UIUU, Russia

World Heritage Sites Air Adventures – Hammer, Sickle, and Yoke
November 30th, 2025
Flight Log #06 – Altai Icing & Baikal Soup
Guest Co Pilot: Mikhail Zoshchenko

At Astana, UACC, situation developed in strictly normal tragic order. Weather was bad, visibility philosophical, ceiling undecided. Immediately our more intelligent comrades—Marisa and Olga—announced important cultural mission: emergency shopping. For this, of course, they required Spartan C‑37 with full crew. For simple flight in snow and crosswind, we required only small PC‑12, one overworked captain, three optimistic dogs, and myself. From UACC to UASS in Semey we flew mostly inside cloud, seeing nothing except occasional instruments and our own poor life choices. At Semey we refueled among concrete, wind, and people who clearly had better things to do than admire our heroism. Then we proceeded toward Golden Mountains of Altai, a great UNESCO wonder which, according to brochures, contains magnificent high‑altitude landscapes and rare ecosystems; according to today’s windshield, it contains mainly cloud, snow, and brief suspicious shadows of mountains when turbulence shakes truth out of them.

In Gorno‑Altaysk, UNBG, civilization expressed itself as hot soup. Some culinary theorist invented “Altai ramen”: strong beef broth, noodles with clear work ethic, dill, garlic, and steam so thick even class struggle would defrost. After this, it seemed almost impolite not to continue. We climbed again, this time toward Lake Baikal, which is oldest and deepest lake in world and, on days like this, also most invisible. Occasionally clouds parted, and we saw enormous dark surface, ice along the shores, and felt very small—like minor footnote in hydrological textbook. Approach into UIUU, Ulan‑Ude, was officially “marginal VFR,” which in plain language means: you see runway about same time runway sees you. Cropduster guided us between layers with calm expression of man who has already filled out all insurance forms in his head. We landed, rolled out on wet concrete, and shut down. Dogs stretched, shook off the flight as if it were small nap; I considered that comrades in Spartan C‑37 were probably buried under shopping bags somewhere sunny. Still, from standpoint of dialectical materialism, our leg was also successful: aircraft intact, crew present, soup consumed, two World Heritage sites overflown, and one more modest contribution made to great history of people trying to get somewhere in bad weather.Read more