We’ve finished our 2nd Expedition of the Last Ice Project, this time crossing Lake Onega, Europe’s largest frozen lake and second largest overall in Europe, located in Russia’s great north.

It took us a total of 6 long (and wet) days to complete a distance of 150Km from the north to the west side of the lake, progressing in total autonomy. After a 10 hour train journey from St Petersburg, we arrived to the town of Medvezhyegorsk from where we started our adventure, to finish in the Kizhi peninsula, a small group of islands opposite Petrozavodsk, and declared a World Heritage Site because their monumental Orthodox wooden churches dated from the XV century.

We were moving at an average of 30 kilometers a day or something like 3 km/h because of the wet snow conditions due to a constant rain and snowfall. Overall temperatures were mild with averages of -2C midday and the real worry was ice thickness. By far the hardest part of this expedition was the weather conditions, which contrary to what one might expect for the region in (still) winter, temperatures were close to 6 degrees warmer than previous years! Showers during this time of year in this high latitude where the Lake Onega is located, is something far from normal and most worrying when this trend has become a norm for recent years.

Constant rain and the humidity kept us wet all the time and all the equipment ended up soaked after few hours on day one! Then the conditions of the ice, with fresh snow and melting patches of the lake, force us to make camp at night on shore of small islands along the way.

By one hand is really exciting to explore this remote and isolated parts of the country, but by other hand you realize how serious are the consequences of the impact of global warming in these fragile environments. Just 50 years ago, the largest frozen lake in Europe was the neighbor lake Ladoga – famous for the “road of life” during Leningrad’s siege during second WW. Nowadays Ladoga does not freeze anymore.

With these expeditions we want to leave you testimony of our passion for nature and for this type of adventures, while also leaving first hand testimony of the “in situ” effects of Climate Change and the need to commit ourselves much more to fight it, if we want to preserve the future of our planet.

Now we are starting to work on the next project expedition, to cross the BAIKAL lake, the largest in Asia; at the same time that we are also projecting the North Pole project for 2020 or 2021.

From the THE LAST ICE project, we continue exploring for a sustainable future.