{"id":241,"date":"2006-12-14T10:25:53","date_gmt":"2006-12-14T06:25:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=241"},"modified":"2006-12-18T06:44:49","modified_gmt":"2006-12-18T02:44:49","slug":"gornii-vozdukh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/241\/","title":{"rendered":"Gornii Vozdukh"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A couple of weekends ago I woke up on the\u00a0Saturday morning feeling very hungover following a night of heavy drinking with an English colleague and his Russian girlfriend.\u00a0 Having tried all morning to get rid of the headache and numb feeling in my body, I decided a brisk hike up the mountain at the back of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk might do the trick.<\/p>\n<p>The mountain&#8217;s Russian name is Gornii Vozdukh, which translates to Mountain Air, and is the site of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk&#8217;s only ski-slope (there are in fact several on the same mountain).\u00a0 I took a picture of the main slope\u00a0in the summer and posted it <a href=\"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=206\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.\u00a0 Since then it has snowed quite a lot, although not enough for the slope to be open to skiers and snowboarders yet.\u00a0 Anyway, I donned my Zamberlan walking boots, fastened on my gaiters, pulled on the rest of my hiking gear and set off straight up the side of the ski-slope.\u00a0 It was pretty hard work I can tell you, and about halfway the snow was getting too loose and too deep, so instead I walked the rest of the way along the road (which will shortly become impassable to vehicles).\u00a0 After an hour I had made it to the top, planted my Union Flag, shook hands with my sherpa, and claimed this\u00a0peak for Britain.\u00a0 I share with you here some photos I took on the hike (click on a picture for a bigger version).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/images\/Sakhalin%2059.jpg\"><img title=\"Gornii Vozdukh, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk\" style=\"width: 406px; height: 266px\" alt=\"Gornii Vozdukh, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk\" src=\"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/images\/Sakhalin%2059.jpg\" align=\"middle\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/images\/Sakhalin%2060.jpg\"><img title=\"Gornii Vozdukh, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk\" style=\"width: 406px; height: 266px\" alt=\"Gornii Vozdukh, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk\" src=\"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/images\/Sakhalin%2060.jpg\" align=\"middle\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/images\/Sakhalin%2061.jpg\"><img title=\"Gornii Vozdukh, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk\" style=\"width: 406px; height: 266px\" alt=\"Gornii Vozdukh, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk\" src=\"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/images\/Sakhalin%2061.jpg\" align=\"middle\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/images\/Sakhalin%2062.jpg\"><img title=\"Gornii Vozdukh, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk\" style=\"width: 406px; height: 266px\" alt=\"Gornii Vozdukh, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk\" src=\"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/images\/Sakhalin%2062.jpg\" align=\"middle\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/images\/Sakhalin%2063.jpg\"><img title=\"Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk from Gornii Vozdukh\" style=\"width: 406px; height: 266px\" alt=\"Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk from Gornii Vozdukh\" src=\"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/images\/Sakhalin%2063.jpg\" align=\"middle\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/images\/Sakhalin%2064.jpg\"><img title=\"Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk from Gornii Vozdukh\" style=\"width: 406px; height: 266px\" alt=\"Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk from Gornii Vozdukh\" src=\"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/images\/Sakhalin%2064.jpg\" align=\"middle\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/images\/Sakhalin%2065.jpg\"><img title=\"Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk from Gornii Vozdukh\" style=\"width: 406px; height: 266px\" alt=\"Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk from Gornii Vozdukh\" src=\"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/images\/Sakhalin%2065.jpg\" align=\"middle\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/images\/Sakhalin%2066.jpg\"><img title=\"View from Gornii Vozdukh, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk\" style=\"width: 406px; height: 266px\" alt=\"View from Gornii Vozdukh, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk\" src=\"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/images\/Sakhalin%2066.jpg\" align=\"middle\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A couple of weekends ago I woke up on the\u00a0Saturday morning feeling very hungover following a night of heavy drinking with an English colleague and his Russian girlfriend.\u00a0 Having tried all morning to get rid of the headache and numb &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/241\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[25,46],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}