So, I wanted to cross an ocean in a ridiculously small boat
-- not just dabble around the edges. And as long as I was at
it, getting older and all, I decided to cross the biggest ocean
– The Pacific – and then what the hell, I may was well head into
the ice choked Arctic reaches of the North Pacific while I was
at it. In skiers lingo, it’s a beautiful line, never been done,
3000 miles of uninhabited islands, current shears, hurricane-force
winds, rattle your teeth out surf, and one of the wildest coastlines
on the face of the earth.
Little did I know that I was about to embark on a mental and
spiritual journey that seems to have just begun.

Name: Jon Turk

From: I live in Darby, Montana during the summers and Fernie, B.C. during ski season

Live Now: see above.

How do make a living:
I’ve been a professional writer for 35 years. For a five year snap in the early 80’s, the writing income slowed down so I fished commercially in the Bering Sea.

How do you spend your time?:
Much of the writing I do is fun, but at other times I’m simply working at the keyboard. My passion is outdoor recreation in the mountains and on the oceans: as a climber, skier, mountain biker, and kayaker. I try to do about one major international expedition a year. I also have three kids and five grandkids, and I love to spend time with them as well.

How did you become interested in Siberia?
In the 80’s and 90’s I was involved in 6 major expeditions to the Canadian Arctic: climbing, kayaking, and dog sledding. Anyone who loves wild frozen places is inexorably drawn to Siberia, due to its great size and raw harshness. I went there with my wife in 1992, and now I’m hooked. I’ve been back half a dozen times since then.

What was the Cold Oceans Expedition?
My first book is called Cold Oceans. (See www.coldoceans.com) It recounted five expeditions: a failed attempt to paddle solo around Cape Horn, a failed attempt at the Northwest Passage in a rowboat, a failed attempt to dogsled from Baffin Island to Greenland, a successful kayak passage from Canada to Greenland, and a return to Cape Horn. The book talks about the mental barriers I overcame to move from expedition failure to success. Incidentally this book is out of print, but you can buy copies directly from me: jonturk@montana.com
Later I selected the title “Cold Oceans Expedition” for my two-year trimaran and kayak expedition across the Arctic Rim of Pacific Ocean from Japan to Alaska. You can read about that on www.goals.com

What was the wildest part of your Cold Oceans Expedition?
At one point we got caught in a zone where two currents collided, forming fifteen foot standing waves. We came pretty close to dying before we broke free into a calm zone. Pretty soon we realized that we had wandered into a huge ocean whirlpool that spun us around in circles for about 36 hours. After two nights in the sub arctic in a 16 foot, open cockpit boat, we got spit out a few miles from our original camp. After that, we were so scared that we decided to quit – until –dah – we realized that we were on an uninhabited island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and quitting wasn’t really an option.

What was the best lesson you learned from it?
Oh boy! I think that you learn to dig deep if you hold on dearly to life.

Has anybody made this trip before?
The expedition that we’re about to embark upon in March follows an old Cossack fur trading route. Those Cossacks were really tough and wandered back and forth across Siberia. They just lived out there for decades at a time. In modern times a man named Dimitri attempted to make the passage. I saw him just before he left and gave him a warm pair of boots and $50. He was travelling with a fur sleeping bag and clothes and skis made out of sliced PVC sewer pipe. But he died along the way.

Who's going with you?
I’m traveling with my Russian partner Misha. He paddled with me on the second year of my trans-Pacific passage and we’ve traveled together twice since.

Will you be passing through any villages?
That’s an interesting question. There are some dots on the map, but no one really knows what that means. I’ve spoken to professional anthropologists all over the European world and Misha has asked the Russians that he can contact, yet there are big gaps in our knowledge. You can’t just Google these villages and find contact information. I suspect that some villages will be abandoned but I hope that we’ll run into migrating reindeer herders in places where no villages are indicated on the map. That’s what this adventure is all about.

What are you taking for food?
That’s another interesting question. I’ll take a core of about 750 calories per day per person of high-octane North American bars and nuts. But we need about 4000 calories per day to survive. We’ll start off with rice, kasha, butter, and sausage from the stores at the town that we fly into. After that, Misha and I will pretty much go native. We’ll eat what’s available. Hopefully we’ll run into folks who will give or sell us reindeer meat or fish or stuff like that.

Average Temps?
It will start out –30 C or so. The key is to get to a village on the Arctic coast before it warms up above freezing. If it gets too warm, the rivers and swamps will thaw and we won’t be able to travel. Then we’ll be really hooped!

Types of terrain?
We’ll be traveling through river valleys that pass beneath low mountain ranges. A lot of open tundra and one major pass to cross.

Languages?
Russian, Koryak, and Chukchi.

Cultures?
Russian, Koryak, and Chukchi. These are some of the toughest people on the planet. They teach me about kindness, generosity, and the resiliency of the human spirit. That’s why I love these landscapes.

How Long is it?
If we go in a straight line, the passage is 1250 km. But I doubt that we’ll do that. We’ll have to wander around to find food, safe passage, and favourable winds.

Where to Where?
We’re leaving from Korpf on the Kamchatka coast and skiing to Pevek on the Arctic Sea. Our starting point is Korpf because that’s where Moolynaut lives and she’ll give us a spiritual send-off. Korpf is on the northeast coast of Kamchatka, the long peninsula that sticks out of the east coast of Siberia. Then we ski due north to Pevek which is a Russian military base on the Arctic coast. You know, in case those pesky Americans decide to attack the soft underbelly of Russia. There’s an airport there so we can get home and don’t end up marrying local women and moving into reindeer tents. I don’t know very much about reindeer herding.

Can you elaborate on Moolynaut?
When Misha and I were paddling across the North Pacific Rim to Alaska, Moolynaut conjured up a three-day storm to bring us to the small village of Vvenka, where she lives. Don’t ask me why, how, or if – I’ve stopped asking or answering questions like that. She asked us to return, which we did a year later.
I had an old avalanche injury which was acting up fairly seriously and some days I couldn’t walk very well. I’d been to a few orthopaedic surgeons and there was much scratching of heads and talk of exploratory operations and long rehab times. Well, when I got to Vvenka for the second visit, Moolynaut had me strip naked and stand on one foot while she went to the other world to ask Kutcha, the raven god, to heal me. I guess that there was some confusion in the other world because I have a steel plate in my pelvis and Kutcha wasn’t sure that he knew how to handle healings with steel plates. So he went a level deeper into the world below his and the powers down there decided that they would heal me, plate or no plate.
Call me a crackpot if you will, but I got better. The real test was this spring when a group of us went south to ski in the Andes. We were carrying heavy packs on rough uneven terrain and then skiing steep icy runs – real chatterry conditions – and I have no pain anymore.
So go figure!

What was the other world like?
Well I don’t know. After the healing, I went back a third time to thank Moolynaut for healing me. She gave me a special mushroom to eat and we started off to the other world. I could see a dot of light at the end of a long tunnel-like passage, but I got scared and returned back to this world.
The elders had a big conversation about my fear and retreat. The next day, Moolynaut’s stepson took Misha and me out hunting. On the way home, Oleg explained that the Gods give each person a certain amount of power. They gave me strong powers to travel in this world but limited powers to travel in the other world.
The current expedition to ski across northeast Siberia is my way of tapping into my power and learning from it.

Have you ever experienced anything like it?
No, of course not. I think that you only get one chance in your life to travel to the other world with a 98 year old Koryak shaman. Now I have to play out the whole scenario.

Do you plan on going back there?
Yes, as I explained above, the current expedition is a continuation of my long journey with Moolynaut. Sometimes I ask myself why she called me in from the sea to embark on this adventure. But no one will tell me the answer. I have to find out for myself. And probably I never will find out. You reach a point where questions and answers become insignificant in the face of magic and spirituality.

What motivates/inspires you?
I think I explained that above: You reach a point where questions and answers become insignificant in the face of magic and spirituality. I just happen to find my spirituality in remote windswept places. But it’s different for everyone.

What other wild adventures have you been on?
I’ve made first ascents of big walls on Baffin Island, paddled a kayak around Cape Horn, skied steep faces in the Pamir Alai, the Andes, and the Kamchatka volcanoes, and mountain biked, unsupported, across the western Gobi of Mongolia.

What are you looking forward to the most on this one?
I’m really lucky to be sharing this adventure with my partner, Misha. We’ve become blood brothers and we’ve taken each other to places that we couldn’t have reached alone. We’re on a dangerous physical journey and a mysterious spiritual one, and I’m anxious to share all of this with Misha.

Do you have any advice for young adventurers?
One of my close friends was Mugs Stump, who eventually developed into a legendary climber, and then died tragically on Denali. In 1978, Mugs and I attempted a winter ascent of the Diamond, the east face of Longs Peak, in Colorado. We were young and inexperienced, we did everything wrong, and we only got up a few pitches before we realized that we were in over our heads.
As we were setting the rap anchors, Mugs stared at me with that intense gaze of his and said, “We’re better than this, Jon. We’re not going to go through life fucking up and bailing. The only important thing is getting good at what you love to do.”
I still want to cry when I think about that icy wall and that moment when we resolved to grow into ourselves.

Thank Anybody:
Yes. I have four sponsors who are making this journey possible. Ozone kites are supplying power kites that we’ll use to harness the wind and carry us across the tundra. We explored a lot of different methods of travel: dogsled, reindeer sled, snow machine, and even bicycles across frozen snow. But skis and kites are the way to go. Also snow-kiting will definitely add a yahoo element to a long otherwise trudge-like traverse. (www.windzup.com and www.flyozone.com )
One of the key pieces of equipment that we will use is the sleds to pull our gear. I did a lot of research and ended up choosing Wilderness Engineering sleds out of Utah. And then when I called the owner, Mark, and spoke to him about our expedition, he offered to supply our sleds. (www.wildernessengineering.com )
Dakine has helped us with kite harnesses. (www.dakine.com )
And the most touching sponsorship of all is that the women on Vvenka are sewing us reindeer skin anoraks. (Sorry, no website!)