10 Aug 2017

SHO: Medvezhy Islands Exploration

After departing Wrangel Island we travelled due west. Our destination was the little known Medvezhy Islands. There are 6 islands in the group which lie to the North of the Kolyma River Delta. They were discovered in the mid 17th Century by Cossack Hunters. They were later visited by a number of important scientific expeditions including Ferdinand Von Wrangells 1821 Expedition, Nordenskiold landed on the Islands briefly in 1878 on his first ever transect of the NE Passage and in 1924/25 Roald Amundsen’s ship “Maud” wintered close to the Islands. In 1935 the Soviet Government established both a meterological station and a navigational station here as part of its development of the Northern Sea Route. Both Stations are abandoned today. We visited the Stations and the Rock Pillars from which one of the Islands, Chetyrekhstol’bovoy, takes its name.