It was sunny yesterday. By the evening, leaden clouds and “Gornyak”, the piercing wind, occurred. In the Middle Baikal region, “Gornyak” is called “Sarma” and blows away everything in its path. Today, we have got “Gornyak” and it is Sunday. Yesterday, the girls thought that they were lucky to spend a cool weekend here. Today, they had to pluck up all their courage to spend these days with dignity. They succeeded. Against all odds. Only half of the girls remained on the ice. The others have not been gone with the wind, not at all.

The wind is howling very loud changing our voices by recording. Vladimir Shatunov finds the weather acceptable. 

In the morning, the weather was nice and I was asked to join the bottom cable running team. It could be one more story to tell you later. The team was the enthusiasts from Nizhny Novgorod, Mikhail and Stanislav.

All the machines were manufactured in Nizhny Novgorod in the 1980s. They are wonderful and unique. They were produced exactly for running the cable on the Baikal bottom under the ice. We had the task to explore the ice thickness along the track. Moreover, we had to knock down the ice on the route of these wonders of engineering not to let them get stuck in the ice ridge.

Mikhail Borisovich Milenin is explaining and showing what we are doing.

What is done?

The status of the new fourth cluster:

• On three strings of eight (the first, seventh and eighth), 36 optical modules have been mounted.
• One half of the second string and one half of the sixth one are ready.
• There are six optical modules on the third string and other six on the fourth one.
• We have not worked on the fifth string yet.

Dismantling and assembling continue on the third cluster. After lunchtime, we did not manage to run the bottom cable because of troubles in the hydrocylinder. It will be repaired and tomorrow, with a struggle, we will start a new day. So it is, comrades. There is a culture abyss between the phrase “a new cluster has been deployed and the bottom cable has been laid” and the reality.

Meanwhile, Misha Zhukov has been filming and editing our new video. I think he created a real masterpiece.