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Comment by random5634 | Hacker News Reader

Here's a link with an image of the highway of bones:

https://elpais.com/internacional/2020-12-23/perdidos-en-la-t...

Here is a video of a drive along it between the cities mentioned in the article:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J46vglp6g98

Insane cold in this area - I'd be curious what type of preparation they had for this, and why not turn back if things were impassable?

Google in the USA maps lots of roads that are 4x4 only (but totally fine on 4x4).

Is this really a ghost road with no use in 20 years? I could pretty easily find some towns that would seem to be connected with it. Also plenty of adventurers and motorcyclists (??? how cold would that be?) seem to take it?

Did they by ANY chance turn down a farm road or some other side track?

A brief check of sat views doesn't really match the "abandoned for 20 years" claim being made here.

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From this link posted in another comment it says "The two travelers - not dressed for extreme cold - evidently took a wrong turn and their car got damaged". So it does not seem to be because google suggested the incorrect route.

https://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/tragedy-in-yakut...

Edit: It was pointed out in the comments below that Google maps does go on the correct route now. It is the same general road, but there was a section called the "Old Summer Road" that had fallen in to disrepair but was shorter.

Here is a link that illustrates the difference: https://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/481952e93a2fed32c94a09bd...

Google maps now follows the red dotted line in the image if you enter the route.

2000 km of ice covered road in one of the most remote places on Earth. People freeze to death on well traveled highways, never mind Kolyma; a place legendary for its lethality. I suppose it's fine that Google is making refinements to obscure routes, but understanding the fate of these people is better informed by Darwin's insights than anything happening at Google.

Not necessarily. Google Maps takes algorithmic approach to identify roads and routes, but as shown by this account and numerous others in the comments, sometimes that algorithmic approach fails and needs to be corrected by human intervention. If it’s known that some roads are dangerous and if it’s not difficult for Google to obtain this information, then there is a responsibility to intervene.

huh, seems like there are numerous towns visible on the satellite/aerial imagery on the "old summer road". Are those towns cut off in the winter (by land)? Do they have an ice road? Seems unusual that travel is easier in the summer. In northern Canada summer travel is often not possible by land due to extensive mud and bogs. In the winter you can travel across the frozen tundra much more easily (although you need to be prepared if you car breaks down).

They're actually more connected in the winter for exactly the reason you stated. Locals do use the road though. These guys wouldn't have gotten as far as they did if the road wasn't in fairly regular use. This is a forested part of Russia and nature reclaims things faster than that.

It looks like their car (Toyota Chaser) was not fit for the purpose. I mean, looking at the car's wikipedia page I can see a city sedan that is definitely not adequate for off-road driving conditions at minus 40-50 degrees Celsius.

Judging by a couple of photos I could find on Google Maps it looks like in the summer the road is barely accessible using vehicles like the famous UAZ-452, I'm talking about this photo [2] showing a UAZ-452 crossing a river. In the winter I saw that these two people did it with a heavily equipped Toyota off-roader [3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Chaser#6th_Generation_(...

[2] https://www.google.com/maps/@63.351051,140.967979,3a,75y,90t...

[3] https://www.google.com/maps/@63.258317,143.201208,3a,75y,90t...

WOW! I would not have expected that be the car used on the "Highway of Bones" with insane levels of cold! I hope they were running it with chains at a minimum.

If you dress right, have a good thermal sleeping bag, have calories in your system, you can do pretty well. A fair number of sleeping bags have survival temps as low as negative -40. I've done OK once or twice at surprising levels of cold (sleeping in the back of car / SUV on a ski trip other winter trek is not end of world, even without cars heater).

Not totally clear still why this is a story about google.

The 2nd pic is great

Well, types who buy cars like these[1] are usually not the type who cares. Those are mostly known as cheap cars for kids to put on 1 megawatt turbos, and giant spoilers on.

[1]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0ONai65wZDk

In the winter the road is packed ice and easy from the vehicle traffic and the rivers can be driven over rather than forded.

In summer there are sections of mud pit, swamps, river crossings because the road is unmaintained. Anything with at least three wheels and a heated cab is fine in winter.

If the vehicle was actually unsuitible they would have gotten stuck within walking distance of town instead of putting a branch through the radiator trying to make an N-point turn in the bush after going the wrong way (probably down some little side fork).

First rule of traveling there is never travel on one car/bus. There are so many stories about that, including a dozens of people frozen when a bus broke in the middle of nowhere

For what it's worth, OpenStreetMap has a section of it as a "track" with "very_horrible" smoothness, but openrouteservice routes that way anyway: https://maps.openrouteservice.org/directions?n1=61.559148&n2...

No clue what is the most common routing service, but at least Graphhopper and OSRM picks the correct route

https://www.openstreetmap.org/directions?engine=graphhopper_...

Oh, curious. I guess the data used by openrouteservice.org might be a bit stale. There was an edit three weeks back: https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/95556786 "the section is practically impassable, this is no longer a road"

That graph just says they didn't bother cutting through the hills make a nice easy grade. The resolution isn't fine enough to tell you whether it's a potholed mud pit or graded gravel.

It's not a real highway anymore and there are some bridges out but the road is still used by local traffic (mainly heavy trucks and 4x4s that can more easily ford the rivers). It is more passable in winter because the rivers can be driven across and there is more ice and less swampyness.

Several people have done the road and other remote dis-used highways on motorcycle (in summer/autumn when it's more difficult but the weather is less brutal). The AVrider forum has several threads with lots of pictures.

Traveling these kinds of roads is common in this part of Russia. I would bet money that they had driven the "correct" route before and then when Google said the old road was faster they knew exactly what they were getting into and figured they'd give it a try because it might save time. Their mistake was not being prepared.

And for a link of one such trip (which was also posted on ADVRider at the time - "Sibirsky Extreme 2010")

http://sherrijosbecauseicanworldtour.blogspot.com/2010/08/ol... (There's a part 2 + 3)

In the US (especially in the West) there are a lot of roads that are seasonal and/or that should really only be tackled with appropriately equipped high-clearance 4WD with a driver who is familiar with driving under those conditions.

Even a fairly straightforward off-paved road route like to the Racetrack in Death Valley, sees the local Jeep rental/tour company rescuing standard passenger car drivers all the time because they get tire punctures with no or crappy rental car jacks, etc. (Or they change tires and the doughnut spare lasts for 5 minutes.)

I've fiddled with Google Maps in the Death Valley area and my experience was that it wouldn't take you on stupid routes just because they are shorter. But if you give it a destination that can only be reached by a challenging road, it will route you on it.

> because they get tire punctures with no or crappy rental car jacks, etc. (Or they change tires and the doughnut spare lasts for 5 minutes.)

The sharp rocks of Death Valley and other super arid parts of Nevada was not something I had really thought about until I saw a picture of the car from one of my friends in Nevada. In addition to the normal full-size spare tire, there were two other tires stuck in the back of the car. He worked in a mine and apparently the road up there was full of these sharp rocks so there were days (not often) that he had to change 2 tires during his commute.

I imagine that it is particular type of rock prone to fracturing with sharp edges. But I also wonder if the sharper rocks more common because of the super arid conditions and are not worn down by the weather.

Flint is one. Used as knives and axe heads in neolithic times. I've had a couple of motorcycle punctures from flint shards.

I drove on a farm track in the Coromandel, New Zealand. The track was very steep and there was lots of wheel spinning getting through. The sharp rocks messed up the tyres. On closer inspection the rocks were bits of volcanic obsidian.

Is that not the road used by Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman in Long Way Round? Because if yes then that road was passable, but even in the summer they had to cross several streams and it looked like the only people driving it were locals in old 6x6 Kamaz Trucks.

If you excuse the episode where they behave like brats at not getting the bikes they wanted, the series is great (and so is “The long way down”).

Can also recommend Long Way Up the new one where they use mostly electric bikes.

In my personal opinion it's the weakest of the three - way too much time is spent on technical problems with the bikes and cars and very very little on culture and people of the countries they go through, it picks up in the last 3 episodes but that's 3 out of....11? I also hate the Americanised editing style where even in perfectly mundane situations there's extremely dramatic music playing, rapid cuts between scenes, and worst of all, episodes ending on cliffhangers like some cheap TV drama. Long way round and long way down had far more soul to them. But hey, that's just my opinion.

And the other thing - I really wish they waited just a year or two with this adventure, the tech they used was literally on the verge of maturing but 90% of their problems were due to driving prototype vehicles. Literally just a year after filming, there are both electric cars and motorcycles that don't run effectively alpha firmware.

I haven’t watched it yet but soon will, thanks for this gambit if and yello_postit.

If they had delayed too long they may have run into covid times and that has ruined an awful lot of things.

Long Way Round was 16 years ago. Lots can change in that time.

Doesn't look that bad overall, especially at 8:50 in that youtube video, you can see a snowplow dropping salt on the roads as well. I would not call that an abandoned ghost road.

The article says a stick punctured their radiator. So no chance to turn back. I’m guessing “stick” should be translated differently, but anyway their radiator was ruined.

Probably more like a "log" (original article says "un tronco o una piedra", like 'a log or a stone').

-54C?! I've been in places where it got to -30C and it's .. weird. Things sound different outside. It's crazy how there are animals that seem to be able to survive it fine.

Google suggested a side road apparently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25574961

Very helpful, thanks for this!

I think there is some mistranslation there. (From Russian to Spanish to English.)

From what I can find, Kolyma Highway is still used and not disused since the 70s, as the article says.

A different article says they took a wrong turn and got stuck, it makes no mention of Google Maps.

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