Vilkitsky Strait

Geographical location

The Wilkizkistraße (Russian пролив Вилькицкого / proliw Wilkizkowo ) is a strait that separates the Taimyr peninsula in northern Siberia by the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago.

The strait connects the Kara Sea in the west with the Laptev Sea in the east. It is about 130 kilometers long and at its narrowest point, between the northernmost point of the Taimyr Tscheljuskin Cape and Cape Taimyra Peninsula on the Bolshevik Island, 56 kilometers wide. East of the Bolshevik Island branches of the Wilkizkistraße in a northeasterly direction from the Jewgenowstraße which separates this largest island in the group of the southeast outlying smaller Starokadomski and Little Taimyr Island. In the western part of the strait lie the four small islands in the Heiberg Island group. The Wilkizkistraße is in the western part of 100 to 150 feet deep, in the eastern part to about 200 meters.

The street is named after hydrographer Boris Wilkizki in 1913 when attempt failed, while the " Hydrographic Expedition of the Arctic Ocean " with the icebreaking cargo ships Taimyr and Waigatsch to pass through the strait during the Northeast Passage and got stuck in the ice off Cape Tscheljuskin. For the first time this northernmost section of the Northeast Passage had been run through 1878/79 Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld of.