Around Baikal 2003

Days 67-71

Day 67 -- August 6, 2003
In the final few days of racing around Urkuth, before we set out for Baikal, I received a flurry of emails from a writer friend of mine back home. His deadline, it seems was quickly approaching, and he had only to add a final sentence to complete the articles he was writing about our expedition. "I just need a quote," his e-mail begged, "why are you doing this trip?"

In the year and a half of planning and preparing, of gazing endlessly at the maps hanging on our living room wall, and of talking to everyone I could find, who's been here - or even heard of Lake Baikal, I had never been asked, or, asked myself, that simple question. Then, as I stared at the computer screen in Urkuth, re-reading, my friend's third pleading e-mail, I realized I didn't know the answer.

Today, after 67 days of exploring and living with, and coming to love this unique and amazing body of water, I've only, just now, thought again of that most basic and essential question.

The answer comes easy now. Maybe too easy and too much of an answer. But, by God, to find out, to see - to see a lake that has survived 2500 times longer than average, will reveal its strategy! To see if a trench that's deeper than Mt. Everest is tall, will share some wisdom! And, if an inland sea, sucking its life from 300 some rivers and swirling with a hurricane on one shore - while on the other an eagle, big enough to carry off a lamb - carves lazy circles over another shore -- might let a couple of wide eyed paddlers come away with their lives, and a healthy hint of fine, organic, "AWE."

Why? Because where better to have a honeymoon than where a newlywed couple is at its best -- most comfortable, most natural state. Feasting on hot, fresh food, cooked over an open flame, on a different deserted beach lapped by blue/green waves under a fire colored sunset, after another day of muscle powered miles and memories. Where bills, advertisements, alarm clocks and career choices, give way to sunscreen, skinny dips, star gazing and surfing a cultural shockwave.

Why paddle around Baikal?

As we close in on the last couple days of our journey, I'm convinced the answer may have best been put, last spring, by my buddy Crawdad. When I explained that Baikal is slowly spreading along a riff down its center, that it's growing still bigger, and that the belief is that it will one day become an ocean. "Just think," Crawdad said with a smile, "someday you guys will be able to look down and say, 'man, we paddled around that thing, when it was still a lake!"

Location: 40 miles north of Bolshoye Goloufpnoye

Day 69 -- August 8, 2003
Another 40 miles, forty miles, and we would have been tucked away safe and sound in BG, gorging ourselves on piroshki, kartoshki and i-dunno-skis -- while Ruba and her family listened eagerly to our stories, not understanding a word, but grinning and nodding and serving up the grub.

It was that mere 40 miles - topped with the 40 campers who invaded our beach, late the night before last, that made the lake look so calm and inviting&before we took to paddling at 8 am the next morning.

The air was thick with rain and gentle rolling waves passed beneath our boats -- as they so often do on this immense lake. A sign that somewhere on the lake, though surely not here, a blustery storm prevailed.

Brandon and I rolled and bopped along for nearly two hours. Brandon merrily singing a tune, I, immersed in thoughts, when we noticed something strange. Rollers, big enough to swallow Brandon whole, were steadily coming from the north. But now whitecaps were hitting us head-on from the south. To top it off, wind was blasting us from all sides. Suddenly, a wall of white slammed into us at about 35 miles per hour. I laid my belly on my cockpit, gripped my paddle tight, kept the blades low and held on.

As soon as it let up, a stronger blast of white, foaming waves bombarded us. "See that opening in the rocks?" Brandon yelled, "we'll land there!" The landing was about 400 yards down the coast. We paddled and braced while the surf crashed angrily to shore. My muscles ached and my eyes were as big as saucers by the time we arrived in front of our spot.

Brandon landed first -- a wave picked him up and he gracefully rode it to shore - a piece of cake -- my turn! My knees were shaking as I prepared to land. I turned the bow towards shore - SLAM! A furious blast of wind hit me broadside. I reached out my paddle to brace, just as the grand-daddy of all waves, a MONSTER, a boat-eating-beast, picked me up. My last memory before it slammed me face down in the surf was Brandon's voice, from far, far away, yelling, "RIDE IT BABY!"

Thank goodness for dry suits, plastic boats and carabiners. Me and all my gear made it to shore in tact. Darn lucky considering the 63 mph reading we later clocked on our wind gauge. The feast at Ruba's will have to wait, as the storm continues to gain strength, pinning us here, just 35 miles from BG.

Day 70 -- August 9, 2003
Our last 4 days on Baikal crystalized the entire dynamic of the trip. Following our near-miss escape on day 68, we holed up for a day and watched the wind "fireworks" wreak havoc on the water from dawn 'til dark. The next morning we voted to punch out of the bay surrounding us, in hopes that it was a sort of climatic crazy-house, and just outside we'd find boundless calm. We were wrong...

"Steam-rollers" of violent, ripping wind and spray forced us to shore over and over, and gave us plenty of time and reason for some philisophical theorizing. Was Baikal simply presenting a final, intense gateway to test our resolve? Did He realize we'd been getting off too easy, and feel the need to balance the scales a bit? In the end we decided that, like a close friend who isn't quite ready to say goodbye, Baikal was just giving us something extra-special to remember him by. "Before you go," we could imagine him saying, "let me show you a few more things I can do!"

Thoroughly astonished, we woke on day 71 to the improbable calm we'd prayed for, and under a clear sky and with visibility that stretched seemingly forever, we finished the game.

Stashing our boats next to the church south of town, we walked into BG and to Hank's family's place. At once the comfort and kindness gushed forth and, realizing we could at last let our expedition "guard" down, we were both overcome with a ridiculous sleepiness that we obliged for 3 days straight. Before we said our farewells, however, as a gesture of thanks and to help make kayaking a permanent fixture on Baikal, we presented our boats and paddling gear as a gift to BG. May they see many more thousands of miles on the Sacred Sea!

PS... Not quite 24 hours ago, we showed up at Jack's place in Irkutsk, completely un-announced. "We need a place to sleep," we said as we stepped in from the pouring rain and dropped our bags on his downtown apartment floor. "We need food, and we need to be on the next plane to California." A few phone calls later, including one to a mysterious "Uncle Pasha", and the long and short of it is that as we finish writing this final update, we're fed, rested, and on a plane to Moscow, then straight through to San Francisco...

By now, I suppose, nothing should come as a surprise!

Read more about the journey in the introduction.