In summer, Konzhak turned me back. At the end of July I climbed onto the Iovskoye plateau planning to film the whole Konzhak Ring — and within days my external power source failed. I kept filming for as long as the batteries held, then I had to come down. That trip became the film The Konzhak Ring: Cut Short — and a promise to return.
The promise was easier to make than to keep. All August I chased the weather: the 7th to the 9th, then the 14th to the 16th, then the 21st to the 23rd. Every time the picture was the same — rain down in Kytlym, and on the summit a solid cloud, thunderstorms, once even a forecast of snow. It felt as if the mountain were deliberately hiding itself from me.
By mid-September I had almost given up and started looking at next season. Then the weather turned. An anticyclone moved in, the wind dropped, and all three days — 25, 26 and 27 September — showed clear sky over the summit. This time I had prepared for everything that failed in July. And, it seems, persistence pays: two days before leaving my friend Oleg called — and a solo expedition became an expedition for two.
On the first day we went for the main thing: Konzhakovsky Kamen, 1,569 metres, the highest point of the Sverdlovsk region. A flock of ptarmigan burst up from the scree, already in their white winter plumage — white flecks on the brown autumn tundra. At the top: wind, a cairn with a cross, and the ranges of the Northern Urals rolling to the horizon. That evening, pink cirrus lit up over the ridge beside our camp, and the moon rose from behind the mountain.
A clear sky is beautiful by day and merciless by night. With no cloud to hold the warmth, the first night on the plateau was so cold we barely slept. That was the price of the weather I had waited for all summer. It was worth it.
On the second day we walked the dunite road — built to a quarry where they mine dunite, the very rock the Konzhak massif is made of — out to Serebryansky Kamen and back: eight kilometres on foot, dust from passing quad bikes, and at the end a climb over scree to the jagged teeth of the ridge.
We met the third morning on North Iov. In the dark, the moon still hung over the dome of the mountain; then the sky turned orange and the sun rose exactly behind the ridge. I launched the drone, and Oleg caught it as a silhouette against the sun. I think that was the frame I came back for.
In July I promised to return and finish the Konzhak Ring. I still haven’t walked the whole ring. But the circle has closed all the same: I promised to come back — and I did.
If you go: Konzhakovsky Kamen (1,569 m), near Kytlym, Sverdlovsk region. Base: “Serebryansky Kamen”, km 44 of the Karpinsk–Kytlym road (~440 km from Yekaterinburg). The dunite road (~16 km to the Iovskoye plateau, 1,100–1,200 m) may be closed during quarry season — check locally. The summit is 6–7 °C colder than the valley; decide on a 2–4-day forecast. On clear nights the plateau freezes even in September.
