The Well to Hell

Nikel for Your Thoughts

To say Nikel is dirty or ugly would be an insult to the words. We could also insult grubby, dilapidated, run-down and sad.

Nikel is not a pleasant place.

On our way into town we stop alongside a small lake with some unclassifiable, live birds floating on the surface. From this distance, there is nothing even remotely attractive about Nikel, set as it is into the blackened hills, surrounded by massive, toxic tailing piles, the towers of the nickel refining plant spewing sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere.

OFFICIALLY DESIGNATED AS a “settlement of the municipal variety” (посёлок городского типа), Nikel and its 12,000 residents are located just seven kilometers from the border with Norway, in Russia’s Pechenga region. This area originally began to be incorporated into Russia in 1533, after the Novgorod monk Tryphon (now revered as a saint) established a monastery on the Barents Sea. His goal was to evangelize the local Sami Skolts tribe, to show that Christianity could flourish even in the harshest of conditions. And flourish the monastery did. By the time of Tryphon’s death, some 250 monks and lay followers were living an ascetic existence along these frigid shores.

Six years later, at the start of the Swedish-Russian War, Finnish troops under Swedish command (Finland then being part of Sweden) decimated the monastery and murdered 116 monks and lay followers. The monastery was moved east and would not be restored in its original location until 1886.

Over the next two centuries, the region remained sparsely settled, largely by Sami and by Pomors who emigrated here from the South. The border began to be established in the first part of the nineteenth century when, in 1809, as the result of the Finnish War between Sweden and Russia, Finland became a principality of the Russian empire. Just over a decade later, in 1826, the 196-kilometer border with Norway was also established.

When the First World War ended and the Russian Empire crumbled, Finland declared its independence, codified in the 1920 Treaty of Tartu, in which Bolshevik Russia ceded much of the Pechenga region (which the Finns called Petsamo) in exchange for two regions in Eastern Karelia.

The following year, prospectors discovered huge deposits of nickel in the Petsamo region, and by the mid-1930s foreign firms were laying plans to mine here, building a railway between the ice-free Finnish harbor of Liinahamari and Kolosjoki (the original, Finnish name for Nikel). Before mining could get underway, however, the Winter War between Russia and Finland (1939-40) intervened, during which Petsamo was occupied by Soviet troops.

After the Winter War, Petsamo was returned to Finland and the first mining began in and around Kolosjoki. For the next four years, the mines supplied the German war machine, until Petsamo was retaken by Soviet Russia. In November 1945, as peace treaties began to codify border changes, the Soviet Union asserted its control over the Pechenga region, with Nikel as its administrative center. Because the industrial base was devastated by the war, mining and refining did not resume until 1946.

Over the past 70 years, the mining complex comprised of the “settlement” of Nikel and the nearby city of Zapolyarny has grown to one of the world’s largest copper-nickel mining operations, extracting over 7 million tons of ore per year from four mines. The refining is done at the massive plant in Nikel, which also processes ore shipped in from Norilsk, an even more dismally polluted city in Siberia’s Far North. The industrial activity at what is today known as the Kola Mining Metallurgical Company (part of the company Norilsk Nikel) comes at a significant environmental cost, however, spewing an estimated 100,000 tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere each year, according to the company’s own data and that of environmental watchdog Bellona.

Throughout 2015, Russia’s state environmental agency, Rosprirodnadzor, repeatedly found KMMC to be releasing sulfur dioxide at levels six or even ten times the allowable standard. In April, the pollution level in one day was measured at 12.6 times the maximum allowed SO2 concentration. For this, KMMC was fined R25,000 rubles, or less than $500.

WE ARE IN Nikel to meet the deputy head of the regional administration for economic development, Alexander Molodtsov, who has what the reality-based among us might call a wild dream. He wants to transform an obscure, Soviet era scientific facility into a tourist attraction.

Fit, compact and sporting a crewnecked sweater and the neatly trimmed beard of a hipster, Molodtsov speaks like a lottery ad disclaimer on speed. Earnest and intelligent, he was born in Grozny (yes, that Grozny, capital of Chechnya), lived in Moscow, worked as a consultant, and about a year ago was recruited to serve in this hardship outpost. He is a new breed of consultant cum apparatchik, young and flush with hard-nosed enthusiasm to make his country a better place.

His idea is at once simple and ludicrous. He wants to turn the Kola Super Deep Borehole (Кольская сверхглубокая скважина) into something people will travel from all over the world to see.

“This place is comparable to what CERN might be in 30 years,” Molodtsov says, referring to the laboratory outside Geneva, Switzerland where 2500 employees oversee the Large Hadron Collider and other physics laboratories. “We expect to sign an agreement in the coming days and turn it into a tourist complex… In principle, it will not take that much investment. As you will see when you go there, one building is in very good condition. We just need to slap in some windows and we can have an information center, a museum about the Borehole, etc… The former head engineer has an excellent collection of historical materials.”

When asked if it is realistic to think that people will travel hundreds of miles to breathe toxic air and contemplate a seven-mile foot hole in the ground (admittedly, the question was stated more diplomatically), Molodtsov seems to not recognize the challenge. “There is lots of international interest,” he says. “Recently a German artist came all the way over here especially to see just this.”

“It’s also the source of lots of urban legends,” Molodtsov says, for the first time cracking a smile. “Surely you have heard about the myth how they dropped a microphone down the well and heard the sounds of screaming in Hell?”

Okay, now we are interested.

DRILLING OF THE Kola Super Deep Borehole was begun in 1970 on the 100th anniversary of Lenin’s birth (because nothing says “we love you” like a borehole). It reached a maximum depth of 12,262 meters (7.6 miles) in 1990 and soon thereafter funding ran out. The purpose of the hole was entirely scientific, and the project was launched at this location because it represented the shortest distance to the point where the Earth’s mantle and crust were separated by the Mohorovicic discontinuity. Translated into lay language, the goal was to drill as deeply as possible into the Earth’s crust.

As it turns out, drilling also had to stop in 1990 because the temperature at the bottom of the well was almost twice as high as expected, and the drill bits stopped working.

The site delivered much useful scientific information for geologists and physicists (little beyond the four kilometer drilling mark was as expected) but if anyone in the non-scientific world knows about the Borehole it is likely because of the urban legend known as The Well to Hell.

It began life as the sort of harmlessly bogus story one might expect to read in an obscure Finnish evangelical newspaper, because that is exactly where it began (its editors claiming they sourced it from a newsletter of messianic Jews in California). For some reason, the tale was then picked up by the Trinity Broadcast Network (see Pat Robertson) in the US, whence it bounced to mainstream media and the ever credulous internet.

The story goes like this: A group of Russians, led by a Mr. Azzacov [sic] drilled a 9-mile-deep [sic] well somewhere in Siberia [sic], whence the hole broke through to a cavity of some sort where the temperature was 2,000º F [sic]. So, of course their first thought was to drop a heat-tolerant microphone into the Borehole. Lo and behold, what did they hear but the tormented screams of the damned [sic?]. A recording subsequently circulated that was later found to be a loop track for a 1970s horror flick.

But the best part is that a Norwegian teacher, Åge Rendalen, saw the story when visiting the US and decided to have a bit of fun at the expense of mass gullibility (those crazy Norge). He wrote to TBN, claiming that he had additional information about the story, confabulating a tale about a bat-like apparition that escaped from the mine just before the microphone was lowered down the hole.

TBN re-reported the story with Rendalen’s colorful addition, not bothering to follow up and check on the false sources he provided.

In reality, as disclosed by David Guberman, the Borehole’s last director, in 1995, the year the operation was closed down, there was an inexplicable incident of a strange explosion after hearing sounds of unknown provenance.

“When, at UNESCO, they asked me about that curious event, I didn’t know how to answer,” Guberman reported to the Russian edition of Popular Mechanics. “On the one hand, it was damn nonsense. On the other, as an honest scientist, I could not say that I did not have any idea what happened in our facility. A very strange sound was recorded, then there was an explosion... nothing was discovered about it over the next several days.”³

MOLODTSOV HAS ANOTHER meeting, so he can’t accompany us to the Borehole, but his wife Liza is kind enough to provide us with detailed instructions, given the fact that the roads are not on any map, not even Google Maps.

Liza begins inscribing directions in my notepad. They begin with a turn down a nameless road just before a “rather disturbing” billboard and end with a “sharp right turn when you are surrounded by massive tailing mountains.” She notes down several interchanges, separated by the estimated time to travel between them.

“How long to get there?” the intrepid adventurers ask.

“About 20 minutes,” Liza says, “40 for non-locals.”

Her estimate proves to be wildly optimistic on either count. And, in any event, we need to first visit a hairdresser.

The Hairdresser

Lena Kolesnik is the proprietor of a bright, cheery hairdressing salon on Nikel’s main drag, just down the street from the central square and its requisite Lenin monument. Easy going with a ready smile, she bounces between very delicate, close work on an elderly woman’s manicure, answering the phone to set appointments, and upselling a second client on her solarium’s new lamps.

Kolesnik has been running her salon for 12 years. She started it simply as a small business, but then it turned out she liked the people side of things, getting to know her clients, gossiping and talking to them about local news. When asked about the greatest difficulties of running a small business in Russia, she does not decry red tape, corruption or government oversight.

“There are simply not enough specialists,” she complains with a sunny smile. “I can’t find a hairdresser or a masseuse. You see that ‘Help Wanted’ sign in the window? It’s been there four months, and I have had exactly one person walk through the door.”

No one wants to take the time to get good training, Kolesnik says, and then put their new talents to use in Nikel. All the young people leave town for Murmansk or points south. She’s had employees in the past, she says, but lately she can’t get anyone who is qualified, so she seems resigned to running a one-woman shop.

Not that she doesn’t love her work. Her caring and interest in her clients is evident as she gently caresses an elderly client’s palm while simultaneously trimming her nails and chatting cheerily with a couple of journalists who have dropped in without notice, claiming to be writing some sort of book about Russia.

We stuck our heads in here as a bit of fact-checking, because Alexander Molodtsov asserted that Norwegians were not just slipping over the border to fill up their SUVs with cheap Nikel gasoline (“Nikel has the cheapest gas in Norway,” a Norwegian had joked). Apparently they also come for the inexpensive but quality dentists and hairdressers, and to party in the city’s cafes, where the drinks and food are far less expensive.

Kolesnik offers a more sobering picture. For her, the Norge are just a small percent of her business, she says — low single digits. “It used to be more. I used to have a banner hanging up outside, advertising the salon’s services in Norwegian, but someone vandalized it, so now we don’t get so many Norge.”

Why stay? Clearly her skills are transferable, in demand, and Kolesnik could set up shop anywhere.

“Oh, we do think about leaving all the time,” she says. “My husband is online every night, looking at homes in Belgorod, where he grew up. It’s so beautiful, but they say it’s hard to start a business there, more expensive.” And, despite the pull to stay put – friends, community and a successful business — they want to leave.

“I want to breathe fresh air, and for my children to do the same,” Kolesnik says, smiling.

Hunting the Borehole

We drive past Nikel’s belching, mile-long nickel refining plant (why would you need to drill seven miles down to find Hell when it has such a suitable replica right here on the surface?) and climb long roads of blackened earth, met only occasionally by an oncoming semi. Finally, a few kilometers out of town we reach the noted billboard (it is an ad to encourage seatbelt use: a man reaches around and across a woman from behind, as if his arm were a seatbelt, although he could just as easily be assaulting her from behind), and head higher still into the hills.

The first wrong turn takes us to the top of a hill (constructed of massive tailing boulders) where there are stunning views out over the Pasvik Valley (a nature preserve inconceivably located just a few kilometers downwind from the town, along the border with Norway). The smoke from the refinery settles over the valley like a toxic meteorological blanket.

We stop for a few pictures after realizing our error, then backtrack to the Y in the road we missed.

Soon after we climbed out of the town, the road conditions changed significantly. The smooth, crushed-stone secondary road was covered with a crusty, slippery snow that hid potholes and pointed tailing shards alike. Plus of course it was bitterly cold. So we traversed the empty miles in anxious anticipation of a blowout, joking about Liza’s overly optimistic directions.

This dampened our enthusiasm somewhat for the starkly beautiful terrain surrounding us, yet when we arrived at the massive tailing mountains (sharp right turn) the human imprint on this desolate, deserted landscape was thrown into mind-blowing relief.

Countless ten-story skyscrapers of boulders loom about us as far as the eye can see in every direction, castoffs from seven decades of digging and hauling from the mine at Zapolyarny. It is difficult to imagine the thousands of massive trucks that delivered their tens of thousands of payloads here, because the valley is silent but for the grind of our little car’s engine. There are other tire tracks in the snow, but we do not see another living soul during our long drive in and out of the area, even though we are never more than 15 kilometers as the soot-covered-crow flies from Nikel.

Finally, just as we are beginning to think we will never find the Borehole and are negotiating over how much longer would be considered a “good faith effort” to find it before we turn back, we crest yet another long hill over rutted roads and see a complex of abandoned buildings nestled in the valley below. We cheer, never having expected to be so excited to see a site of industrial and scientific ruin. Then, of course, we stop for photos.

Nadya and I wait in the car as Mikhail disappears out of sight down the side of the hill, camera in hand.

We are in the middle of nowhere and, in the eerie silence surrounded by the opaline Arctic landscape, Nadya makes an unexpected observation from the back seat.

“This is just like the beginning of a horror movie,” she says.

I laugh nervously.

“But I’m not worried,” she continues, “because the pretty girl always survives in the end.”

WE BRAVE THE damp, blowing wind and explore the site. Yes, one main building is more or less standing, as Molodtsov suggested. But to think that all you need to do is slap in a few windows and you have a welcome center seems something many levels of magnitude beyond optimistic. We dodge heaps of twisted metal, disemboweled electronic devices of unknown significance, and a huge porcelain bathtub. The buildings are eerily quiet and empty. There is not even the usual startled fluttering of pigeons, the denizens of every other abandoned and hopeless building the world over.

We spend some time on post-apocalyptic art-photography and root around, trying to locate the site of the actual Borehole. We know it has been covered over and Molodtsov had said it would undetectable, since the tower encasing it was torn down. Still, we search until our fingers are numb and the depressingly shabby surroundings take a toll on our psyches. The place has not gotten to this state by simply falling down for 20 years; scavengers, looters and vandals have clearly been legion.

The journey ends with a cup of hot tea near a small pond adjoining the complex – we don’t dare think what sort of heavy metals might have settled into its silt. Then we hastily hop back into our chariot for a sunset drive back to civilization, past gargantuan, man-made mountains, geological reject piles doomed to erode over the centuries in the cold back of nowhere.

Just past the ten-story tailing piles we see a large, black crow soar overhead. It is the only living thing we have seen since leaving Nikel hours before.