What does the stone cape refer to? Cape stone

On the geographical map of Russia there are many places with strange names that do not correspond to reality. Most often their origin is due to someone else's mistake. And one of these places is Cape Kamenny on the Yamal Peninsula. After all, when you step onto its territory, you expect to see piles of stones or a mountain range. But there is a complete absence of stones. In winter - snow and ice, in summer - tundra and sand. So where does this strange name come from?

Where is he?

Finding the village will not be difficult if you enter its coordinates into the navigator: N 68°28"19.7724" E 73°35"25.2492". Although it received the status of a rural settlement only in 2004. But if you don’t have the opportunity to use a navigator, then find the capital of the district on the map - Salekhard, and draw a straight line from it to the northeast. After 380 km you will see the settlement.

Endless tundra around a small dot, a mole on the body of the Yamal Peninsula on the left bank of the Ob Bay in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. This is what Cape Kamenny looks like on the map. But the significance of the village for the country is great.

Where does such a strange name come from? The mistake made by navigator I.N. Ivanov back in 1828 became fatal. And all because in the language of the indigenous Nenets population the name of the village sounds “Pey-sala” (means Crooked Cape), similar in sound to “Pe-sala” (translated as Stone Cape). But the Nenets are not offended by the mistake and even built a two-meter mound in honor of Ivanov on the shore of the Malygin Strait. It is called “Thurman-Yumba” - Navigator’s Mound.

A little history

The village is divided into three parts, which clearly reflect the history of the development of the village itself: Airport, Geologists, Polar Geophysical Expedition (ZGE). Moreover, each of the microdistricts stands separately, and the distance between them is from 1 to 5 km. But if you look at a map of the USSR from the 40s to the 60s of the last century, you will not find this village. And all because of secrecy. After all, in 1947 of the 20th century, construction of a secret port of the Northern Navy began here. Later it turned out that the depth of the water area near the Gulf of Ob is too shallow, so it would not be possible to place a port here, but the airport has already been built, and a closed military base is being placed on it to guard the borders of the USSR.

In the 50s, the airport began to accept civilian ships. Active development of the territory of the Yamal Peninsula and its geological research began. Oil and gas fields were discovered, which began to be actively developed in the seventies. Wells were installed, from which the first gas was produced in 1981.

The third part of the village of Cape Kamenny (ZGE) was built in the 80s. In the future, thousands of meters of drilled wells, the construction of hundreds of drilling rigs, and the discovery of new oil and gas fields awaited them.

But 1992 struck. The USSR collapsed, many industries, including oil and gas production, fell into decline. People who worked in Kamenny Mys, from whose photo you can see how inhospitable the peninsula is, were looking for something better. The population falls from 6 thousand to 2.

Pressure oil pipeline

But time passes, a new century begins, and a new round of exploration of the earth’s bowels begins. 2013, February, construction of a pressure oil pipeline began from the Novoportovskoye field to the acceptance and delivery point near the village of Cape Kamenny. The first line was completed by 2014, construction of the second has begun.

The length of the oil pipeline was 102 km, and the pipe diameter was 219 mm. Harsh climatic conditions and difficulties in construction could not stop the desire to get rich at the expense of oil fields.

Today

If in 2014 the population in the village was only 1,635 people, then with the development of oil and gas production, the population began to increase, including due to immigrants from the Donetsk and Lugansk regions of Ukraine. The social sphere here is very developed. It’s hard to believe that you are in the North, everything is so civilized - post office, hospital, clinics.

Simultaneously with the second line of pipelines, in 2014 they began to build a subarctic terminal in the village of Cape Kamenny, which will allow loading liquid fuel into tankers that can sail both by sea and along rivers. The planned volume of loadings is up to 6.5 million tons per year.

In 2017, construction began on a power plant with a gas turbine, which is planned to be put into operation at the end of this year. It will supply electricity to the residential microdistrict "Geologist". At the same time, structures are being built to collect and purify water, which will also be supplied to residential areas.

Social facilities are also being built - kindergartens, schools, residential buildings. Apartments in new buildings are intended both for relocating residents from dilapidated housing and for new arrivals.

I flew here for eight days.
More precisely, I tried to fly away. But every time something happened that stopped me, prevented the plane from leaving the runway, blocked the sky somewhere in the North with clouds, filled the snow with water, and did a lot of other things. As if I had angered the heavenly office.
But we need to do it in order.
“Come to us!” an old friend tapped me on ICQ. “Here is the North, there is space, and the air is completely different. Here you can just take a break from everything. You can even just be silent. Come, I’m waiting!”
Hummocks on the shore of the Ob Bay

“To us” means to Yamal. To the village of Mys-Kamenny. On the map it is just a round dot on the left bank of the Ob Bay. There is an anchor drawn next to the point - that means there is a port there, or so cartographers think, who, as usual, are wrong. Further north, there is almost nothing. Seyakha. Wood-burning. Kharasavey. Bely Island. And everything - the sea, the ocean, the North Pole. Fly there? In the wilderness, in the tundra, in the polar winter?
Of course, I agreed immediately, what did you think? I packed my backpack and went to the Tyumen Roshchino airport.
This is where the fun began.

2. TRACTOR FLIGHT

The ticket was purchased successfully. Tyumen - Berezovo - Cape Kamenny, no problems, they told me, everything is normal, every Tuesday the AN-24 makes this flight.
It turned out that there were problems, and some more. Exactly one day before our departure, an emergency happened on Kamenny. The Gulf of Ob showed its temper, the wind raised a high tide, and the landing strip was flooded with water. Immediately caught tightly in the ice skating rink. The flight was cancelled, no one wanted to have figure skating on the plane.
They canceled it the next day. And every other day. “The band is not ready,” the teletype at the UTair representative office tapped every time. The flight was rescheduled for next Tuesday. I’m already used to arriving at the airport, learning about another cancellation, shaking hands with other passengers, each of whom has become something like a relative over these days, and leaving again for home.
Nobody left on Tuesday either. But on Wednesday - finally! - they gave the go-ahead, and we set off. No landing in Berezovo, which is a pity, they say it’s beautiful there. And I wanted to see the places where His Serene Highness Prince Menshikov was once exiled. It’s scary to think, because Alexander Danilych didn’t even get there by plane, but on horseback.
Now I'll tell you what. Tractors, even with wings, should not fly across the sky. They must ride on the ground and growl loudly. When I sat down in a chair and saw the blades of the right propeller outside the window, in front of my face, I had not yet thought about it. And then the AN-24 began to warm up the engines. He screamed so terribly that there were no thoughts left in his head. Probably the only thing louder than this is the MI-6 helicopter, which also rattles its entire body.
Continuing the unbearable roar of the engines, our flying tractor set off and ran along the runway. And for the next three and a half hours he continued to yell in flight. Feels like your brains are in a mixer.

There was wind and snow in Kamenny. The northern wind and northern snow are not at all what happens in winter somewhere in the south of Siberia, when white flakes slowly swirl and fall... New Year's beauty, in short. Here, as they approached the landing point, the pilots for some reason turned on their headlights, and through the windows it became visible... nothing at all became visible. Just a solid wall of snow flying parallel to the ground. Then it turned out that at that moment the dispatcher was yelling into the microphone: “Turn off the headlights! Turn them off, you’ll go for the second round!”
However, everything worked out fine. Having glided along the polished runway, the plane froze, and immediately border guards appeared out of thin air, carefully checking documents. Mys-Kamenny is a closed village, it is difficult to get here without an invitation. But the senior lieutenant of the OAP (Separate Arctic Border Detachment) glanced at my passport, muttered: “We have been warned,” and stepped aside. The border guards are strong here, they are not accountable to anyone - only to the headquarters in Vorkuta. Once, having learned that smuggling was possible on a flight arriving from Tyumen, the border guards simply surrounded the plane and forced it to fly back - along with all the passengers. But now the border post has almost been disbanded, only a few people remain.
Friend Kirill in all his glory

My friend Kirill Sedov (aka brat_kim) met me right at the ramp, from which I was almost blown away by the wind. It's good to work at the airport and know everyone. Later he told me that our plane landed with a failed radiator of one of the engines. It was covered with snow. The usual thing. Yes, I agreed, of course - a common thing.

3. CAPE-STONE-1. FIRST IMPRESSION

There is not a single stone here.
For those who doubt, I will repeat: exactly. No one. In winter there is snow and ice. In summer there is tundra and sand on the banks of the Guba River. The only stones I saw here were lying on the windowsill of Kirill’s office at the airport, and were sea stones brought from Liberia by a helicopter pilot I knew.
Hummocks again Either sunset or sunrise...

They translated it wrong, they were in a hurry! - Kirill chuckles. - In fact, do you know how the name of this area is translated from Nenets? "Sandy Cape". Like this.
At first, when my friend took me to the bus stop, I didn't understand or see anything. Solid snow, wind in the face and rare lights in the dark. Then the “bus” came and I began to understand a little. The bus is a hefty three-axle Ural with a huge, polar-modified, kung-box. In the booth there is an intercom for communication with the cabin, and a powerful heater. It still doesn’t help in forty-degree frost; thick, but single-layer glass freezes. But now it was warm. These “buses” take children to and from school every morning and evening, and adults to work.
The lights behind the glass gave way to the complete blackness of the night tundra. Then - lights again.
“Geologists,” said my friend, “the central region of the village.” Ours is long and narrow, scattered all along the Guba. And here comes the administration.
Behind the glass, I saw a one-story brick building surrounded by satellite dishes. "Ural" dropped someone off and moved on. Darkness again. And a few minutes later there were lights again.
- We've arrived. ZGE area, I live here.
- ZGE?
- Well, yes. Polar geological expedition. Previously, geologists stood here, their beams and houses. Then the expedition was disbanded, but the residential area remained.
We left and went home.

4. CAPE KAMENNY-2. OUT OF EARTH

All movement on foot here occurs simply - along the lines of the heating main. Between wooden one- and two-story houses there are pipes driven into high wooden boxes. A meter or more above the ground. You can only walk on them; the rest of the space is covered with deep snow. But the art of walking is anything but simple. The boards are icy, and under the gusts of wind you slide and desperately try to maintain your balance, swaying as if on the deck of a ship in a storm. Only dogs that look like little bears run around calmly and lie everywhere, not even getting up when you step over them. By the way, they really are everywhere, something like interior items. When I walked into the waiting room at the local airport, it was full of people, and there was a huge husky lying lazily in the middle. She didn’t move her paw even when Kirill twisted her ears into tubes and carefully examined her mouth. She just opened her eyes and said, “Who’s here?” Ah, yours...
View of Kirill's house. There is nothing further.

Kirill's house is the last one (Akademika Sakharov Street, by the way - that's how whimsically names are sometimes chosen), then there is only a gas pipeline, snow, hummocks and the gray water of the Gulf of Ob several kilometers away. A little distance away a light glows. This is a water intake.
“The water intake will stop, the boiler room will freeze - and that’s all,” Kirill waves his hand, “just evacuation, take everyone out, then replace the pipes that burst in the cold.” No other way.
Fragile balance.
My friend has two children and a wonderful wife, Galya, who is always worried about how to manage everything - feed everyone, help her son do his homework, find time for a friend and a parent-teacher meeting. And he finds it and succeeds.
“They can’t bring new textbooks from Earth,” she tells me, “they’re delaying them.” And how we live here... It’s hard, of course. The utility bills are simply huge, the climate, the polar night. Adults get used to it, but what about children? And the prices, you understand, don’t think that we are all rich northerners here...
Understand. Fruits and vegetables are in great demand at the local store.
- Zinaida Petrovna! - this is the saleswoman calling out to the customer. - You take the onions, and the potatoes only by appointment, we’ve already bought all of them. So sign up in line, there’s a notebook over there. We are waiting from Earth!
"Earth". This is what they call everything south of Salekhard. “Plane from Earth”, “commission from Earth”, “call from Earth”. Probably, in the future, the first colonists on other planets will say the same thing: “A rocket from Earth is expected in a week.” Here, on Kamenny, you feel this especially - many live and work in the village, leaving their wives and children there, “on Earth,” so as not to be brought here, where there is not a single tree. And some, like the chief of police, are not carried out on duty, so as not to give anyone a reason to put pressure on themselves through their wife and children. Such a life.
Well, the children here are very ordinary - they play their games cheerfully, and only from a very young age they got used to the fact that there is tundra around, that the weather can change every ten minutes and that sometimes, in a snowstorm, you have to stay home because You can't go out. And the school on the Cape is quite modern, standard, two-story, with a new extension. They study here in two shifts, and every day you see schoolchildren with backpacks rushing to the bus in the dark at about three in the afternoon, when the sun has already set.
School. Morning.

On a clear day, if you look into the tundra, you can see "Ears". This is a strange structure, a local landmark - and it’s as if the Earthen Cat, a character from one of Bazhov’s fairy tales, had stuck out its ears from behind the hill. Or a hare. At first it seemed to me that they were very close, but they immediately explained to me that you wouldn’t get there. You will have to drive about twelve kilometers to see “Ears” - a military stratospheric communications device, now mothballed - in all its 60-meter glory. A titanic structure, considering that communications here in Kamennoye are, indeed, only available to military signalmen, at the airport and local, inside the village. Those who are supposed to still have radio or satellite phones - as a last resort.
In general, traces of military presence here are often found. Not far from Kamenny there is Lake Jaunto. Almost ideally round in shape, with high sandy shores. They often crumble, now and then exposing fragments of mammoth bones. The lake is very deep. Kirill’s father, Vladimir Sedov, an old geologist and a wonderful person, not at all prone to fantasy, said that at one time they were going to make a submarine base out of Yaun, connecting the lake with Guba with an underground tunnel.
Kirill with his father

I have no doubt that it was so. If only we had our energy, and for peaceful purposes, apple trees would have bloomed on Mars long ago.

5. OUR PEOPLE FROM THE POLICE

The local POM (village police department) looks as usual. Offices, iron bars, a temporary detention cell, 15-20 employees. A weapons room and a guard at the entrance, always reading a book and answering calls. Police chief Zhenya Zgonnikov, quietly swearing, rummages through papers, draws up a report on phone calls for his superiors in Salekhard, and curses his careless subordinates. Everything is as usual. But when I met him and other policemen, I realized that the North had changed everything in its own way.
“You see,” laughs the cheerful guy Igor “Voroba” Voropaev, one of the local police officers, “if you think like that, then we don’t need so much police here.” Three or four would be enough. We know everyone - who can steal, misbehave while drunk, steal a “cat”... But there are no drugs here. There's just a lot of turnover. They sent one district police officer, a second one, they worked for several months, did not yet have time to figure out where and what - look, they are no longer there, they were afraid of the conditions, they left...
Comrade district police officer Voropaev with his favorite toy.

"Cat" is a snowmobile "Lynx". “Burans” are called “mopeds” here - any kid can ride one without any hindrance. Snowmobiles in Kamenny are the main means of winter transportation, and almost every family has one. “Lynx”, “Buran”, “Taiga” - you can see a lot of them. Especially at the savings bank, on paydays. Local fishermen, Nenets and young people all ride snowmobiles, and there are clear tracks of caterpillars in the snow all around. No way without a snowmobile. “The cat is sick,” they throw up their hands sadly if suddenly something happens to the car. By the way, it would be nice to bring snowmobile designers here for at least a week, in deep winter. So that you can see for yourself how the locals are modernizing the fairings by riveting sheets of tin onto them - otherwise it’s impossible, the wind is in your face, and your hands are freezing on the steering wheel.
There are other exotic vehicles here - everything except passenger cars. There is no place for them on Kamenny.
"Niva". More precisely, its modification "Bronto". Runs well in the snow.

And there are no drugs here. Pure truth. Just pour yourself some vodka. Yes, and someone would try to engage in “dealing” in a village of three and a half thousand people. All that would be left to do would be to feel sorry for him - and only if they had sent him to Earth, and not left him somewhere in a large tundra that would not give away its secrets.
“For example,” continues Igor, “they came to us with a statement.” They cleaned out the store. I immediately say: well, this one is sitting, this one went to Yar-Sale, this one is not there either. Only these two remain. That’s right, both were detained later. True, there are still Nenets. Sober people are like people. But when they get the money, it started right away, just don’t worry, mom! They get a little drunk and they cut themselves, shoot, fight among themselves.
Sometimes police officers have to quickly pack up and travel many kilometers into the polar night, on call from some camp. Once they reported: a Nenets got drunk, was running around with a gun, and had already shot someone there.
- And we are just moving to a new building; the weapons room has not yet been equipped there. Well, they took away all the weapons, leaving only armor plates and batons with handcuffs. There is nothing to do, we get into the helicopter. And the pilots ask: “Why bulletproof vests? Will they shoot? No, we won’t fly up, you’ll get there yourself.” They dropped us off a kilometer from the camp; we had to walk. We've arrived. It turned out that someone on the radio had mixed up everything, as if in a “dumb telephone”. It’s a fact that a drunken Nenets was running between the tents. But not with a gun, but with one butt of a gun, he hit someone in the head. They tied him up and put him to bed. That's how they flew off...
On the day I arrived in Kamenny, a Nenets’ snowmobile was stolen. The drunk was sleeping, Zhenya said, so they stole him. I came to complain. The snowmobile was found the same day. They knew approximately who could have done this - and again they were not mistaken. Knowledge is power. But the Nenets took the statement and had already managed to negotiate a settlement with the kidnapper.
- In vain. - Sparrow is laconic. - Next time the same one will be with him again and will steal the moped again. Where will the Nenets go to complain when he sobers up? To us.

6. NATIONALS ALL AROUND

"Nationals". That’s what some here in Kamenny call the Nenets. Everyone is used to seeing how they come here for money, bring fish, and how they move into houses. A government program for relocating indigenous people to supportive housing, that's what it's called.
They don't like the Nenets. None of the Russian-speaking population likes it. Once you start asking why, you’ll hear a bunch of stories about drunkenness, about aborigines who have lost their human appearance, about the big money that the state pays them for everything - because they are Nenets, because they let their children study, because where There’s a drilling rig on someone’s land, for deer, for resettlement... However, not everything is going smoothly with studies. One young Nenets told how he hides in the tundra every time a helicopter flies to the camp to take him to the boarding school. He hides because his father wants him to - he wants him not to go to a Russian school, but to herd reindeer. It is difficult for him to cope with the herd alone. The "spinner" won't wait forever - it will fly away, the son will still lie under the hummock, then he will go to help his father.
The resettlement of nationals is also a problem.
- Why did we interfere in their lives? Well, they graze their reindeer, live in tents, come to trading posts, to the village sometimes - and so be it! No, they got drunk, they spoiled it, now for some reason we force them into comfortable houses, we give them money - just live, settle down, nothing that our own living space lacks! But they are not used to it, they live as best they can, and so soon the apartment, the whole house turns into God knows what. In one room they sleep side by side, like in a plague, in the next room they are butchering a deer, everything is covered in blood, next to it they have set up a toilet. The apartment is missing! But the big bosses don't understand this.
I heard these or similar words from more than one person in Kamenny. It is clear that it is convenient to write off a lot of money in the “national policy” expense column. Where's the money? - Which? These? They gave it to the Nenets! - Ah, okay, okay then.
A drunken Nenets is truly a pitiful and therefore terrible sight. Where are they - those “children of the wild”, about whom they loved to write so much in the literature about the development of the oil North? But they are not there. He received the money - and immediately, not an hour had passed, a scarecrow was hobbling around the village - staggering, hunched over, in a dirty little suit, with difficulty climbing onto a snowmobile, taking with him a box of vodka.
Not all of them are like that, you can’t argue with that. There are many others - those who roam the tundra, fish, herd reindeer, and have retained independence and a clear head. But in the villages this is not the case. “I haven’t seen a single normal Nenets for as long as I’ve been living here,” Voroba told me sadly. And he has lived here for 27 years.

7. NATURE AND ITS SHADOW

It is difficult for anyone who has not been to the North to explain what is beautiful here. And even in winter, when there is only snow, snow and ice around.
And I can't explain, but I'll try. If you haven't, imagine it.
Imagine how this harsh, monotonous beauty stuns and hits your eyes. And the flat, low, almost black sky above the Gulf of Ob reflects the water, like a mirror that itself reflects the sky. And the motionless, cold, swift twilight falling from above on the tundra, when the sky and earth on the horizon begin to merge into one gray wall. And a white haze of snow, through the veil of which nothing is visible. And the fog rolling into the headlights as the car drives along its track in the milky white haze. And the moments when the wind calms down, and there is such a silence that does not happen anywhere else, as if the heart of the Earth stopped for a minute. And the moon, barely visible through the wildly flying clouds in the coal-black sky.
Imagine hummocks, blocks of ice on the shore - dazzling blue if there is sun, and broken gray when daylight comes to an end. And the sun, emerging on the edge at noon, only to set below the horizon three hours later, giving ten minutes of red sunset over the edge of the tundra as a farewell gift.
ZGE area. Four o'clock in the afternoon.

Imagine the wind that blows almost always, under the gusts of which the glass in the windows tinkles. It blows from the tundra. And in the tundra there are no trees that would even slightly delay it. It carries snow parallel to the ground, and here no one notices it until the usual breeze turns into a snowstorm and visibility drops to a meter or two. In dashes - at random, from the porch towards the neighboring house, from fire to fire. Otherwise, you can get lost, like one helicopter technician got lost - he walked a few meters away from the car for a minute, then turned around - but the helicopter was not visible, not a light through the flying snow. He went at random and wandered for an hour and a half until he was accidentally found by others who went out in a chain to search. A little more, and the technician would have gone into the tundra, which has no end or end.
Imagine snowstorms, when the next day people go to work through the balcony of their two-story house - you step over the railing, and now you are standing on snow rolled down by the wind overnight, and the residents of the first floor have to dig trenches from the entrance door. And the children who here in Kamenny came up with a fun idea - skiing right from the roofs of houses. He pushed off harder and rolled smoothly along the snowdrift that had formed almost close to the roof. And accidentally, during the night of a blizzard, a slightly opened UAZ gets filled to capacity with compacted snow, so that you can’t even shovel it right away.
And imagine an instant, almost imperceptible summer - full of midges and mosquitoes, but with wild rosemary and cloudberries blooming in the tundra, with short warmth and surf that splashes a hundred meters from the houses. With lakes full of ducks and fish. With a period of “white sun”, which almost never goes away and turns the whole day into a polar day. It fades a little, then flares up again, so that the windows of houses have to be sealed in order to sleep in the dark.
Anyone who has been to the North will return here again and again.
Even if only in your thoughts.

* * *
Introduced?
And now - come on, I will bring you down from heaven to earth.
The entire vicinity of Mys-Kamenny is completely littered with scrap metal. It looked like there was some kind of metal breaking and piling championship going on here. Here and there - rusty iron, the remains of some structures and mechanisms. Picnic on the side of the road. Along the roads between residential areas - it’s as if Wells’s Martians landed in the wrong place, died from the cold and were left to rot in their twisted tripods covered with black scale.
Once a barge came to Guba, and a cunning visiting entrepreneur called out - I accept non-ferrous metal! In a few days, they hauled everything onto a barge - they managed, to the amazement of the airport manager, to even pull out an old broken plane that had been lying on the edge of the runway for many years, growing into the sand. But it was a non-ferrous metal, expensive and needed by everyone. But you can’t sell mountains of black metal, rusty barrels and cables to anyone, so let them lie there for themselves.
Like a monument to a time when life was in full swing here.

8. PEOPLE OF THE CAPE

They are different. They live here, and everyone dreams of their own. Earn money and move “to Earth”. Raise children. Find your happiness. They also drink vodka, rejoice, love and hate, fight and make peace, speak in ordinary language and continuous obscenities.
But they are northerners. There are almost no random people here, they don’t take root. Although the indigenous residents regret the times when “there was more order,” and the border guards simply did not let anyone into Kamenny.
- Previously, you would have been checked right at the exit of the plane, then you would have filled out a detailed form at the checkpoint, the border guards would have confiscated your passport, and on the same day they would have asked for information about you - and they would have known everything: how, where, when and with whom. Now, you see for yourself - everything is no longer the same,” Kirill laughs.
Everything is simple here. If you mess up, they will find you. If you deceived you, they will find out. If you say yes, it means yes. No no. Any falsehood will be met with an ironic smile - chat, chat, we understand... When I accidentally mentioned that I was a journalist, it took a long time to restore trust. They don't like hacks here.
- It would be better if you introduced yourself as someone else! I would be calmer.
- Yes, Zhenya, I have nothing to be ashamed of. I don’t make up any nonsense.
- Well does not matter. Will you write something else like this...
- I’ll write it and show you.
- Then, it's OK.
Here you can wave your hand, stopping a passing Ural, and it will stop. Because the North. Just a few years ago, no one locked their doors here. You could just close the apartment door and that’s it. Go, no one will touch anything, but the key is here. Hanging on a string nearby.
Not so now. Life has become harder.
- Write. Write how we live here. They hardly think about people here. I’ve been in the North for twenty-six years, repairing helicopters. I decided to quit, but it turns out that UTair doesn’t owe me anything, so let’s get out, thank you for your service. Nothing, they ran in after he threatened to sue. The airport was almost closed, but before... how many planes and helicopters there were! They flew everywhere. Build new housing - who needs it? There are so many destroyed houses in the village, here and there windows are broken, no one lives. People are leaving. Geologists survived in Labytnangi with an exorbitant fee - rent, they say, give us the money. That is OK. Enough. Now I, too, will go to Earth, - this is what an elderly helicopter technician told me, a man who has been surrounded by the North, who has one dream - to get home, to St. Petersburg, to his wife, “to live like people live.”
And some people don't want to leave. I grew up here, I’m used to it, and I don’t want to, even if they offer me a good job THERE. It remains because all the roots are in Kamenny, because every bump here is known, because there is nothing closer than the wind that blows from Guba.
Romance?
Yes, what is it? It’s a simple habit, but it’s hard in another place, the climate is not the same, the people are different. And there is work here, which still pays well. And also - something that I, a passer-by from the south of Siberia, although I have visited “the North” more than once, still cannot understand - after all, I was not born and did not grow up here.

9. CAPE-STONE-3. SHASHLIKS

The barbecue trip was a success.
“We have to make it before dark,” Kirill said and called the police. The police, represented by chief Zhenya Zgonnikov and district police officer Igor Voropaev, responded immediately, we loaded into a service UAZ and, carefully, so as not to fall into the water, drove along the shore of the Guba River. It was already starting to get dark.
It’s very strange to go to a barbecue and carry firewood with you in the trunk, which cannot be found locally. And listen to people arguing ahead: “Let’s drive a couple more kilometers, the place is more beautiful!” - Come on, let’s go here, it’s not bad here either. At the same time, for kilometers ahead and behind there is the same landscape, except that here it is somewhat enlivened by the wheel of the Kirovets tractor, and where it is “more beautiful” there are some dilapidated towers at the edge of visibility.
The towers turned out to be an old geological warehouse for explosives. This is where we stopped.
If any of the readers suddenly want to go to the Yamal tundra for barbecue, remember: the car must be parked so that it blocks you and the grill from the wind. Otherwise, no amount of vodka will save you; you will freeze before the first portion of meat is cooked. Point number two: take a gun with you (preferably a larger caliber, like the Saiga) and more ammunition. There will be something to have fun - for example, brutally kill an innocent beer bottle several times, riddling it with large shot, and then loudly rejoice at your hunting successes.
Me and Saiga. There is no alcohol in the mug, but just beer.

Shooting into the air can also stop local poachers on snowmobiles flying past in the dark along the “Nenets road.” True, shoot don’t shoot, but they still don’t have muksun, the boxes are empty - it’s not the season, boss, we would be glad, but you see, the Guba is stormy, all the nets were broken and carried away to such and such a mother!..
Our trip ended late at night. It was easier to return - you can follow your own track, without the risk of turning onto hummocks in the fog and ending up in the water.
This is how we went out into nature, which is abundant around us.

10. END AIRPORT

It's quite small. Previously, a lot of equipment landed and took off here - rotational helicopters, airplanes from everywhere. Now the strip is empty - you can only see a lone “turntable” on the edge, flying in from Nurma or Seyakha. The technician is intently pulling the blades with cables to the body so that they do not flutter in the wind. And silence. The only major flight is from UTair from Tyumen, on Tuesdays. In summer - twice a week.
View of the strip, the "turntable" and the Gulf of Ob.

But air traffic controllers still don’t rest. Some “aircraft” is passing by, someone in a helicopter crosses Guba from Yamburg, a white check mark is displayed on the locator screen. But the Air France airliner, following the shortest arc to Japan, beats off the coordinates: “one handrid zero zero...”.
In the control tower.

Here you can also look through binoculars - however, you still see snow, sky and water, and even a tractor, which continuously darts back and forth along the strip, dragging behind it two heavy pipes filled with sand - cleaning and rolling away the snow. The airport provides work to a fair number of people - weather forecasters, signalmen, dispatchers, and airfield maintenance workers. But it’s not the same as before, although north of it in Yamal there is no longer a single runway for large aircraft.
Kirill works at the airport. If you take a compass, put a needle on the point marking Mys-Kamenny and draw a circle with a radius of about a hundred kilometers, then my friend will be the only one within the circle who has ICQ and an account in LiveJournal. However, this doesn’t bother anyone in Kamenny.

11. EPILOGUE

If you think about it, you can write for a very long time, collecting impressions stuck in your memory, snippets of conversations, local stories. But I won't do that, I'll just end with my own departure.
I flew out, oddly enough, on schedule. The women at the security check were surprised by my small backpack, thoughtfully noting that they themselves would not have flown from the North with such small luggage. But then they remembered that there were no fish, sighed and covered the entire backpack with transfer tags.
Boarding a northern plane always follows the same pattern: “Are you a passenger? Exactly? Then go into the cabin, take a seat... well, whichever one you like best, take it, no problem.” The few front rows are always piled high with luggage, and that was the case this time too.
It's time to go to Tyumen.

The AN-24, still howling mercilessly, rolled along the strip - and now Cape-Kamenny remained under its wing, there were people who live here, on the edge of the Yamal Peninsula, who received me as hospitably as it can probably only be in such places. The Far North sank into the darkness of the night, without even noticing some passerby - what does it matter to him, the North, who has seen all sorts of things?

Then we flew calmly all the way to Berezov. There, the thoughtful movers melancholy stuffed the coffin into the luggage compartment (“The corner doesn’t fit, Sanya, push harder!”) and left. So to speak, “cargo 200”, the final exotic touch. The deceased, as expected, behaved quietly and did not disturb any of the calm passengers, except for the flight attendant - since in the "twenty-four" the front luggage compartment is located between the cabin and the cabin. So she was very uncomfortable handing tea to the pilots.
Then we landed in Tyumen as usual. The north is over.

But I know that I will dream about him at night for a long time. I dream about it until I find myself there again.
And I will definitely be there.

thanks for the camera provided to Tim (silver_golem)

Territorial division

Unofficially divided into three parts: Airport, Geologists, Polar Geophysical Expedition.

Name

There are several versions about the name of the village. The main one says that at one time the translation from the Nenets language was incorrectly carried out, and as a result, instead of “Sandy Cape” (“Pesalya”) we have “Cape Kamenny” [ ] .

Geography

Story

The village of Cape Kamenny appeared long before the ZGE base. There was an alternate airfield, and the village. YNRE. The ZGE base was built in the 1980s.

Economy

The village is located at the Gates of the Arctic oil terminal of Gazpromneft PJSC.

Since 2013, construction of an acceptance and delivery point began near the village, as part of the development of the Novoportovskoye field.

Gallery

Installation of the Arctic Gate oil terminal.jpg

Oil terminal "Arctic Gate"

Acceptance and delivery point "Cape Kamenny".jpg

Acceptance and delivery point "Cape Kamenny"

Mys Kamenyi-1.jpg

Heat and water supply pipes covered with wooden decking between buildings in a village

Mys Kamenyi-2.jpg

Sunset during the white nights in the village

Mys Kamenyi-3.jpg

Yard in the "Geologists" area

Marinabey of Mys Kamenyi of the Yamal district.jpg

Piles of scrap metal on the shore of the Ob Bay in the village of Cape Kamenny

Population

The main population is Russians and indigenous people - Nenets. Over the past few years, the number of Russian visitors from Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan has increased.

Infrastructure

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Notes

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Excerpt characterizing Cape Kamenny (village)

Anatole recently moved in with Dolokhov. The plan to kidnap Rostova had been thought out and prepared by Dolokhov for several days, and on the day when Sonya, having overheard Natasha at the door, decided to protect her, this plan had to be carried out. Natasha promised to go out to Kuragin’s back porch at ten o’clock in the evening. Kuragin had to put her in a prepared troika and take her 60 versts from Moscow to the village of Kamenka, where a disrobed priest was prepared who was supposed to marry them. In Kamenka, a setup was ready that was supposed to take them to the Warsaw road and there they were supposed to ride abroad on postal ones.
Anatole had a passport, and a travel document, and ten thousand money taken from his sister, and ten thousand borrowed through Dolokhov.
Two witnesses - Khvostikov, a former clerk, whom Dolokhov used for games, and Makarin, a retired hussar, a good-natured and weak man who had boundless love for Kuragin - were sitting in the first room having tea.
In Dolokhov’s large office, decorated from walls to ceiling with Persian carpets, bear skins and weapons, Dolokhov sat in a traveling beshmet and boots in front of an open bureau on which lay abacus and stacks of money. Anatole, in an unbuttoned uniform, walked from the room where the witnesses were sitting, through the office into the back room, where his French footman and others were packing the last things. Dolokhov counted the money and wrote it down.
“Well,” he said, “Khvostikov needs to be given two thousand.”
“Well, give it to me,” said Anatole.
– Makarka (that’s what they called Makarina), this one will selflessly go through fire and water for you. Well, the score is over,” said Dolokhov, showing him the note. - So?
“Yes, of course, so,” said Anatole, apparently not listening to Dolokhov and with a smile that never left his face, looking ahead of him.
Dolokhov slammed the bureau and turned to Anatoly with a mocking smile.

Logistics to Cape Kamenny is one of the areas of sea cargo transportation that our company carries out. This is a settlement in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. The village of Cape Kamenny is located on the shore of the Yamal Peninsula, on the left bank of the Ob Bay, the largest bay in the Kara Sea, the watershed between the Gydan Peninsula and Yamal. Conventionally, it is divided into three parts, the names of which are historically determined: Airport (Aviators), Polar Expedition and Geologists.

Once upon a time, the settlement was created as a base for a geophysical expedition to the Arctic. Over time, two other enterprises appeared here. Previously, the infrastructure and culture here were better developed. Over time, some residents settled in other cities, leaving the Far North, but today more than 1,500 thousand people live in the village. This means that in addition to supplying the oil terminal at the Novoportovskoye field, local residents may need cargo transportation from Cape Kamenny to other Arctic or Russian ports. We also undertake the delivery of any cargo not only during summer navigation, but also in winter, accompanied by icebreakers.

The population is mainly employed in the field of medicine, education and culture: there are schools in the village, including a music school, cultural centers, gyms, hospitals and a kindergarten. The local utility company uses fuel extracted directly from sources in the village. Transportation of various building materials to Cape Kamenny is relevant: it is easier to deliver bulky cargo and equipment by sea.

The district administration is gradually cleaning up the village, which has been littered since Soviet times - large landfills have recently been cleared out.

Shipping scrap metal, decommissioned equipment and machinery from Cape Kamenny by sea is more profitable than delivery by road. Not far from the village is the settlement of Novy Port, in the vicinity of which the Novoportovskoye oil field is located. In this regard, tankers with oil produced in Novy Port and other cargo ships regularly ply along the Northern Sea Route.

Transport to Cape Kamenny is available both by land and by air. But it is sea delivery that is a profitable and economical means of sending goods, since it allows you to pack both piece (general) cargo and liquid cargo, such as oil, bulk cargo - coal, sand, ore.

In the summer, thanks to the port-marina, motor ship communication between the village and other cities of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug becomes possible. It is planned to develop another oil field near the settlement, which will require the delivery of additional materials and equipment to Cape Kamenny. The planned development of the Arctic regions, including this village, assumes improved conditions in the very near future. Perhaps ships will be able to arrive through the Kara Sea to the port of Cape Kamenny, which will be in no way inferior to other large port points.

Transportation to Cape Kamenny is carried out by our company at any time of the year. We take on even the most complex tasks and are ready to help in drawing up transport schemes and the most optimal solutions for each specific case.