In the Land of White Death: An Epic Story of Survival in the Siberian Arctic
In 1912, six months after Robert Falcon Scott and four of his men came to grief in Antarctica, a thirty-two-year-old Russian navigator named Valerian Albanov embarked on an expedition that would prove even more disastrous. In search of new Arctic hunting grounds, Albanov’s ship, the Saint Anna, was frozen fast in the pack ice of the treacherous Kara Sea-a misfortune grievously compounded by an incompetent commander, the absence of crucial nautical charts, insufficient fuel, and inadequate provis
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The Final Frontiersman: Heimo Korth and His Family, Alone in Alaska’s Arctic Wilderness
- ISBN13: 9780743453141
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Hundreds of hardy people have tried to carve a living in the Alaskan bush, but few have succeeded as consistently as Heimo Korth. Originally from Wisconsin, Heimo traveled to the Arctic wilderness in his feverous twenties. Now, more than three decades later, Heimo lives with his wife and two daughters approximately 200 miles from civilization — a sustainable, nomadic life bounded by the migrating caribou, the dangers of swollen rivers, and by the very exigencies of daily existence. In The Final
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Review by Z for In the Land of White Death: An Epic Story of Survival in the Siberian Arctic
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This is a worthwhile read if you enjoy harrowing stories of near-death polar adventures. It’s amazing that Albanov survived. His book is a combination of excerpts from his detailed diary and elaborations he added after the fact, supplemented by an informational preface from the publisher who recently discovered his almost-forgotten manuscript.If you have already read “Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage” by Alfred Lansing, this book isn’t quite as good, but it is an interesting contrast. (If you haven’t, put Endurance on your must-read list!) The challenges faced were similar, though not quite as extended in Albanov’s case. This story starts in much the same way as the Endurance – a ship trapped in pack ice (though in this case in the Arctic). But this is where the story diverges. The biggest difference that you learn up-front is that only two people survived (compared to the whole crew on the Endurance!)Albanov is the navigator but does not get along with the captain. As a result, after two winters (!) enduring their relationship and the worsening conditions, he asks for permission to build a kayak and sledge from scrap and set out on his own in search of land. Much to his disappointment, however, half the crew (even many of the weaker ones) ask to accompany him.Their destination is “Cape Flora” about 120 miles away across pack ice. According to a polar explorer’s diary from decades ago, Cape Flora once had a shelter and supplies. But they really don’t even know if it still exists and exactly how to get there. And if it is still there – what then? But Albanov is able to focus on the immediate goal and not worry about the what if’s.Interestingly, the crew was not a group of explorers anticipating adventure, but opportunists looking to make money in the walrus-hunting trade. This could have contributed to their low survival rate. Albanov complains about his companions a lot – their laziness, stupidity. But from Albanov’s first hand account, the reader can infer that he was a loner. I couldn’t help but wonder whether a leader like Shackleton could have brought out the best in the group and had a higher chance of surviving.Anyway, it is truly amazing that Albanov and one of his companions survive all the crazy challenges they are delt – snowblidness, hunger, cold, scurvy, lack of maps, drifting pack ice, angry walruses, almost drowning, and so on. This is a short book, and a good page-turner. Although it’s not as good as Endurance, it’s still a good read.
Review by Adrian M. Wood for In the Land of White Death: An Epic Story of Survival in the Siberian Arctic
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Perfect for fans of INTO THIN AIR, KNOCKDOWN, or similar titles that set humans against pitiless nature–and here nature does some serious damage against the humans. Albanov clearly conveys the confusion and bouts of hopelessness that made his life-or-death trip across uncharted ice such a challenge. Albanov’s details about using home-made sledges and kayaks to travel over the cracked ice, his small group’s constant search for food, and the difficulties in keeping a group constantly moving toward an unseen goal make this a mesmerizing tale. Readers of Jack London will find this adventure a treat, too.
Review by Wildness for In the Land of White Death: An Epic Story of Survival in the Siberian Arctic
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First, I would like to thank Jon Krakauer and David Roberts for their efforts in bringing this lost treasure to English-speaking readers.
Much of what is read about polar exploration is about American, or English, or Scandinavian exploits. The Russian Classic, In the Land of White Death (the title is the English translation of the title of the French version published in 1928), will make a great addition to any library on Arctic and Antarctic exploration.
Valerian Albanov is the Navigator on the Saint Anna which leaves Alexandrivsk (now Murmansk) in 1912 to traverse the Northeast Passage (something only accomplished once before at the time) on a hunting trip that was supposed to end in Valdivostok. But, a late start finds the Saint Anna frozen in the ice pack early that winter in the Kara Sea. After wintering 1913 stuck in the ice that is dragging them every northward, Albanov believes that the best chance of survival is for the crew to split in two – half to remain on the Saint Anna with her captain Greogiy Brusilov and wait the eventual (hopeful) passage of the ship into the Western Hemisphere to be freed near Greenland, while the other half – thirteen – follows Albanov on a trek across the ice pack southward towards Franz Josef Land, the archiplelago that was Fridtjof Nansen’s Farthest North.
Albanov’s account begins with his team’s departure from the Saint Anna. The early part of the book is told in a narrative that Albanov wrote after the trek then quickly switches to his journal entries which are written with great clarity. Albanov’s adventure brings them face-to-face with the harshest of dangers including being separated from the rest of his team on ice flows, constant attacks by Walruses (not always unprovoked), and treking with poorly made sledges that were built from scrap materials removed from the Saint Anna.
Albanov’s writing style brings the reader into the adventure and when they trek for 15 hours southward some days only to find that the ice flow has taken them farther north than when they started, you feel their anguish.
>>>>>>>
Review by Joseph Haschka for In the Land of White Death: An Epic Story of Survival in the Siberian Arctic
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Navigating the Barents Sea north of Russia and Siberia can be a dodgy proposition. Nevertheless, in August 1912 the Russian ship “Saint Anna”, with 25 men and one female nurse aboard, set sail from Murmansk for Vladivostok (7,000 miles distant via the Northeast Passage), with the expressed purpose of discovering new Arctic hunting grounds. By mid-October, the vessel was trapped in the ice, and, for the next 18 months, drifted helplessly northwards. In April of 1914, ten of the crew and the ship’s navigator, Valerian Albanov, despairing of the vessel’s eventual release, voluntarily left their shipmates in an attempt, with kayaks and sledges, to reach the Franz Josef island group somewhere to their south. IN THE LAND OF WHITE DEATH, subsequently written by Albanov, is based on his diary of the 3-month, 235-mile odyssey over the ice pack, frigid water and deserted island shores to reach Cape Flora on Northbrook Island, from which point he anticipated rescue.There are many points of similarity between this book and ENDURANCE: SHACKLETON’S INCREDIBLE VOYAGE, by Alfred Lansing, which describes the same sort of gritty survival journey achieved by Sir Ernest Shackleton and his 27 men after their ship, “Endurance” was trapped and crushed by Antarctic ice in 1915 during an abortive attempt to reach the South Pole. Notwithstanding the facts that Shackleton was a more charismatic leader, that Shackleton’s men were of better mettle, and that their journey to safety was over a longer distance, the Albanov narrative remains a gripping, tautly told account of men against the elements. One of its chief attractions, for those with short attention spans or too many books to read, is its brevity –190 pages in small-format hardcover. Sadly, there is no photo section (as is included in ENDURANCE).One might wonder why this tale took so long to be noticed by the reading public as opposed to various accounts of the Shackleton ordeal. Perhaps it’s because it first had to be translated from Russian, or because Albanov, unlike Shackleton, died in obscurity, or because Shackleton was already a figure of some fame by 1915. Or because all of the Endurance’s crew came back alive, while the Saint Anna’s crew, well … In any case, WHITE DEATH is a little gem of a book, and I unreservedly recommend it.
Review by sgardner for In the Land of White Death: An Epic Story of Survival in the Siberian Arctic
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Of the dozen or so books I have read regarding true artic/sea adventures and of all books I have ever read, this one will always rate at the top!! Albanov, though on the bias side due to his own telling (but understandable and agreeable due to the situation) gives a very detailed account of his travels with an indepth detail of how his mind worked and why various events took place. This is a true roller-coaster, fast pace of a read (and very enjoyable and easy to read)that just when you think events/situations are at a stand still, the ride starts all over again at an unbeleivable pace. I was most impressed with Albanovs writing/telling of the story style in which it appears he took great pains to express his mind and provide details that seem impossible to even think of considering the circumstances. A must for the true adventure reader.
Review by bensmomma for The Final Frontiersman: Heimo Korth and His Family, Alone in Alaska’s Arctic Wilderness
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James Campbell reports the life of Heimo Korth and the family he has raised, the last family of trappers to remain in the National Arctic Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. Although this book has one foot in the “wilderness adventure can you believe anyone can survive this” genre (Heimo regularly traps in -50 weather and even jogs in -20 weather), it is also a kind of domestic family saga, almost a “Little House on the Prairie” but the prairie is the Arctic. Heimo, his wife Edna, and daughters Rhonda and Krin, face near tragedies and real tragedies lost in blizzards, or facing a broken-down snow machine miles from home, or jumping from ice flow to ice flow in desparate hope of making it back to shore, or falling through overflow ice on the river. Remarkably though, the main thing I’ll remember about this book is the sense it conveys of Heimo’s redemption (lost and alcoholic, he came to Alaska to trap in the 70s, but dried up and built a family there), and of the love and affection of a family who have no one but each other for months on end. This is a real testament to Campbell’s skill as a journalist and author.The adventure and drama of the Arctic keep the reader turning pages like a good mystery but the after-effect is one of love and integrity.
Review by Debra Hamel for The Final Frontiersman: Heimo Korth and His Family, Alone in Alaska’s Arctic Wilderness
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Heimo Korth has lived in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for nearly thirty years, eking out a subsistence living some 250 miles from the nearest road. He moved to Alaska at twenty, eager to escape an abusive father and unwilling to submit to the yoke of a nine-to-five job. For six years Heimo (“HI-mow”) lived alone, trapping and hunting and flying out occasionally with bush pilots to sell his furs. But in 1982 Heimo married Edna, whom he met while walrus hunting on St. Lawrence Island, and she followed her husband to the wilderness. They have lived together since in this desolate place where the sun dips below the horizon in November and isn’t seen again until January, where temperatures range from a balmy 80 degrees to 50 below. They and their daughters live a semi-nomadic life, moving each spring from one of their three cabins to another so as not to deplete the animal populations in any one area. Every summer they spend six weeks in Fort Yukon, population 750, stocking up on supplies and getting a small taste of civilization.
James Campbell, who happens to be Heimo’s cousin, visited the Korths several times beginning in 2002. In telling Heimo’s story Campbell juxtaposes descriptions of life in the Arctic–the logistics of carving up a dead moose, the efficient reuse of toilet paper as a firestarter–with stories of Heimo’s boyhood in Wisconsin and discussion of the politics of land apportionment in Alaska. The result is a fascinating look at a lifestyle that is impossibly alien yet unexpectedly familiar: Heimo’s teenagers tack Britney Spears posters to the walls of their cabin.
One begins reading Campbell’s account with incredulity, wondering why anyone would choose to live in such an extreme environment and whether the Korths were wise to raise their children there. But reading the fascinating, sometimes heartrending story of Heimo and Edna’s life one comes to respect them and their decisions. We are left hoping that Heimo manages to live out his days as he wishes, growing old in a wilderness few men before him have experienced.
Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan’s Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece
Review by Lisa87 for The Final Frontiersman: Heimo Korth and His Family, Alone in Alaska’s Arctic Wilderness
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This book is so wonderfully written. James Campbell breathes so much life in every word and every paragraph, that it is one of those rare books that is hard to put down. My husband couldn’t believe that I would be so taken in by a story about the wilderness.
Yet, the character development; the smooth writing style that describes the trials and hardships; all of the history that I learned made this such a three dimensional and rare treat. If only James Campbell had other books that I could purchase!
I read a ton of books and this is one of the few that I will definitely recommend to everyone that I know.
Review by Robert Daniels for The Final Frontiersman: Heimo Korth and His Family, Alone in Alaska’s Arctic Wilderness
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What would you do if it were 40 below and your snowmobile conked out 15 miles from your cabin?After reading this book you will understand that the answer is simple. You’d die. End of story.This is the tale of a real world tough guy who at a young age gave himself over to the pursuit of wilderness survival and is about the only one left out there with survival skills of this level.The author is no wimp either, spending considerable time with Mr. Korth plus doing mega-research on the history of the Alaskan wilderness, which he weaves into the story in an informing, non-boring way.When I read Into The Wild I somehow thought that the fellow that died just had a few unlucky breaks-like the river rising which trapped him out in that old bus. Wrong. That guy never stood a chance from day one, and this book shows you why.Like a lot of guys I have always had two fantasies – living in the backwoods of Alaska or living on a remote tropical island. I heartily thank the author for paring my fantasy list down to one – the island.
Review by for The Final Frontiersman: Heimo Korth and His Family, Alone in Alaska’s Arctic Wilderness
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This isn’t really my genre but when i started reading this story I couldn’t put it down. It is incredibly inspiring and touching. It will touch your life and influence you in a positive way: a little like the book, Seabiscuit. It was educational too. It would be wonderful for children in difficult financial or familial situations to read. I can’t stop talking about it and I can’t put it down.