Volcano-crater treks – +1!

Kamchatka truly abounds in natural beauty, and here’s another precious gem in its impressive crown: the Maly Semyachik volcano, whose main feature is its rather sizeable crater (~800x900m), which cradles a stunningly colorful lake:

From the side the volcano looks rather unremarkable; you’d never guess such a marvel is hiding inside ->

I’m sure I’ve done so before, but I’ll quote Wikipedia again:

“Maly Semyachik … is a stratovolcano located in the eastern part of [the] Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia. It is a compound stratovolcano located in a 10-km-wide caldera within the 15×20-km mid-Pleistocene Stena-Soboliny caldera. Three overlapping stratovolcanoes were constructed sequentially along a NE-SW line, with the youngest cone, Tseno-Semyachik, at the southwest end. A hot, acidic crater lake fills the historically active Troitsky Crater, which formed during a large explosive eruption of Ceno-Semiachik about 400 years ago.

The water in the lake is poisonous and has an unusual bright turquoise color as a result of several types of acids and other substances being dissolved in it. The water in the lake never freezes, even when everything is covered with a layer of ice and deep snow. The name “Semyachik” translated from the Itelmen means “Stone Earth”.

It states there the lake’s turquoise – and often it is. But it also changes color. See the first pic above – light gray, right? I’ve also seen it off-white, royal blue, and dark gray!

I’ve flown over this extraordinary site by helicopter several times, and every time I’d dreamed of landing and walking along the crater’s rim. Then last year that wish came true (dreams do come true sometimes!). But, as I’ve found, dreams tend to grow, and soon I found I wanted to hike all the way around the volcanic crater’s rim. And this time – that’s just what we did!

But I’ll get to the rim-walk later; for now – a volcanic caldera/crater rim-walking digression!…

Maly Semyachik is actually my 12^th full-circle crater-walk. I’ve written before about my passion for circling volcanoes, so let me quote myself (from here):

“Walking around – full circle – the upper ridges of volcanic craters and calderas is a splendid idea. Unique views in all directions, aka – beauty-360˚! I’ve already gone into this topic in a research-post entitled: 12 reasons volcanoes are way better than mere mountains.“

And now for my list. Number one goes way back to my pre-blog days of 2004:

I. Mount Vesuvius, Italy. Yes, really! ->

II. Gorely, Kamchatka. Walking around its two main craters is a must. Back in the day we had to figure out the route ourselves, but now there’s a well-trodden adventure-tourist trail ->

III. Ksudach, Kamchatka. A full two days to walk around! Simply… Countach! ->

IV. Sopka Gorshkova, Kamchatka. The “blister” on the Northern Fissure just by Tolbachik. Small, but it counts as a volcano! ->

V. Cuicocha, Ecuador. Walking around this scenic old volcanic crater is just mind-blowingly delightful ->

VI. Mount Fuji, Japan. Magical ->

And two more Japanese volcanic craters:

VII. Maruyama crater, Aogashima. What an absolutely gorgeous island! ->

VIII. Hachijojima-Fuji. A more low-key island. We had a long layover, so we decided to climb its volcano and circle its summit ->

IX. Bromo, Indonesia. Another stunning walk around a perfectly symmetrical volcanic cone ->

X. Kelimutu, Indonesia. Mind-blowingly beautiful! The “Blue [?!] Eyes of Kelimutu” are just… wow! ->

XI. Tarawera, New Zealand. A string of craters that we nearly managed to circumnavigate in full ->

And now we come to number XII on my list: the crater of Maly Semyachik, Kamchatka. Here’s how we rolled…

The hike around the crater starts, of course, with actually getting up there. We chose to do so by helicopter, and didn’t regret it…

After landing, we packed up our backpacks, gathered our courage, and set off. The views along the route are just spectacular! But it’s pretty steep in places, so sure footing is crucial…

Often – sloped surfaces:

And here come the panorama pics…

This is what Petrovich loves; after all – he’s been known to utter more than once the following phrase: “Petrovich is designed for walking on flat, level ground” ->

At times, the vistas were truly exquisite:

As we walked clockwise, the acidic lake was always to our right:

Mysterious structures noted along the way:

Makes you wonder what kind of winds blow here in winter to sculpt the landscapes like this:

Walking along this ridge is actually quite safe – even if you slip, you can stop yourself easily. But if an earthquake shakes things up and a section of the rim tumbles into the lake… well, that’s another story…

Meanwhile, the easy section ended, and soon we were climbing upward ->

Another fantastic view into the crater:

The view outward isn’t bad, either! ->

After covering about a third of the way around the crater, we hit a muddy stretch that was hard to walk on. We first tried detouring along the outside of the crater, but that was tricky too…

Petrovich, ever the wise one, took one look at this detour-route, and remarked: “Petrovich isn’t going along that; time to get back onto the original route – mud or no.” And it was absolutely the right call!

Back on track, we carried on: steep slopes, soft and unpredictable scree, wet and slippery clay…

We eventually hit the halfway point. If you look closely, there – just a little left of center you can spot our helicopter ->

Next came a relatively easy, level section:

But then, again – another totally impassable, slippery stretch:

As we hiked, I kept worrying we’d run into something insurmountable and be forced to turn back. Thank goodness that never happened!

Grrr. This was turning into a real pain in the ***. Just too tough to enjoy…

But we persevered. Really, it’s a volcano-trek that should only be done by mountaineers. Yes, we’re proud we managed it; but I don’t think we’ll do it again. Btw: see that faint line on the slope? That’s the detour path:

Once we’d come full circle, we had a climb upward ->

Though I’d trekked across snowfields and scree before, trudging up a steep incline on sticky, wet clay – this was a first. But the views on the way were simply fantastic! ->

Looking outward – just as wow! ->

Strange structures line the crater’s rim, but by now nothing surprised us:

Here’s a view of the crater and acidic lake from the other side. Tourists never come here – so this is a rare shot:

Assorted pics:

Wow; what a day. And one to remember: the day we circumnavigated Maly Semyachik! Hooray, comrades!

In closing, some photographic masterpieces taken by DZ ->

And that was that! Time to fly on!…

The best high-res pics from our fall-2025 Kamchatka trip are here.