The Klyuchevskaya orchestra.

My “Another day – another different corner of the globe” series continues! Today – back to Kamchatka!…

Some 350 kilometers north of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky is one of the most magnificent volcanic sights in the world – the Klyuchevskaya group of volcanoes. It’s the largest “agglomeration” in Russia – combining 14 volcanoes (including four active ones) and several hundred cones, domes, and other knolls. And the stars of the show of this group are the three adjacent volcanoes Klyuchevskaya Sopka, Kamen, and Bezymianny.

I never tire of marveling at the Klyuchevskaya group, which is why I’ve kept returning over and over down the years. During our September 2025 trip around Kamchatka we approached it from a different direction but, alas, it was completely shrouded in dense cloud. Still, even in that setting the views are simply stunning. Add to that the lack of oxygen in the helicopter (we were flying up near the summits – altitudes not to be sniffed (between ~3000 and nearly 5000 meters!)) and the other impressions we’d picked up along the way, and it all still added up to a  VIP experience (Volcanism Impossibly Perfect)!

We tried to see the splendor of the Klyuchevskaya group from all sides ->

Here’s the summit puffing away ->

Kamen didn’t fully reveal itself either ->

No matter from which direction we approached the group, we still didn’t get any good views of it last year. The year before was much better.

We didn’t see Bezymianny either, for the same cloudy reason. In the photos you can only make out gas clouds – if you can tell volcanic emissions from an ordinary water cloud…

Yes, this time the views weren’t the most magical.

Although… there is no “bad weather” in nature Klyuchvskaya is still amazing in any weather!

More volcanic vaping:

The beauty attracts extreme adventurers who regularly try to reach the summit of Klyuchevskaya Sopka. But they don’t always come back safe and sound. The Sopka is in a sense a lottery: you can climb up and come back down again – or not. So I don’t approve of climbing up to this particular volcanic summit. Too mad-hatter dangerous by far…

Next, another fine volcano of the Klyuchevskaya group – Tolbachik:

Sure – charming… But not perfect due to the cloud ->

Plosky Tolbachik. Not that you’d know it… ->

Ah – that’s better:

Somewhere on the horizon Klyuchevskaya Sopka is sticking out. Or is it Kamen? ->

Ostry Tolbachik from the south ->

Glaciers on the northern side:

Snow on the southern slopes:

And the “popped blisters” of the Northern Fissure:

Here we spontaneously decided to set the chopper down on one of these blisters and walk around the summit.

The views here in different directions make your head spin. And all this is the result of the Great Tolbachik Fissure Eruption of 1975–1976. Here it is on the map:

The eruptions of these blisters occurred 50 years ago – but the lava flows have only just started to sprout vegetation:

It’s not only about the bright colors here – the crater slopes in some places would get so hot that, if you stuck a piece of wood into certain cracks, after a while it caught fire. And that was happening 10–15 years ago (40 years after the eruption). Photo from 2010:

Everything’s since cooled down and this trick no longer works. But still – a magical place!

By the way, this is what it looks like now:

A similar photo from our 2012 trip. You can see how the landscapes are gradually becoming covered with vegetation:

And another colorful photo from that same 2012. I really want to see Tolbachik in roughly the same kind of weather:

The view in the other direction:

The same view 10–15 years ago. You can see clearly how the black cinder desert is retreating and getting covered with multicolored vegetation:

And again, in the fall of 2025:

That’s it, we’re landing…

We didn’t have time to walk on the neighboring Gorshkov. And anyway the wind was really quite uncomfortable…

Which is a pity. Up there the colors are just stunning. It feels like you’re walking on a multicolored carpet. We absolutely have to go back.

Another curious place near Tolbachik is the Dead Forest – destroyed by the 1975–1976 eruption. Some fir trees were only partly buried, the branches held back the “cinder rain”, and voids formed around the trees. Then the branches gradually rotted away, the cavities filled with cinder, and as a result these here funnels appeared on the surface:

An interesting place!

This knoll is overgrown quite a bit – obviously formed during some even earlier eruption:

Oh, what’s that on the tree over there? ->

It’s thought that it’s some kind of disease that creates these growths. But how do they survive when the trees died 50 years ago?

The surroundings are gradually getting overgrown by advancing plant life:

For comparison – the same place in 2012:

To wrap up, a few drone shots from DZ ->

Glamping site! ->

Proportions gauger! ->

Gully? Stream? As per – where there’s water there’s more vegetation ->

And that was that – time to be flying back. And since there was little cloud cover we enjoyed some great views along the way ->

And finally – a brainteaser. What’s this? It looks as if runes were planted with trees! ->

The best, hi-res photos from our fall-2025 Kamchatka trip are here.