Australian Geographic Kamchatka Ski-Mountaineering Expedition

News Flash
M7 Action Sports Utility Bag gets frisked by Russian military.

When film-maker Stephen Curtain, together with his four fellow Australians on the 'Australian Geographic Kamchatka Ski-Mountaineering Expedition' stumbled across a secret Russian military air base in their travels across Siberian Kamchtaka, land of many active volcanoes, they were more than a little curious. So too their paranoid and security-conscious hosts, Russian army officials, who led them into a concrete cube building for a three-hour interrogation.

Earlier, the Australian team had successfully summited Klyuchevsky (4750m), highest active volcano in Eurasia, despite being buried in basecamp by a six-day, 40ºC snowstorm. From 2700 metres they skied out of the mountains. The team was close to celebrating an incident-free exit before literally stumbling on to the end of an army airbase runway at lower altitude. There, Russian officials, clad in army fatigues and exchanging suspect glances, interrogated one member at a time in a small, sterile room. Outside, barbed wire encircled the top of a fence-line that was in turn guarded by men with weapons.

Stephen quips: “The officials completely unpacked each of our rucksacks to find any evidence that may have compromised their military security. That is, they were on the lookout for any photos or video footage of their base. Thank God we had all agreed not to shoot even one frame at the instant we had stumbled on to the runway. In my haste to try and hide my video camera in the M7 Sports Utility Bag, for fear of it being confiscated, I completely wrenched the zip piece from its teeth”  I freaked! I later had it replaced with a waterproof zip in Australia?.

All told, the Russian army officials lightened their mood once their search was completed and they were satisfied. We produced a small Australian flag and some native animal playing cards as a token and their straight-laced faces suddenly broke into small smiles and even a chuckle. Then, one officer trailed his finger through the back of my 'Lonely Planet Russian phrasebook', searching for a translation for the word “Vodka”. I smiled. These men, stationed at an outpost on the remote Kamchatka Peninsula, were not so scary after all. We all exchanged handshakes in friendship and were shortly escorted off the militarized zone and into the civilian part of of a nearby Russian village.

To this day, they are still probably there in their cold little building without a computer, email, modern materials such as fleece and other western luxuries. Maybe thats a good thing.

For more tales see www.geocities.com/kamchatkaexpedition and for a documentary trailer see www.eucalyptproductions.com/dvd-gallery/kamchatkaexpedition from 15 November 2007.