Magadan to Alaska !!
 

Hallo there,

I am planning a trip round the world next summer, and the plan is to go Road of Bones, and to Magada. From there I was planning to go to Alaska, but found out that Air Magadan is not flying anymore. Do you have any suggestions ! By air, by boat, by fishing boats, UPS, etc. etc. ??? I will be there in end of July og beginning August.


S. Thorsteinsson

I am also keen to see replies to this one!

Re Magadan to Alaska
 

Hi. This is a trip that I have wanted to do ever since reading about Mondo Enduro in Bike Magazine in 1996 but at the moment I have too many family responsibilities for a long trip.

The way I see it is that you can’t get a flight direct from Magadan to Alaska but (forgive me if I am stating the obvious) you can fly out of Magadan to other destination(s). I am not sure of the exact details of all flights from Magadan but you can certainly get to Moscow and from Moscow you can fly to most places. However this would not be a cheap option.

You may be able to get to some other destinations from Magadan but I can’t see much on the web but a phone call to Magadan Airport should give you some clues.

There must be boats coming & going from Magadan but you may not be able to get a direct crossing to Alaska. You may have to somewhere else like, say, Yuzhno or perhaps Japan. I can see no reason why you should not be able to get from Magadan to Alaska but you might have to go via one or more other destination to get there. There is no easy cheap option but perhaps you should start with: Where can you get to from Magadan? And then work out the best way from one of the next destinations to Alaska rather than looking for direct routes.

boat
 

hi

I am planning to drive through Turkey, into 'stans, Mongolia, Russia and then to Canada.
Also planning same timescale, i.e. Mongolia in July then across to Magadan, probably aiming to get to Magadan by end August begin Sept.

I AM NOT on a motorbike (ahh luxury of a bed and kitchen on board !!). I have an off-road prepared 4x4 ex military iveco truck (think - landrover with luxury)

obviously flying never viable for me. So I looked into (briefly) the possibility of 'ferry' or container ship.
There are companies running regular services shipping containers back n forth between Russia and certainly Vancouver.
Now the 'rent a container' idea is commonly used for us 4x4 people to get vehicles to or back from Africa so it's not an obscure off the wall idea.
Basically, you rent a box (40 ft long) and put whatever you like in so a truck and a few motorbikes could stack up as a viable option.

FESCO ( ZacharyV-little a in a circle-FESCO.com - could be an out of date contact though ) was the name of the company offering this weekly route and price was ball park figure of say $6 to $6.5k.
My hope would be to perhaps travel on board the ship with vehicle but company won't 'officially' sanction this (i.e may be possible but needs arranging at port ( i.e. back hander to captain of ship !!)).

Give it some thought, could be viable.
Check out FESCO see what info you can get (mine may be out of date).

Phil.

Many 'freighters' take passengers in small numbers. It might be possible to take a bike as 'luggage'.

bad news
 

I believe at present there are no airlines and no services connecting Eastern Russia direct with North America. In the past there have been direct flights from Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, Magadan ...

Your best bet now is probably to fly the bike to Khabarovsk, and then take Korean Airlines from Khabarovsk to Seoul and then to Anchorage.

Phil,
I'll be doing pretty much the same route as you through the stans, mongolia, etc...
Looking to share the shipping container with you.

edde

I plan on going the other way. I have to ship my vehicle from Alaska to Eastern Russia. Does anyone have more info?

For the 4X4 community..

Have you considered driving between Alaska and Russia? For real ! It's only 55 or so miles.

A team of three Ford vehicles were going to do it a few years ago in a planned publicity drive from London to New York - driving all the way under their own power only.
They got special permission to drive through the English Channel Tunnel service tunnel just before the system opened. They then went on across Russia and planned to drive across the ice to Alaska and on to NYC.

Sadly, that year exceptionally, the ice was not considered thick enough to support the cars. But other winters it could.

It really puts the seasons against you for travel, but given sufficient ice, why not?
Has it been done before?

(Personally, I am a biker so count me out!)

Huge crevaces and shifting make this not an option. It may only be 55 miles but not worth the risk. Besides, I would like to travel the Road of Bones in the summer. Pretty harsh trying to cross Syberia in the dead of winter with wife and 5 kids!

Some thoughts
 

A bit out of line here since I'm still, as Colorado Ron, into going by vehicle.
I'll leave kids and wife at home though. I am going from the american continent to Russia.

Fesco does not under any circumstances take passengers, was what I was told when spoke to them. They seemed pretty strict on that.

Shouldn't it be possible for, as the creator of this thread stated, get some fishing boat to run across and ditch a car and pick up return passengers?
80 somewhat km with people going both ways, if coordinated correctly, would be an ok deal for them. I'll gladly pay 5000 if they take me and the Suv.
The problem, I would guess, is entering Russia legaly this way.
The roads, if there are any at all, which I guess there aren't, would be the second problem. Time and patience would eventually take care of that I guess.....

Doable?

Hey!
 

I've been doing some checking. Haven't gotten hold of some happy old fisherman who's willing to slip over to Russia and dump me and my SUV.
The funniest thing would be to go by a smaller ship, but hey I don't have any personal contacts with anyone up there soo....

I'm back to air cargo, but I really can't find any usefull info on this either.
Why is this??? The world is full of people and still you can't get from Alaska to Magadan in one straight line?!!!

Nobody's got info on this?

Fesco is not an option as they ship without taking passengers.

Or perhaps someone know some cool characters in the northern parts of the American continent, who's got a boat and is willing to do this trip....
I saw this show on Discovery Channel, about lobster fishers, these guys seems like they're up for a challenge, you know them???

Post if you've got further info on them or ANY info at all.

mmm - crossing the wet bit between !
 

swedishspeeder - hi, when I spoke to FESCO they did indeed state that they do not take passengers. However, this was the 'official' answer, unofficially they told me that it may (big maybe i grant you) but they said it may be possible to arrange your own private deal at the port with the captain ????
now i know this all sounds very thin and not much to rely on and I do also realise that it's a risky gamble especially having driven all the way across Russia and the old visa window is closing rapidly behind you.
My theory was; shifting the truck across the water is the tricky bit, getting a person over cannot be that hard, if all else fails then fly across.

When you thinking of crossing ?

what plans now ?
 

SVERRIRT
LOXSMITH

how are your plans progressing ?
Have you had any luck with arranging to get your bikes over to Canada?

Phil!

My sponsors backed out!!!
That would have been fun though.
So as of 2 weeks I'll just drive up to NY load my vehicle and go by boat myself, pick it upp in england and drive home to Sweden.
I was compiling an e-mail list to a bunch of russian air-cargo lines, the day before the main sponsor decided to get cheap.

I was going to write them all (in one e-mail) and ask them for prices.
If you want I can send you the list of e-mails and the website I found them on. (Hope I still have it).

Really good that guys like you exist, that way I can point my finger towards you and say "he does it as well"/"this is rather normal".

Hope you get to do it soon!