Kalispell logger takes a crew into the wilds of Russia on new Discovery Channel series

Sean Vann said he believes he was born 100 years too late, but working for 17 years in the Russian logging industry has given him the opportunity to feel as if he’s living in the past.

“It’s always been my kind of place, kind of wild and crazy,” Vann said. “People provide for themselves, they’re honest, good people. I fit in there and do well over there.”

Now television viewers will have the chance to experience a bit of Vann’s Russian lifestyle when the new Discovery Channel series “Siberian Cut” premieres on Tuesday at 8 p.m. locally.

The reality show follows Vann, who lives in Kalispell in between assignments in Russia, as the crew leader of four American loggers and three Russian loggers working together during a three-month stint in the frozen Siberian woods. Two of the loggers are from Northwest Montana — Brandon Woodward from Columbia Falls and Jared Fitchett from Libby. Another  American logger is from Bozeman and the fourth is an Oregon resident.

“The premise of the show is us overcoming the language barrier and all the difficulties that present themselves daily on a Russian logging site,” Vann said, though he speaks fluent Russian himself. “There are problems with roads, it’s minus 30 to 35 all the time, the infrastructure just isn’t there. You just can’t take anything for granted. It’s always a big adventure.”

Vann, who graduated from Flathead High School in 1984 and went on to serve in the U.S. military in various capacities, was managing a recent project in Siberia for a Swedish-owned company when he was the focus of a feature by a reporter from the Financial Times. Some television producers found his work interesting enough to film his daily life on a logging site for about a week. From that, the idea for “Siberian Cut” was born.

Having an American crew was a novel experience for Vann.

He hadn’t worked with fellow countrymen since his days as a logger with his father in the early 1990s. They started off in the woods in Northwest Montana and when the timber opportunities became scarce, they spent time east of the mountains and then moved on as far as Colorado. They eventually decided it wasn’t worth being so removed from their families back in the Flathead Valley, so they liquidated the company.

After hearing how wide-open the Russian timber market was at that time, Vann applied for a job as a logging supervisor in a small village, launching his new life in Russia. He worked for five different startup companies until going out on his own.

“It’s been fantastic, I’ve seen a lot of changes in 17 years,” he said. “Russia was a very different place. When I first went there, I lost a lot of weight because there was no food. There were no street lights, there were thugs, you couldn’t park your car outside or things would get stolen.”

Though he said life is still rough in villages and some of the rural areas were actually better places in Soviet times, “at least you can get food now,” he said.

His wife, Kim, used to visit Vann in Russia, and at one point she brought their two children (now ages 16 and 12) to live with him for four to five months in Russia. It was a short-term experiment.

“It’s very boring out in those villages for a western woman with no car in the middle of nowhere,” he said.

Even the Russians themselves are not interested in village life any more, Vann said. That’s part of why bringing Americans in to work for him was so appealing — he’s had trouble finding labor there.

“The Russian kids dream of getting out of the village and into the city,” he said.

He has learned a great appreciation for the American loggers’ breadth of talents compared to their Russian counterparts, he said. While Russians tend to specialize on one piece of equipment or one skill, the American loggers are “very versatile,” he said.

“It’s nice to have guys you can give a task to and they’ll do it,” he said. “It’s been really awesome to have these guys from the U.S. with me over there.”

Shooting for “Siberian Cut” was from January through April, the coldest time of year. There are no roads in the summer to the places that loggers generally need to be, Vann said, so they need the ground to be frozen in its “Siberian asphalt” state.

Vann didn’t previously know any of the loggers who ended up working with him. They went through a screening process and they chose four of the few dozen who had expressed interest.

His impression of the Discovery Channel film crew was that its members worked nearly as hard as the loggers themselves.

“They are some of the hardest-working people I’ve ever come in contact with,” he said. “It was never too cold, or too much rain, or too muddy for them. They’re in it to their waists and they’re doing what they need to do.”

Vann hasn’t seen any of the program yet and is currently in Kalispell, taking a well-earned break but already planning for the next logging season in Russia.

“I’ll start preparing for the next winter season fairly soon,” he said. “You’ll see when the show comes out what kinds of risks there are.”

Reporter Heidi Gaiser may be reached at 758-4439 or by email at hgaiser@dailyinterlake.com.