"The first impression I had was being physically gripped by [the cold]," Chapple says. "It was literally like something had wrapped around my legs."

Chapple says he's never experienced a cold like that. He describes the streets of Yakutsk, a city of about 270,000, as dark and foggy.

"The mist from people's breath, from car exhaust and from factory emissions, it never goes away, it never dissipates," he says. "It just hangs there. So very, very misty, all through the day and night."