Walking to the frozen river

River. The usual word in everyday life of any Russian person. But if you dig deeper, try to get closer to the river and study it, it turns out that this is the whole universe.

A distance of half a kilometer can easily turn into five kilometers, or maybe three hundred and fifty, if you have a river in front of you! And this water barrier can take someone's life.

In Veliky Ustyug there is only one bridge across the Sukhona River and it passes far from the city center. When winter comes, the buses going to the side of the river to the village Dobrynino and nearby villages, empty. People prefer to walk. After all, the distance is only half a kilometer.

The warm start of winter has affected the prolonged freezing of the river. The river was frozen, but there were gullys, where you can fall through. The depth at the coast is small, but no one wants to be knee-deep in negative temperature in cold water.

People, risking their health, and sometimes maybe their lives, are walking along the fragile ice.

Fishermen are a separate topic. They are crazy, can go to the thinnest ice during the freeze-up.

I decided to take a chance and try to go through the river Sukhona in Dymkovo.

In principle, the path is well-groomed, no one has failed before me - it means that the ice will endure!

For residents outside the river is everyday life. Nothing unusual happens in the frame. The woman returns home from work.

In the middle of the river it becomes uncomfortable due to the accumulation of ice (hummocks).

The depth here is more than two meters.

There are a lot of people across the river.

Both adults and children, and even whole families can pass and not be afraid.

On the other side there is also a wet place with thin ice. People bypass the main trail, as there already someone has failed.

The danger is minimal, but pleasant enough!

That is Dymkovo!

And Ustyug is seen in the frosty fog!

I make a classic landscape.

Now you need to return to "your" shore. Here I have not seen people passing through the river, but there is a path.

The depth at the coast here is much greater, and the fear of failing several times higher.

In the middle of the river again hummocks.

If you do not go off the trampled path, then walking along the river turned out to be quite safe.

I started my way from the church which in the distance. There are several more paths leading to different parts of the city and villages.

When the snow closes all the protruding ice floes, hummocks, people will begin to ride the river on snowmobiles. The most dangerous thing happens at the beginning of winter and in spring, when the river is freed from ice. These periods of the off season can be delayed for a long time. And people just live on. Everything goes on as usual.