Kambalny Ridge: volcanism heaven – without the crowds. | Nota Bene: Eugene Kaspersky’s Official Blog

There aren’t many places in the world where you can find world-class, mind-blowingly beautiful natural objects… without the typical crowds of tourists. But in Kamchatka – you can!…

Of course, I’ve been seeing – and mentioning in my blogposts – the steady rise in the numbers of tourists that visit Kamchatka in recent years, but, all the same, given Kamchatka’s vast size (bigger than the UK), those are still a mere drop in the ocean.

Perhaps the most striking example of the relative touristlessness of Kamchatka can be found at the southernmost end of the peninsula – where there are the two unique and astonishingly grandiose volcanoes – Kambalny and Koshelev. Here’s Kambalny and its eponymous ridge:

And here’s Koshelev:

These volcanoes are more than 200 kilometers from the town, and given there’s no proper road in-between, “regular” tourists tend not to get this far south; getting here for them is too far, too difficult, too expensive. There’s also nothing to attract extreme skiers, snowboarders, or rock climbers down here since these two volcanoes are both just ~2000 meters tall. All the same, the outstanding beauty to be beheld down here is off the scale (given good weather) – made all the more outstanding by there being no tourists milling about whatsoever!…

We spent three nights down at the southern tip of Kamchatka – in tents near a thermal field on the edge of Kambalny Ridge. In this post – about this Ridge…

The main thing for us: Kambalny Ridge is trekkable. It’s around eight kilometers in length as the crow flies, and around 12km taking into account all the twists and bends along the way…

I’d been here before, in 2015, and ever since I’d dreamed of getting back – in good weather. But on each trip to the peninsula since then that didn’t work out due to the annoying lack of any such good weather (yes: same old, same old for Kamchatka). This year – the weather wasn’t bad: hallelujah! Here’s how things were looking upon approach in the chopper:

Walkies time! ->

It was hardly a clear, sunny day, but all the same – at least we had (distant) visibility:

That’s where we were heading – along that there (Kambalny) ridge ->

The going wasn’t easy:

I’ll never tire of such Kam-treks. They’re like a good book – each time you read (trek) it again you get something more/different. But that’s where the comparison ends – for the book doesn’t change; Kamchatka does: be that in the form, simply, of good weather (!), or something more significant and volcanistic like an eruption or landslide…

Kambalny – the view from the north:

And here’s the… Jabba-the-Hutt-like form of Koshelev ->

An interesting phenomenon you can come across here: snow tunnels ->

The tunnels appear if a warm stream in winter gets blocked up under several meters of snow. The stream melts the snow around it – and that’s how you get the tunnels ->