Excursion to the taiga

We are sitting in a city bus and are on our way to a nature reserve on the outskirts of Krasnoyarsk. I look out of the window and try not to let the persistently bad weather spoil my mood. “Is this the Siberian summer? Will we have to drive incessantly through this rainy soup for the next few months?” I think of the rainy weeks last year when we never got dry and were always freezing. “This isn’t going to happen again, is it?” I mutter to myself, not really in the mood for the hike ahead of us. “Tanja, Denis, we’re here!” Jenya tells us to get off the bus. At a restaurant that is still under construction, we wait for Katja, who also wants to accompany us into the nature reserve. “What a load of crap. The weather forecast predicted sunshine,” Jenya grumbles again and again. “Is this what the Siberian summer looks like?” I ask. “No, the weather is unusual for this time of year. Last week it was still 25 degrees. But now it’s bad. Normally we have a hot summer with temperatures of up to 35 degrees in the shade. But only for one or a maximum of two months. Then it gets cold again. “Hello!” interrupts the greeting call from Katja, who has just got off a bus and is coming towards us waving. “Are you ready?” she asks in a good mood, like a real Siberian who can’t be bothered by the weather. “Sure,” we reply and march off. In a light drizzle, we first follow an asphalt road that winds gently uphill. Again and again we meet other hikers who have put on simple plastic capes to protect themselves from the wet. After about eight kilometers, the asphalt is long behind us and the path leads steeply into the mountains. Bizarre rocks, some overgrown with moss, line the slippery path. Flowers stretch their blossoms into the dusky forest. Birds chirp sporadically. Roughly hewn logs lie above a small stream and are intended as a temporary crossing. “Revolutionary activists used to meet in this cave,” explains Katja. “Are there any brown bears here?” I ask. “Of course.” “And aren’t you afraid when you wander through the woods?” “We don’t think about it. I’ve never come across one before. Only once, about two years ago, when we were camping, did we hear one. I’m telling you, we were all terrified together.” “And what happened?” “Some of us screamed so frighteningly that the bear ran off.”

The march continues through the dripping taiga. We climb over rocks, ledges and through crevices. “I didn’t think they would go on a real hike with us,” says Tanja. “Me neither,” I gasp in surprise, as in previous years we were mainly only taken on Sunday excursions and most of our hosts were not sportsmen. Katja, Anja and Jenya, on the other hand, are very active in sports and travel a lot in their free time. At the summit of the approximately 640-metre-high range of hills, we enjoy a fantastic view of the seemingly endless taiga, the largest coniferous whale area on earth. I look thoughtfully into the distance. Even on the horizon, where Mother Earth seems to bend, I can’t see anything other than a strip of grass undulating up and down. Our friends prepare a picnic for us on a stone slab. We sit there together and devour cheese, bread, fruit, cookies, chocolate and drink hot tea from the thermos flask. If it weren’t for the many notorious Siberian mosquitoes and the constant drizzle, you could feel right at home.

Crashed

Not far from us, a climbing group is enjoying the ascent up some 25 to 30 meter high rock towers. “You climb here without ropes or safety devices,” explains Jenya. “Despite the drizzle? Isn’t that quite dangerous?” I ask. “You mean because it could be slippery?” “Yes.” “Well, we use special shoes for this. They give the climber a good grip. But you’re right, I wouldn’t want to climb up there in weather like this either. Just a few years ago, one of our best climbers fell here. He climbed these rock towers thousands of times to train himself. Once he wasn’t careful and had a fatal fall. Do you see the sign there on the rock face? They put it there to remember the tragic accident,” he explains. “Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!” shouts a young free climber in the face of the rock domes. She jumps around exuberantly and seems to be beside herself with joy and adrenaline. We watch as the athletes climb up the wall one after the other and disappear from our field of vision behind a ledge. I jump up to take some photos of them when a shrill scream runs through my limbs. “Has someone crashed now?” I ask Jenya, who is standing close behind me. “No idea,” he replies, shrugging his shoulders. Then we hear loud sobbing and crying. “At least the person is still alive,” I think. Then some of his climbing colleagues rush into the wall. “Please can you help us?” one of the people coming back asks Katja because he has learned that she is a medical student. Katja sets off immediately, climbs onto the first platform of the rock and provides first aid. A short time later, they carry the victim off the rock platform on their shoulders. She laughs and cries at the same time. “She’s in shock,” explains Katja. “What happened?” we want to know. “She somehow slipped and her knee crashed through the wrong way. Thank goodness it popped back into its natural position straight away. But she will definitely have torn several ligaments,” explains the trainee doctor.

“Can you send me the pictures?” a young climber asks me who has just come back from the tour and has seen me taking pictures of her on the wall. “Sure,” I reply and want to know how often she goes climbing here. “Almost every weekend and sometimes even in winter.” “In winter? Don’t you mind if it’s minus 20 or 30 degrees here?” “It’s okay with the right equipment,” she replies with a smile. “And what about the danger of crashing?” “Oh, something happens almost every weekend. A lot of people fall here. Some have the wrong equipment, many are inexperienced and some are reckless,” I learn. As the climbing group organizes the removal of the injured, we leave the athletes and continue our hike through the wet forests infested with mosquitoes and ticks. Despite the unpleasant humidity, we are compensated by the unconventional nature. “Don’t leave the path. The ticks are lurking there!” Katja warns us again and again. “How are we not supposed to leave the path in the coming months if we are forced to camp in the woods?” I ask. “That’s just not a good idea. Our ticks are super dangerous. People die from them all the time. Our citizens are constantly being warned not to go into the woods at this time of year. It’s best to take out insurance against tick bites. We have a serum that has to be injected within 48 hours of the bite. It’s normally very expensive but with the insurance for 200 roubles (4.50 euros) or 300 roubles (6.81 euros) it’s no problem.” “We also have a tick problem in Germany, but people still go into the woods,” I try to tone down her statements. “You can’t compare it to Siberia. Here it’s a real epidemic. Many are even talking about a biological weapon. You really have to be careful and constantly examine each other. The ticks are much more dangerous than our largest land predator still alive today, the brown bear. Hopefully you won’t run into them.” “Well, you’re really encouraging,” I try to joke. “Well, I would never want to go on the tour with you. It would be too strenuous and dangerous for me.” “Hm, it usually sounds worse than it really is,” I reply thoughtfully.

Dangerous ticks

After about 20 kilometers of mountain hiking, we reach the asphalt strip again in the evening. “We have to check each other for ticks immediately,” orders Katja. No sooner have we taken off our shirts and rolled up our trouser legs than we are attacked by countless mosquitoes. I now carefully examine my exposed skin for ticks, which belong to the family of relatively large mites and feed on the blood of reptiles, birds and mammals. They usually live in forests or dense vegetation, where they lie in wait for passing animals or humans. They perceive their host with the help of their sensitive sensory organs on their front legs and wait with their first pair of legs stretched forward for a potential host to touch them. However, ticks can also run towards a victim in their immediate vicinity ? for example on a person sitting in the forest or meadow. That they fall on their victim is an incorrect statement. They are attracted by certain odors, react to vibrations, body heat, fatty acids from sweat and carbon dioxide. They use their claws to hold on to fur or skin and pierce the skin with their mouthparts, which consist of piercing-sucking organs, to suck blood. Dangerous pathogens such as Lyme arthritis, rickettsia, encephalitis and relapsing fever are transmitted to humans. The reason for this is a protein in tick saliva, which temporarily weakens the victim’s immune system. As a result, the immune system’s defense cells are not activated when pathogens transmitted by the tick enter the bloodstream. Why the ticks survive the harsh winter here in Siberia is a mystery to me, because according to the scientific findings of the Free University in Berlin, only some tick species can withstand extremely low temperatures of -17 to -23 degrees Celsius. Here in Siberia, however, temperatures of minus 45 degrees and below are not uncommon. “There’s one!” shouts Anja. Sure enough, one of the harmless-looking arthropods crawls up Anja’s leg. She immediately grabs Jenya and burns her in the flame of his lighter. I’ve already put my clothes back on when I have the idea of filming the tick search. I immediately take off my shirt again and roll up my trouser legs to capture everything on film. “There’s one too!” Jenya shouts, examining me. “What, it can’t be! I’ve looked at least three times,” I wonder. “It could be that the tick was stuck in a stitch and only just came out,” he suspects, which makes us realize how difficult it can be to discover all of these parasites on the body.

In the evening we sit in the kitchen, exhausted from the excursion, and eat together. We talk about the day’s experiences and especially about the tick problem. Although it is already 11 p.m., dim light falls through the windows. “At this time of year, it only gets completely dark here when the sky is completely cloudy,” explains Jenya.

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