Life at –69°C | We Built Our Winter Camp on the Route of a Giant Icebreaker

On the frozen sea at –69°C, thick landfast ice looks safe. Flat, white, solid – the perfect place for a winter nomad camp. Our family sets up traditional tents, sleds and a reindeer herd on what seems like unbreakable ice. For one night everything is calm.

Then, in the darkness, a distant red glow appears on the horizon. A low metallic rumble crawls through the ice.

At dawn the truth rises out of the gray light: a massive Soviet icebreaker is coming straight toward us. The old people suddenly remember that decades ago a shipping lane cut through this exact place. Our camp – our homes, children and animals – stands right on the forgotten route of the ice giant.

There is no radio contact. The ship does not slow down. Under its bow the ice explodes and folds, sending shock waves toward our tents. Cracks run like lightning across the white desert, fanning out under the reindeer, under the sleds, under the sleeping places.

Panic turns into a brutal, silent evacuation. Tents are ripped down in seconds, canvas and poles thrown onto sleds. Reindeer are harnessed on shaking ice. Children are grabbed from warm beds and wrapped in whatever furs are closest. People try to push the herd toward the distant shore while the entire ice field begins to “breathe” and rise under their feet.

The advancing bow of the icebreaker lifts slabs of ice the size of houses. Our camp breaks apart into separate floating islands. Some sleds hang half over black water. An old man and several bags of winter supplies drift away on a small floe. One last tent with a child inside still stands directly in the path of the ship.

In the final minutes, the hero tears the child out of the last tent and runs for the shore, jumping over widening cracks as the shadow of the icebreaker covers the sky. A new, wide fracture opens in front of him. He has one chance to jump over the black water with the child in his arms.

The episode cuts at the exact moment of the jump, when the bow of the icebreaker is already above them – and we don’t know if they make it off the ice in time, or if the ship will cut through their world and take everything into the dark sea below.

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