On foot from the Valley of Geysers to the Valley of… Death!

Uzon – done.

Valley of Geysers – done.

The Valley of Death – done, but that was last year, and in the summer. So why not head back there to see it painted in autumnal colors? Why not indeed…

Over there – the start of the Geyzernaya River, which flows through the Valley of Geysers:

The Valley of Death is hardly known about. You won’t even find it marked on either Yandex or Google Maps (although Google at least has some better quality photos).

It’s only about five kilometers as the crow flies from the Valley of Geysers, so most of us reckoned we should walk there instead of taking the chopper (some still went in the chopper). Of course, taking the actual lay of the land into account, it turns into about 10 kilometers one way, with an elevation gain of 500 meters: still perfectly doable.

And anyway – there’s a trail that follows the famous Soviet-era hiking Route 264 from the Valley of Geysers to the Valley of Death: even more reason to walk it.

However, allow me to resort to that old, well-worn wisdom: “Don’t try this at home!” The 10-kilometer route, even if it sounds short, turned out to be much tougher in reality. Like I’ve said before, walking trips come in different flavors: there’s hiking; there’s trekking, and then there’s wrekking. You’ve guessed it – the walk to the Valley of Death was one of the latter.

But nothing that morning hinted at that. The sky was blue with a gentle scattering of clouds, and our trusty little helicopter was parked and waiting. Off we (the walkers) popped, full of optimism…

Uh-oh. We set off a bit too late: tourist helicopters (not ours!) were already disturbing the peace. Here’s one – a Mi-8 – in the middle of the pic ->

We left the “civilized” path and things turned tough. We found ourselves scrambling across waist-high grass and thickets up to our necks – and mostly uphill:

The trail would show up sometimes, only to disappear again:

But even the trail wasn’t much help: it was absurdly slippery (thanks to the recent rains) and totally unpredictable. How did folks hike here in Soviet days with just pumps on their feet?

Making lots of noise to scare off any bears lurking in the bushes (we didn’t see a single one), we finally got up onto the plateau. Even our indestructible guide, Denis, looked a bit over-exerted by that climb ->

But that doesn’t mean everything up top was flat and easy – just a touch easier going.

And the higher you go, the better the views. Looking down – you see the Valley of Geysers:

That’s where we started out this morning – from those little cabins down there:

Now we need to keep heading in that direction, toward those prominent peaks:

The autumn colors only really kick in up on the plateau (down in the Valley, you don’t see them):

Just look at all this beauty!

And see that nice little lake? It’s from yet another landslide, which blocked a river. The same landslide – due to some mysterious underground processes – caused the Velikan geyser in the Valley of Geysers stopped working some 2.5km to the southwest of the lake. Crazy how all these natural events are connected.

Over there – something hissing, bubbling, and steaming. But we didn’t check it out this trip ->

Btw: all this awesome volcanism (both the in Valleys of Geysers and Death, plus the Uzon caldera) is the work of a neat little volcano with the unusual (in both Russian and English) name of Kikhpinych ->

Almost there… the Valley of Death ->

Everyone was pretty wiped out – understandable for those who hiked, but even the folks who came by helicopter seemed tired (must be the name of the valley giving off deathly vibes).