Yamal Frost - the largest natural refrigerator in the world where you can get lost

Yamal is a peninsula at the end of the world. More precisely, in the north of Western Siberia, in the very place where you can see the endless snowy deserts and the beauty of the real north. Since most of the Yamal Peninsula is chained with permafrost, with the advent of a fish processing plant, it was decided to use natural refrigerators to freeze products, namely ice caves. The repository is still operating and, for its uniqueness, has managed to acquire the status of a memorial of regional significance.

The plant was built in the village of Novy Port, about which we can only say that it has been “new” for almost a hundred years since it was founded back in the 1920s, and has never been a full-fledged large port. In fact, the village is an intermediate coal bunkering port, where ships calling on the Northern Sea Route call for fuel. However, with the advent of a fish processing enterprise, fisheries became the main industry of the village.

For a long time, they did not hesitate on the question of storing huge volumes of fish, but simply dug a giant refrigerator in the thickness of ancient ice. Which is quite logical, because why spend money on electricity and refrigeration, when you can use the features of the local climate for free. This is how the Yamal permafrost, the world's largest natural refrigerator, appeared in the 1950s. So that you better understand the scale of its ice labyrinths, let's say that it occupies about 7 thousand square meters in area and allows you to store about 2 thousand tons of products.

The creation of the permafrost took more than 10 years, in the literal sense, of hard labor. In other words, deportation of ice caves was carried out by convicts sent to Siberia, who carried out all the work with picks and other hand tools.