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In winter when the open water of the Okhotsk Sea is warmer than the frozen plains north of the mountains, the air over the former rises, and a colder atmosphere rushes through the valley of the Viliga to take its place.
Crossing a low ridge on the west side of the "Propashchina," we reached another small stream known as the Viliga, at the foot of the Viliga Mountains. Along this there extended a narrow strip of dense timber, and in this timber, somewhere, stood the yurt of which we were in search.
He could not promise us that this route would be practicable, but he had heard that there was a beach for at least a part of the distance between the Viliga and Yamsk, and he thought that we might make our way along this beach and the pripaika, or ice-foot, to a ravine, twenty-five or thirty miles farther west, which would lead us up on the tundra beyond the mountains.
The Viliga Mountains which blocked up the road to Yamsk were cut by three gaps or passes, all of which opened into the valley, and in clear weather could be easily found and crossed.
Our guide seemed to find the road by a sort of instinct, for the drifting clouds of snow hid even our-leading dogs from sight, and all that we could see of the country was the ground on which we stood. About an hour before dark, tired and chilled to the bone, we drew up before a little log hut in the woods, which our guide said was the Viliga yurt.
His face clouded up with anxiety as he glanced at it, and replied laconically, "Viliga dooreet," or "The mountains are fooling." This oracular response did not enlighten me very much, and I demanded an explanation.
His "bedroom," bed, and bedding might all tumble into the sea before morning, and his "good night's sleep" be indefinitely prolonged. Going back a short distance in the direction of the Viliga, I finally discovered a place where a small stream had once fallen over the summit of the cliff, and had worn out a steep narrow channel in its face.
Leet himself was ready to admit that this storm on the Viliga would not compare unfavourably with anything of the kind that he had ever seen in California.
While the weather everywhere else is calm and still, the wind blows through the Viliga in a perfect hurricane, tearing up great clouds of snow from the mountain sides and carrying them far out to sea. For this reason it is dreaded by all natives who are compelled to pass that way, and is famous throughout north-eastern Siberia as "the stormy gorge of the Viliga!"
Tired and disheartened, we were compelled to camp on the slope of the escarpment for the night, with no prospect of being able to do anything in the morning except return with all possible speed to the Viliga, and abandon the idea of reaching Yamsk altogether.
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