Eight people start out for the winter tourist and sports relay race "Roads of Pioneers" on February 24. The core group consists of teachers and methodologists of the Regional Center for Supplementary Education of Children. Also pedagogical workers of educational organizations of the region and representatives of the tourist core group of the Vologda Region went on a difficult journey across the northern expanses.
The expedition was organized by the Regional Center for Supplementary Education of Children and the Vologda Regional Branch of the Russian Geographical Society.
The group is registered with the Central Route Qualification Commission. The expedition leader is Vladimir Slabodyanik. Expedition members are Nikolay Vatochkin, Victor Kapustin, Grigory Sokolov, Dmitry Belyakov, Sergey Popov, Roman Lipin, Nikolay Erofeev. All members of the expedition have experience of winter camping trip.
The expedition is held for the third year in a row. The campaign has a third category of difficulty this year.
Expedition members plan to pass about 600 kilometers for 10 days. The start took place in Vytegorsky district. The starting point, as in the past year, was the Educational Center - the cadet school "Shipbuilders of the Prionezhye named after the Hero of Russia Y.L.Vorobyov". Here experienced tourists met with children studying at the Center.
Further, the expedition path will run along the ice and ice pilings of Lake Onega to the Shalsky settlement and then to the Povenets settlement in Karelia. From this point the path will go along the White Sea-Baltic route to Belomorsk and further to the coast of the White Sea.
The tasks of the expedition include the development and testing of the tourist route on snowmobiles and skiing on Lake Onega and the Republic of Karelia, visiting memorial sites associated with the names of outstanding Vologda and Russian explorers, photographing historical, natural and cultural monuments along the route of the expedition. The route of the expedition partially repeats the summer route of the expedition "Shipbuilders of Prionezhye", that also has a certain interest.
In recent years, the northern territories have attracted a lot of attention with the peculiarity and special, harsh beauty of nature, the originality of the local culture, and the pristine landscape.
"One of the promising areas of development of these territories is to attract tourists, especially in the winter period", says the methodologist at the Regional Center for Supplementary Education of Children, member of the expedition Vladimir Slabodyanik. Also Vladimir noted: "By organizing this expedition, we want to draw attention to one of the types of winter leisure time activities, to show that it is possible to actively develop winter autotourism (snowmobiles), to carry out camping trips of various degree of difficulty in our territory".
Another goal of the expedition is historical; it is not by chance that it is called the “Roads of Pioneers”. Participants want to attract the attention of Vologda citizens to the historical events of the development of the regions of the Far North, Siberia, and the Far East. That is why the expedition’s route partly follows the path used by our ancestors, exploring the endless expanses of the Russian North.
“Also we set ourselves the goal of improving the skills of the staff of the Regional Center for Supplementary Education for Children, organizing sports and camping trips with children”, explains Vladimir Slabodyanik.
The main sponsor of the campaign is PAO "Severstal".
Text: Sergey Shadrunov
Photo is from the archive of the Regional Center for Supplementary Education for Children