Boarding for sea trip
The Avachinshy volcano towering near Kamchatka with a layer of fog
The Avacha Bay near Petropavlovsk, Kamchatka
Lunch !!
Vladimir
Three Brothers Rocks
Comoran struggling to take off with wet feathers
The sun burning the fog
Unidentified red fish that was not comestible
Sea lions rookery
Pretty crashing waves but dangerous rocks for the boat !
Comoran drying out their feathers
Remarkably camouflaged seals
I wondered why such great camouflage but apparently the top predator are sea lions (not that far away !)
Pretty crashing waves !
Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy
Wrong end, Rover !
A local food restaurant
Helicopter visit to the volcanoes
These are probably Mil Mi-24 helicopter re-purposed after the Afghan war
Neither Thao nor me was very reassured but the ride was very smooth
Even English labels !!
After a few minutes of trying our helicopter would not take off, so the pilot went to investigate !
OK pop this thing up and poor some oil
This time it takes off !
Sorry those windows had a long life...
Colorful fields of red leaved (autumn) blueberries
Karymsky is the most active stratovolcano on the peninsula. It erupted the year after we saw it
Maly Semyachik volcano
Actually triplet volcanoes but the one on the pictures is the dominant one
The Troitsky (the explorer who discovered it) crater contains a 700 m deep lake. The steep 200 m walls are composed of the interlaced layers of lava and tuff, which make the walls striped. The fumaroles sediment adds white, yellow and greenish colors.
The light-greenish lake color is caused by sulphur which comes up from underwater fumaroles. The temperature of the lake is 30-40° C. The diameter of the lake is about 500 m, the depth is about 140 m. The descend to the lake is possible only on the talus from the north side, which ends by the steep of about 20 m height. The water is acid. When the volcanologists were exploring the lake in a rubber boat, they hardly came back to the coast - the aluminium blades were dissolved by the acid. Reference
Columnar basalt
Dolina geyzerov (The Valley of geysers)
Yes... yes... I was fascinated by those helicopters !
Big jet of boiling water
Little mud volcano
Beautiful colors!
Dancing water
Steaming landscape
PJ too lazy to go down the stairs
Small ejecta...
Big ejecta...
Blueberry plants (the one seen from the helicopter previously)
Thao with her name tag and translating machine
Karymskoye lake (3.5 km in diameter, 70 m deep) in the "Academy of Science" volcano very large caldera
Bubbling hot water sources
Bear footprints
Bear poop (she was eating blueberries !!)
No visible bear though !
Little mud volcano
Bubbly little mud volcano
More bear prints
Kamtchatka Bilberries (also known as Iwa tsusuji, Krasnika)
Nalychevo reserve
Goryacherechensky hot springs with some of the group relaxing
Thao was starving !
"To pilot or to not pilot ?"
Smiling and skilled pilot
