My People and Places Portfolio and Blog
After we returned to the Yelizovo Heliport the trip north began on the central Kamchatka road as far as the Malki Village campsite which had lots of large mosquitos, so before the usual drill of putting the tents up we covered ourselves in Mosquito spray. It was already dark when we put the tents up, and Lou was alittle tired so we had a nap, when we were called for dinner she decided not to bother to come out just for some plain rice or similar (despite being asked about dietary requirements at the beginning of the holiday they stil had meat in each main meal). When I was asked about this the interpreter/guide from Vision of Kamchatka who was by then at very least a little tipsy said that she could eat the salad in a very dismissive tone to which her now constant companion chuckled away at. This complete lack of care and attention to detail is one reason why would recommend people use another company other than this one for their trip to Kamchatka.
The next day we were joined by a couple and two more guys, and two more seats had been put into the back of the bus, they didn’/t have much room back there and they were big guys so they had problems, the other problem was the during the long trip (400km+) north there was nothing to do or see and the road was a bumpy gravel road. This lasted until turned off the dusty gravel road onto a ‘minor track’ until we got to the kamchatka river, we were to cross this on a ferry which was basically a steel pontoon with a boat attached to it, after a short break at the Studennaya (Cold) river the track got worse until we had a break to collect wood a couple of hours later but here we got our first glimpse of the Tolbachik we were to go up the next day.
The landscape eventually flattened out and looked like a lunar lanscape of volcanic ash/sand and rock with small cones around us and the imposing site of Ostry (sharp) and Plosky (Flat) Tolbachik Volcanoes that are joined together to form the Tolbachik Massif. The camp was centred around a few wooden huts that make up the local volcanologists centre, the views were fantastic of the setting sun on these volcanoes, and after setting up the camp, eating dinner, and having a quick drink with the others we crashed for the night.
The next morning I woke early to take some photos when the sun was rising, and once again I could see the two Tolbachik Volcanoes, and as we were only going up the slightly lower Plosky Tolbachik Volcano I thought to myself that my knee would stand up to the strain after a few days break from scrambling up volcanoes. Plosky Tolbachik (Along with Ostry) sits on the base of an older volcano, and there are few sightings of early eruptions, and Plosky Tolbachik is a truncated cone that used to contain a lava lake until an big eruption in 1975-76 when this collapsed and formed a 3km Caldera formed in the crater instead.
When we arrived at the starting point I felt pretty good, Lou and I had packed all our stuff into one daysack we me carrying my camera and we were going to swap after a while, it was another warm day but I felt good but about halfway up my bandage had come unstuck from my knee. I stopped to take it off and put it back on at the next stop, by this time we had already lost one of the new people in our group, he had turned back as the air got thinner, but I was coping with that part well. We were about 3/4 of the way up and after crossing a field of volcanic ash and rocks before the final part of the ascent and I feel my knee throbbing and as we scrambled up loose rocks to get on the ridge going up to final part my knee just gave way undeneath me and I yelped with pain. The rear guide for the day, Yuri saw this and shouted ahead, after sitting/laying down for a while it appeared the others were having a first lunch stop, so Lou went up to tell them I really couldn’t continue up. Valentin came down to tell us he was going to escort us down as we were too high up to go back on our own. I was very disappointed at first that I hadn’t continued, but as we descended slowly we saw the cloud come in and shrouded the volcano above us, and we also got to decend with Valentin slowly with him giving a commentary on what we were seeing. It turned out a lot of the ash/sand we had walked up was actually a thick layer of ash sat on top of a glacier from Ostry Tolbachik, and he showed us areas where we could see this, and stopped at a beatiful waterfall where you could see the water flow disappearing under the glacier we were walking over.
We eventually got to where the 6WD was parked and after a chat, drink of water we napped and waited for the others to return which they eventually did, when. That night was a little more relaxing, the last of the big volcanoes so we enjoyed a few vodkas (medicinal of course) in one of the huts, we ate in there for the next two days as the people using it previously had gone.
The next day we headed off to see the new cinder cones of the Northern Steppe that had been formed by the Great Tolbachinsky fissure eruption in 1975/76. The one were to climb was on 300m in height, but I knew my knee wasn’t up to climbing up this loose surface, but I was advised to get to the halfway point as the view was great and I took take photos from there, so I did this even if it hurt to get that far. I took photos as the others continued, these cinder cones looked amazing in themselves but also the surrounding countryside looked great too, so much though that I decided a lie down would be a good thing, so I lay down and plugged in my iPod and relaxed until the front runners on the way down.
When we had eaten lunch at the bottom we went on to the Dead forest where the trees were buried by up to 7m of ash from this same eruption, it was eerie, but there were some signs of life on the edges, a weird white moss and as we got further in some vegetation and small trees had begun to grow again. We stopped to wander around and saw the half buried reamins of an Mi-4 helicopter that had crashed around the time of the eruption, the next stop was the ‘lava caves’ where we had a wander into caves formed by the lava in a small volcanic cone.
The next day it was time to leave the area, but not before the usual chaos and inertia that that happened whenever we left anywhere, but the boredom was broken by the friendly Mountain ground squirrels who came out to entertain us.
As always with the photo gallery below click on the thumbnails to see the full, uncropped versions of the photos.
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