Section 7. Stolbi State Nature Reserve – Mountain taiga.

Days 15, 16 and 17: (August 26,27 and 28) Stay in Ski lodge in Kaltat. Make bus excursions to Stolbi reserve. Study the comlex ecology of the mountain taiga and the taiga/steppe ecotone. Meet the scientific staff of the reserve. Lectures by scientists from the reserve and the local university. Skilift excursion to high altitude ecosystems. Departure by bus for Krasnoyarsk, visit to hydro-electric dam. Overnight train to Shira.

Kaltat ski lodge near Stolbi Reserve, Monday 26 August 7 p.m.

Today was another typical Siberia day of surprises, disappointments and opportunities; planning here tends to be a never-ending pastime. But this time things were especially confusing, because Tonya, our only adequate English speaking Russian had gone back to Moscow, and her replacement won’t arrive till tomorrow. The only translators we had today were two charming teenagers, who rarely agreed on one another’s English version of what we were being told. Our original plan was to take a ski lift to the top of a mountain, and then take the rest of the day to walk back to some road where we would be picked up. We would see both wet and dry slopes, and be introduced to the unique ecology of the region. Well, we made it to our mini-busses, and roared off along a web of roads and highways, with some great views of the northern extensions of the Sayan Mountains, their tops mostly hidden in cloud. When we stopped and got out, we saw no ski lift, only the headquarters of the Stolby Reserve. We cooled out heels for some 20 minutes, while Boris and his entourage were inside. Then we were told that the fog and cloud were too thick to go up to the top; we were going to ‘The Rocks’ instead. Another mini-bus ride: the head of a trail. There we were introduced to our guides for the day, a forest ecologist, a soil scientist and a woman, whose role remained a mystery, since she spent most of the day some steps behind, smoking cigarettes. She said very little, but was occasionally called upon by the others to comment on the history and administration of the reserve.

I was glad when we finally started up the trail, and it did not take long for us to get involved in discussions about soils and local climatic heterogeneity, and the response of the vegetation to these influences. We even got into a discussion about the complex interactions of the vegetation and the fauna, resulting in an elevated bio-diversity. However, it was difficult for the students, because the guides spoke in Russian, which was badly translated; I had to try to first make sense of it, and then explain it to the students, while the Russians blithely barged ahead with a new topic. You see, on slopes facing different directions, rainfall and solar radiation are quite different, resulting in different soil formation, then drainage affects the soils, and as a result one gets a very patchy forest. Add to this fire and human interference, and various successional stages, plus grazing effects, not to mention the underlying geomorphology and geology, and to the uninitiated, it quickly becomes chaos.

Our visit to ‘The Rocks’ was a pleasant surprise. About half an hour up the trail, we came upon a number a gigantic rock outcrops, which are very steep, and up to 200 m high. They stick upwards out of the otherwise gently rolling forested foothills of the Sayan Mountains. We were told that they are Ordovician magma bubbles that rose upwards from the mantle to somewhere in the upper crust, which consisted of Cambrian sedimentary rocks, where they cooled very slowly, forming a course, crystalline granite. Much later, the Cambrian layers were mostly eroded away, exposing the rocks we admired today. I think these rocks are awesomely beautiful. No wonder that they are very popular with the general public as well as with rock climbers. Oddly, this reserve is the center for all of Russia for ‘free’ climbing, which results in the shockingly high average mortality rate of fourteen deaths per year. Yet, they keep coming, young daredevil men, trying to break records; only too often they end up breaking necks and backs instead.

Unfortunately for us, the weather deteriorated, and we came home to our lodge in the rain. From then on, the day became even more confused. First we were offered a video on the reserve, which we were told was ‘self explanatory’, but it turned out to be 90% close ups of people talking (in Russian of course) and 10% people climbing up the rocks, or sliding down snowy slopes. Then, out of nowhere arrived a mycology professor from Krasnoyarsk University to give a talk on mushrooms. Unfortunately, she spoke only Russian, her slides were poor, and the translators could not agree on the content of their English versions. So ended this day. We did, however, resolve one worrying situation; Willem was driven to Krasnoyarsk, and was examined by a medical person. He has two cracked ribs, nothing more serious. He was given a large bandage, which he has to keep tightly wrapped around his chest during the day. He came back much relieved and smiling, and has decided to complete the whole trip. We all cheered, and drank a good toast to his full and speedy recovery. I must admit that I am also much relieved, because in Mirnoye I decided not to evacuate him right away, or skip Kolmogorovo and head straight for Krasnoyarsk, but all the same, ever since his tumble, I fretted over the possibility that his injury was more serious than it appeared.

Tuesday, 27 August, 7 p.m.

This turned out to be a particularly fine day, despite a pretty miserable beginning. At breakfast time, we could barely see the end of the garden, because of fog and drizzle. So, once again the trip to the higher, dryer part of the Sayan within the reserve was postponed. We decided to spend the morning at the lodge, and have three lectures for the students. This worked quite well, partly because the lecturers were good, and partly because we now have two new reasonably competent translators. The first lecture was by Radii Alexandrovitch Kolovski, who gave an overview of the effects of air pollution in the reserve. I was surprised to learn that the top portions of the mountains, i.e. the areas above 500 m are the most severely affected. The reason for this is that despite Krasnoyarsk being a major source of pollution, it is not the main source of pollutants in the reserve. The prevailing wind carries most of Krasnoyarsk’s exhaust north and north-eastwards. Most of the pollutants affecting Stolby come from further, or even much further away. Some ‘fingerprint’ heavy metals that affect the vegetation in the reserve have been identified as coming from an industry in Balkhash, in Kazakhstan. The situation in the reserve is not considered serious as yet, but soils are acidifying, and some conifers are showing needle damage. It is a great fortune for the reserve that the pollution plume from Krasnoyarsk is narrow, and goes mostly northeastwards. The city releases 200,000 metric tons of air pollutants annually, mostly heavy metals, nitric oxide and sulfur oxides. According to Dr. Kolovski, nobody has studied the condition of the forests to the northeast of the city. The second lecture was on the biology of the wolverine, by Vladimir Kozhechkin, which was a fun bit of natural history, but with only five to ten wolverines in the entire park, and a very small budget, there was no chance to do real science. The third lecture was by me, trying to summarize for the students the essence of what we had seen so far in the montane forest.

By this afternoon, we could no longer postpone our visit to the dryer, northeast facing slopes. Donning our raingear, we gathered on the covered porch, as the rain poured out of heavy cloud. But minutes after we packed ourselves into our mini busses, the rain stopped, and when we arrived at the foot of the ski lift, the sun came out. It takes the ski lift nearly 20 minutes to get to the top, so that we had a good chance to view the forest on both sides of the cleared strip through which we ascended the mountain. Also, from the higher elevations, looking back, we had a great view of Krasnoyarsk and surroundings. But the best part was getting to the top, and walking across to a viewing platform overlooking undisturbed valleys to the northeast. It was a serene and gorgeous view of forested slopes facing the prevailing winds, while the slopes in the wind shadow were covered in grass. We were observing the first evidence of getting close to the steppes of central Asia. We descended a fair bit onto one of the steppe-covered slopes, and studied the vegetation. There was plenty evidence of recent fires, which had burned some way into the forest edge, killing some of the trees. For me, however, the big thrill was finding real steppe plants, such as a couple of species of Galatella, which are beautiful purple aster-like flowers, Cimicifuga foetida, which has a strong, unpleasant scent, some species of Stipa, which are typical steppe grasses, and several species of Artemisia.

Shira, near Khakassii State Nature Reserve, 29 August 9 a.m.

The train journey from Krasnoyarsk to here was a fine experience. We first headed westwards along the Trans-Siberian railroad, as far as Acinsk. There we turned southwards, and as night fell, we started the ascent onto the 900 m high Solgonskij Krazh range, which forms a natural boundary between Krasnoyarsk Province and the semi-autonomous Republic of Khakassia, both of which are, of course, part of the Russian Federation. We were provided with bedding and surprisingly comfortable drop-down cots, and slept like happy pigs till we approached Shira just before four a.m. Upon arrival at Shira, we faced a challenge for which we had been prepared, but which nearly caused a big problem anyway. We had been told that we had only two minutes at the station to get off the train, and unload all our luggage. Boris had already managed to convince the conductor that we should have longer, but the limit was drawn at four minutes. As soon as the train stopped, we started throwing bags out, but it was a slow process because a bunch of very nervous Russians, who believed they only had one minute, wanted to get onto the train, and would not wait for us to get off. This caused something like a partial gridlock, which meant that when the four minutes were up, there were still a few bags and two or three members of our group (including me) on the train, and a few panicking Russians on the platform. We managed to toss the last bags out, past or over the Russians, and jumped off the moving train; as far as I could make out in the darkness, all the Russians who were running beside the departing train managed to get hold of a door and hoist themselves in. A bus took us to a place where we were dropped off at a cluster of very odd cottages, where we found beds, and without any further ado continued with our night’s sleep. That is, most of us did. I did not, because I had a rapidly growing feeling that my gut was about to explode. Since the cottages did not have any sanitation facilities, I went in search of a latrine, but failed to find one in time, and my explosion took place behind a very small shrub. Feeling rather miserable, dirty, cold and tired, I continued my search and found the showers. After a lengthy ice cold shower in near complete darkness, and a double dose of Imodium, I found my cot, and slept. Fortunately, my gut problems were short-lived, and by morning I enjoyed what will have to pass for good health.