Ksudach: the extended Kamchatkan volcano experience with no match.

Onward – southward, heading for the inimitable Ksudach volcano – a… Countach among the peninsula’s ~~fastest~~ ~~retro~~ ~~12-cylinder~~ biggest and most striking volcanoes!…

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been here, but it could be a hundred and I’d never tire of it: its colossal caldera, the new crater growing up inside it, and the two luscious lakes: oh my gigantically grand, green and grandiose!…

The drone comes into its own here:

The Shtubel crater – the one in the middle – is such a beaut:

The water in the lake is dippable-swimmable – if you don’t mind its being cold:

The views from up on the ridge of the main caldera are also awesome:

A waterfall is featured:

All very nice – if you can manage to get here, for doing so is difficult without one of these:

…But that’s what makes Ksudach all the more exclusive (it’s alright for some, eh?!)

Btw: previous visits’ reports:

2021
2015
2012
2010 (pics only; the text is in Russian)

As per tradition we stayed at Ksudach for a few days: walkabouts, swim-abouts, crater-walking, barbequing…

Our camp:

The beach may not look much but it’s got a trump card up its sleeve: it’s WARM! And the water is too: it’s piping hot at the edges of the lake:

…So hot – it steams! ->

Other, less-experienced Kamchatka-tourists are choppered to Ksudach for an hour or so, then choppered away again for the next micro-installment of micro-Kamchatkan tourisms. Poor things. If only they realized they should stay for days…

The weather, of course, can be changeable…

That’s when some natural spa-treatments are to be partaken in:

…Or a movie is watched:

I mentioned that the water is piping hot at the edges of the lake. Well, curiously – just five meters from the shore it’s freezing: perfect for cooling… beer! Here’s DZ trying to remember where he’d parked a six-pack a couple hours earlier:

Come evening the clouds lifted, so we were able to chopper up to the top of the caldera in time for the sunset:

Magical mossyness:

For some it was all too much:

Now, since we were at Ksudach for some days and the weather was unusually good, this meant that the main must-do could be attempted. As I’d written before…

“The main must-do here at Ksudach isn’t the spa-resort bit. It’s a full caldera rim-walk! That is, if the weather’s good; if it isn’t – don’t bother: waste of time…”

This was the seventh time I’d been to Ksudach. The fourth time, in 2012, was the first time we managed a full rim walk; the sixth (in 2021) was the second time (in both directions!). This year we were in taking-it-easy mode, and didn’t do a full caldera-walk, but half of one (and we had the helicopter take us to the top of the caldera’s rim instead of on foot!)…

Sure, we could have walked up (and down again – the chopper flew us back down in the evening too) ourselves, but that would have made the day a stamina-endurance test on the whole – not the sublime, steady-paced meditative experience that we got…