A sunny Kambalny (and some Kamchatkan naming traditions).

Having had to sit out the bad weather the previous day, we woke the next morning to clear blue, sunny skies – a rare but actually possible climatic phenomenon in Kamchatka. So after a quick breakfast (the weather could turn later in the day, so we had to look sharp), we all hopped into the chopper and flew up to the peak of Kambalny volcano!…

And here it is – at the end of its eponymous ridge:

It may come as a surprise to you that volcanologists consider a volcano to be active if it has erupted in the last 10,000 years; that is, after the last ice age. Kambalny is one such volcano: active, but rarely so. Its last big eruption was in the 14^th century – more than 600 years ago. Since then there’ve only been two instances of activity – both on a much lesser scale: firstly, some 250 years ago; and secondly, just recently – in 2017, when Kambalny emitted a column of volcanic ash five to six kilometers high! ->

That photo is from here (I found a video too). And here’s the exact same spot all that ash came from:

In closing, a few words on Kamchatkan nomenclature…

Kamchatkan natural objects’ naming customs, which are often simple, clear and straightforward (at least in Russian), can be demonstrated based on the good example of Kambalny.

There’s the Kambalnaya river. It runs past Kambalny volcano, through Kambalnoe lake, and into Kambalny Bay in the Sea of Okhotsk. The endings on the root Kambal change due to the case of the noun following it in Russian: river – feminine (aya); volcano and bay – masculine (y); and lake – neuter (oe)).

There’s another algorithm used in Kamchatkan nomenclature – one which honors the memory of folks significant to given locations…

For example, inside Ksudach caldera there’s Lake Shtubel, named after the pioneering volcanologist. Kambalny itself also once followed this algorithm: from 1804 to 1910 it was called not Kambalny but Mount Koshelev, named after general (of the Russian Empire) Pavel Ivanovich Koshelev. In 1910 it went back to its pre-1804 name of Kambalny, while Koshelev became the name of a nearby volcano (and I said the nomenclature is “simple, clear and straightforward”?!).

The rest of the photos from our Kamchatka-2024 trip are here.