Mountain photos - amateur and professional photos of mountains.

The author: Pokrovsky Oleg, France

 

Kamchatka

Part 2 (Part 1)

We recommend to fans of hiking to walk on Maly Semyachik. It takes only three days of walking to the northeast from Karymsky along a paved track. (You should only ask about everything on the basis of volcanists - a permanent establishment of institute of Volcanology - to know what is what there).

Maly Semyachik (1563 ì) with its acid lake a half-kilometer in width is certainly a unique place. Color of lake varies depending on illumination and color of the sky.

Sulfuric and aluminium colloids, dispersing light, can cause such paints.

 

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The acid lake of Maly Semyachik is 120 m in depth and 500 m in width. It simply corrodes metal and clothes (pH = 1.4 if to whom it is interesting). Nevertheless, our French colleague Jacob Karlovich fell down there, and anything happened, even his skin did not peel. Truth people say that a dog once having stumbled fell down there … The Lethal outcome. I do not know it could probably swallow this water. And guys once decided to try to measure its depth and came up on the middle of the lake on an easy aluminium boat which had safely thrown upward by the helicopter. They could hardly get out (already without a boat), and the structure of lake was a little enriched with aluminium. In summary, I want to warn: you will not descend to the lake on a freebie. The ropes are rotten, and the fixture does not hold. Fragile volcanic breeds of Kamchatka are not a good place for rock-climbing.

Among accessible and inexpensive places where it is possible to reach without dependence from weather conditions, “ number one ” is certainly, Mutnovka.

Farther, on a slope around of the station, go to bathing in "Dachnye(Country)" springs, from them via a paved track go upward - to the volcano. People will show the right route; for a day you will approach almost to the beginning of the ascent route on the crater. There is a road to the pass built like by a bulldozer.

There are two ways further from the pass, however the readers can combine their both. The first, we named Chemin de Cretes, to the left from the pass goes via a ridge or near to it up to the crater (1à, hardly 1á). It takes about three hours.

On the route to the ridge stands a "head" - volcanic neck of very interesting form

The track is surprisingly beautiful, especially when it passes among fantastical volcanic formations and figures of aeration

 

And in the distance, if you have luck at the weather, volcanoes - Vilyuchinsky, Opala (Disgrace), Avacha, Koryaksky are floating above the ground.

At the end of August and in September if everything round is covered with strew light snow and the anticyclone become settled you will see an unforgettable show. The top view on the crater will simply paralyze.

Actually, Mutnovka is submitted several, apparently, seven craters, grown together which are periodically active.

Now the active crater is located in distant, southern, edge of the big crater. It is not visible from above, only smoke rises, and wind brings sulphurous evaporations. The highest point of Mutnovsky - 2200 m.

You can bypass the all crater round for a day on snow, it does not represent any technical difficulties. Though it is impossible to make a full circle - "nepropuski" (as it is said on Kamchatka - the capes are impossible to pass over) on the active crater.

However, climbers may have not been there. As you have already guessed on photos, uniqueness of Mutnovka is the fact that in the crater, penetrated hot fumarol jets, a glacier of the considerable sizes lays. It is possible to descend on it from above, but it is better not to risk.

Breeds are friable, alive, everything varies every week here. Only a distant northern wall is firm enough and stable. We will return on the pass and we will go down to the river Vulkannaya flowing from the northeast crater.

Wealthy people rent "Ural" (6 x 6) which takes a group from the main road almost to the output of the river Vulkannaya on the "plain". From here there are two - three hours of easy walking up to fumarol and even an hour - up to the most active crater. I advise you to visit a falls on the river Vulkannaya where motley volcanic breeds in a combination to a "martian" landscape create a surrealistic picture

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Ascent on fumarol field and to the glacier passes goes on a slope and snow sites in places.

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Fumarols, hot jets of gas and pair, of the temperature 200-300C on the glacier and up to 600C inside the most active crater, penetrate a glacier, forming caves in it .

The thawing water gathers in springs and gives the source to the river Vulkannaya flowing below. Pay attention to our tent on kurumnik. Jets of sulphurous gas, penetrating the glacier, acidify water (to whom it is interesting, pH of the river is about 2.5, the temperature 8 C, and pH in some boiling boilers reaches up to 1 - 0.5).

In passing sulfuric mounds, roaring bottomless boilers and boiling springs we will ascend to a recently formed crater lake.

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As well as the lake of Maly Semyachik, it, while anonymous lake, is acid, but warm (temperature 20-30 Ñ). Blocks of ice, falling off from the glacier, at the period of 10-20 minutes, fall in green water. The depth of this lake is not measured yet.

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It is remarkable there is the similar acid lake in the crater of the next with Mutnovsky volcano - Gorelyi (Burnt)

 

A path rises from lake to edge of the active crater. It is frequently visible nothing from above, all is closed by clubs of pair. It strongly smells sulfur and devilry. On rotten ropes you can descend downwards the bottom, but there is nothing to do there to the usual person.

There is not potable water on Mutnovka, you should take it in a crater from below or collect while ascending from the snow sites.

On a return way it is good to stop and get warm in a base of institute of volcanology.

You can reach it going downwards the road from the place of turn "Urals".

In vicinities of the base, in the glaciers laying at the bottom of valleys of springs, water

has washed out long, up to 0.5 - 1 km, and rather high ice caves.

You can easy walking there even without crampons. On the photos - leading scientists, professors from St.-Petersburg (Valentina Nikolaevna) and from Toulouse (Jacob Karlovich) in the company with the author and a bottle of ten years' "Tawny."

At an exit from a cave - the most beautiful cascade of ice and rocks on a background . All is impregnated with a prana.

 

I have absolutely overlooked - flowers as everything else still grow on Kamchatka.

 

Beautiful traces of Bears.

It is too difficult to write about all impressions from Kamchatka within the framework of a small material.

I would thanks the remarkable people loving in Kamchatka, who helped me to make this acquaintance to Kamchatka: our friends, employees of institute of Volcanology of the Russian Academy of Science Elena Georgievna Lupikina, Gennady Aleksandrovich Karpov (Karymsky). Thanks to Michael for Mutnovka, for fine photos; to Sergey Fazlullin for the Kamchatka rivers; to Ivan Ivanovich Yatsenko for unforgettable travel along the Kamchatka river and visiting Esso; to Olga Koroleva from the settlement of Mayskoe for a shelter and hospitableness; thanks the pilots of helicopters from Halaktyrki and all - to everyone whom I could not thank. Up to the new meetings.

Some practical advice:

1. The prices aboard the plane vary constantly. The return ticket "Transaero" costs within 15-20 thousand of roubles from Moscow.

2. In Petropavlovsk - Kamchatkiy you can buy any products and drinks, and the majority of the shops work round the clock. Opposite to the market there are shops of gear, and, basically, all for the Kamchatka conditions you can find there.

3. The hotel in city costs 500 roubles for a person for a day.

4. In city there are about 50 tour agencies engaged in the organization of trips of any level. But it is possible to stay waiting for a good weather for a week. Though usually such does not happen, the weather varies quickly, for two - three days.

Jacques Schott, Celine Dessert and Gleb Pokrovsky participated in expeditions and photographing.