenly becomes a busy slope. While our crew loves slashing the banks on the side, airing small bumps, and even sliding down a weird metal structure nearby, the kids prefer to simply straight-line until they fall and burst into laughter. It’s almost hard to ask for our boards back.
One night after another excellent day of riding, we find ourselves at a band rehearsal of sorts taking place at the former villa of a prison warden. With just a guitar and some percussion the instrumentation is sparse, but intense. The intensity builds until the singer suddenly loses his set of fake teeth. All smiles, he tells us there were times of violence in his life, times he was fortunately able to leave behind after recovering from the incident he says cost him more than just his teeth.
We see him again later in our stay—he’s the DJ at a bar one night, and master, or бáнщик (banschik), of a special banya ceremony another evening. He directs as two men use bundles of birch branches, or veniks, to smack our sore muscles next to a steaming woodstove.
The food in Sheregresh ranges from upscale westernized meals with strict table service to ramshackle hole-in-the-wall establishments serving local fare. We usually opt for the latter. On our second-to-last evening in Sheregresh we enter a sparsely lit venue and see a man equipped with a hammer, pocketknife and pair of pincers working on a broken latch on the backdoor. We begin to turn around because the whole place looks to be under maintenance, but as we try to leave the owner approaches and beckons us to sit down.
With the language barrier in full swing, they simply show us their complete stock of food and drink including the fully frozen inventory of their deep freezer. They seem to be especially proud of the random chunks of meat they’re presenting us, so we let them have their way. While the chef cooks, the makeshift mechanic ditches his work and tries hard to communicate. Immediately he becomes aware that our Russian starts and ends with спасибо (sbasiba, meaning “thanks”), so he gets creative. He shows us his documents, draws on the carpet, lays out signs with cutlery and even pulls off dance moves. He explains the best he can about his times in foreign lands and how he learned about typical perceptions of Russian culture elsewhere in the world. Before he can try to elaborate further, the owner gestures for him to get back to work, so we try to help him to fix the lock on the backdoor. We return to the table as the chef brings out our food with a big gesture and smile to match. It’s a rather simple dish made from a bit of mystery meat, roasted potatoes and other various vegetables, yet its seasoned herbal flavors are aromatic and delicious. We leave full and entertained.
Some may refer to Siberia as the “Sleeping Land,” but our experience here has been intriguing and lively. We enjoy a fun final day on the mountain, then gather with our new group of friends for a gladsome farewell. We share stories, drinks, food and laughter like we’ve known each other for years. Our crew decides to leave the locals with a few of our bindingless boards so they’ll be equipped for their own powsurf sessions. It’s a fair trade for the vivid memories we’ve collected in such a short time here, for the genuine hospitality extended to us by strangers in a land that’s so much more than cold, bleak tundra.
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