Over the following years, the Russians consolidated their possession of this Asian territory, now known as Siberia, and established trade relations with China, to the south. As the presence of Russians increased so did the Church. As the Russian frontier advanced eastward a fork southward occurred when the Albazin fortress on the Amur River was taken by the Chinese. This defeat in 1685 brought Orthodox Cossacks as prisoners to a settlement in Beijing that led to establishment of a [[Russian Orthodox Mission in China|China Mission]]. The Treaty of Nerchinsk, signed in 1589, formalized Russian trade and boundaries with China and provided an impetus to advance further to the east, on to the peninsula of Kamchatka.

Following the route pioneered by Kopylov in 1639, the Vitus Bering led expedition that took a year and a half to reach Okhotsk, arriving in the fall of 1727. Bering moved on to Kamchatka the following spring. Here his expedition built a boat, named ''Saint Gabriel'', that sailed north along the Siberian coast looking for evidence of the American continent. After searching for two months he convinced himself that the two continents were not joined, but he had not sighted the American coast. Returning to St Petersburg, Bering was criticized for not physically confirming the separation of the continents. A new expedition was formed that finally sailed in June 1741 from the base on the Kamchatka peninsula, named Petropavlovsk, in two small square rigged ships, the ''Saint Peter'' and ''Saint Paul'', commanded by Bering and Captain-Lieutenant Alexis Chirikov respectively. Separated by the foggy gloom of the northern seas, the St Peter, with Bering on board, arrived on [[July 16]], 1741 at the Alaskan coast with a view of the snow covered mountains that were to be named the Saint Elias Mountain Range. On the same day Chirikov on board the Saint Paul discovered Sitka Bay.