It is impossible to look away from the window — hills, volcanoes, ribbons of rivers, green forests. Sometimes you can even see a bear, that is frightened by the sound of a flying giant above him and runs to the nearest dwarf pine thickets. The helicopter is full of tourists, there are about 20 people on board. Everyone is patiently waiting, adjusting their headphones, staring at Kamchatka, smiling at their neighbours and keeping their cameras of different brands and sizes ready. As soon as we fly to the next nameless mountain with streaks of melting snow, everyone clings to their gadgets and takes dozens of shots. And I am no exception.
Flying over Kamchatka is the best way to understand the vastness of this remote land. You need to see the peninsula from above first — this will help you to navigate on the ground, understand the cardinal points, help you to see the ocean in the distance, and to memorise the locations of the 'domestic' volcanoes: Avachinsky, Kozelsky and Koryaksky. And you will constantly keep saying “Wow"! The helicopter excursion includes a visit to the famous Valley of Geysers, which is located on the Kamchatka Peninsula, a walk along the Uzon caldera and a swim in the Nalychevo hot springs. The end of the trip is always the same: tourists are relaxed after the hot springs, surrounded by volcanic sulphurous smells, they sit together at one table and eating lunch (there is only fish on the menu). But you never know in which location the trip will start and where the helicopter will land at first. It depends on the weather conditions and the number of helicopters on the routes. To separate groups of tourists, the captains agree among themselves, which helicopter will land where. There are only 14 km between the Uzon caldera and the Valley of Geysers, so the flight between the smoking tops is very short. Anyway, it doesn't really matter where you start. The first stop on our trip, for example, was the Uzon caldera.
The first part of the trip is a flight around a pair of volcanoes. On the way to the Valley of Geysers there are two of Kamchatka's giants. The first is Karymsky Volcano, with black smoke billowing out of its vent, like from a locomotive firebox. They say it sometimes hoots in the same way. It is constantly smoking and sometimes billowing out columns of ash; but flying around it by helicopter feels less alarming than it would from an airplane. It seems that the helicopter is very close to the top. But when you realise that its caldera is 5 km in diameter, you understand that the volcano is still much farther away than it seems. The guide shows a sheet with the name of the next volcano and points to which side the next Kamchatka exhibit will appear.
Now it is Maly Semyachik, an extinct volcano with a lake in the crater. The turquoise lake looks very impressive on a cloudy day, playing with all the aquamarine colours, but in fact this is a terrible mixture of sulphuric and hydrochloric acids. The lake is also warm, its temperature ranges from 27—42 °C. The depth of the lake is 140 metres. Well, you have to read all this information later, the guide stays silent on board the helicopter. It is impossible to shout louder than the engine sound, and passengers are sitting in their headphones anyway. The distance from the Valley of Geysers to the Uzon caldera is only 14 km. Just a few minutes' flight.
A reserve ranger carries a double-barrelled shotgun over his shoulder, walks along a wooden path, signalling that everyone should follow him. Kronotsky Reserve inspectors accompany every group arriving by helicopter. Even though everyone knows the strict rule to walk only along the wooden paths laid over the gurgling and stinking fumaroles, there will always be someone ready to risk stepping off the boardwalk for a dramatic photo that would shock social media. Well, bears are often seen there too and can also become dangerous content for someone's blog. Therefore, the attendant watches every step of the visitors.
But honestly, you forget about all the dangers when you go down to the caldera. It is a field of hissing fumaroles, gurgling cauldrons, sneezing mud volcanoes, multi-coloured clay tubercles, a smoking acidic lake with nettles and ferns on its shore. It seems like you can watch it for hours. And inhale the 'aroma' of rotten eggs, stinky socks, and some acid. There are more than 100 springs flowing from the ground; in total, geologists count more than 500 geothermal phenomena in the Uzon caldera. It feels like a diviine chemical laboratory of God, where something seems to be happening as if in a 'Breaking Bad' episode. All this is called volcanism — the release of various substances from the Earth's interior to the surfacel.
I notice a bear’s footprint on apparently toxic clay. I wonder if this chemical mixture under its feet is burning its paws. And what was the bear doing here? Wasn't the bear frightened off by the stench of hydrogen sulphide and everything that evaporates from these colourful puddles? But it turned out that the bears like to stomp on warm clay. In addition, in the summer there are many berries and pine nuts.
Looking at the smoking acidic Chloride lake with white water and blue-green thermophilic algae, which thrive in a hot mixture of sulphuric acid, sodium chloride, methane and hydrogen, I recall another TV series: there was a clever criminal, who got rid of bodies, dumping them into vats of sulphuric acid… even the sandals did not survive. That story took place in Yellowstone, but Uzon Caldera looks no less convincing as a setting.
Uzon is also a volcano. It has been dormant for the last 40 000 years. Yo don't see a classic cone here, because the helipad is on the flat bottom of the caldera itself, and it is one of the largest in Kamchatka. It is a huge hollow, 9 × 12 km, filled with all kinds of toxic liquids and minerals. It feels good to stay on the boardwalk. The volcano is still 'breathing' in its sleep. Three hundred thousand years ago, Uzon, as a young volcano, had a classic conical shape, reaching a height of three thousand meters. It erupted so violently that the ground beneath it collapsed and forming the caldera where our helicopter landed.
Uzon has many mud volcanoes of different sizes. If you can explain the chemical reaction that turn sulphur fumes into kaolinite clays, you could make any chemistry teacher in ecstatic. But I was never good at chemistry. So, I was just hypnotised by these grey bubbles of the earth. This is some incredible activity. There are cavities under the clay crust there are empty spaces, the ground underfoot is constantly moving. On the site of old volcanoes, landslides occur, and new volcanoes can appear anywhere. This is a real hell’s kitchen, and if someone falls into it, the consequences can be seriuos. Clay cools much longer than water.
A chemical process is taking place in every bubbling hole: arsenic and antimony are formed here, sulphur is deposited as a soft green layer, mercury, copper and zinc do their job. They say that mud volcanoes are especially active after it rains, when the clay becomes more liquid. You won’t understand how something else can exist here. However, archaea live here — tiny microorganisms that breathe sulphur and live in all sources. Well, we did not have enough time to see everything. We spent too much time at the observation tower, looking at this volcanic swamp. If we had hurried up, we could have reached Lake Bannoye with its warm water and fumarole fields. But we had to fly.
It would be more accurate to call this place the valley of the Geysernaya River. All the most interesting things are located along its riverbed. This is one of the few major geyser fileds in the world with geothermal geyser activity, the second only to Yellowstone National Park in terms of the number of geysers in the world. In fact, this is a gorge 8 km long and 4 km wide and about 400 meters deep. About 200 different springs are active in the valley.
Landscapes change quite quickly there — natural disasters have completely changed the landscape twice in the last ten years. In 2007, the largest mudflow recorded in Kamchatka came down, its front extended for about 2 km, and the total mass of volcanic mud and slag was about 20 million cubic meters! It destroyed buildings, created a 50-metre dam on the river buried and flooded 7 geysers and several springs, waterfalls and covered the Malachite Grotto. A new lake was formed, but later drained into the river. And during the next mudflow in 2014, some previously buried geysers opened again and new ones appeared. The Valley of Geysers has become even more beautiful.
In the colourful Valley of Geysers, you can find everything that is in a geologist's guide to geothermal activity — bewitching mudpots and hot springs, steam columns, fumaroles, pulsating springs, geysers, bright clays and warm lakes. The Kikhpinych Volcano is responsible for all this. Since the Valley of Geysers is a part of the Kronotsky Biosphere Reserve, visitors are allowed to walk only under supervision and only along wooden boardwalks, which are installed in a field of grass as tall as a human.
The first thing you see in the valley is the 'Stained Glass', a steaming slope about 40 meters high on the banks of the Geysernaya River, where eight large geysers and many small ones spit hot water. In total, in the valley there are 42 large geysers and 6 large mudpots today. The most spectacular and the largest mud pot is Red Mud Pot, its measures about 17 × 12 metres and about 2 metres deep.
For anyone unfamiliar with geysers is a column of boiling water, or rather, a mixture of steam and water heated by igneous rocks to 98 °C. It erupts from a vent — the gryphon. After ejecting steam, there is always a resting stage, when the geyser builds pressure in order to spit out another burst of steam with maximum force. Each geyser has its own schedule, but almost all of them erupt like clockwork. Most of the geysers and pulsating boiling springs are located in the lower part of the Geysernaya River — this is the main natural attraction of the Valley of Geysers in Kamchatka.
A little higher up the river there are two more sections. But any chance to go a little further or come closer to a geothermal feature is strictly stopped. Safety in the Kronotsky Reserve is well monitored. Gases escaping from vents and mud pots can be dangerous — every year animals fall into these traps — wolverines, foxes, small birds, even bears sometimes. But more often this happens in the nearby Death Valley.
Tatiana Ustinova, a hydrologist at the Kronotsky Reserve, discovered the Valley of Geysers in 1941, together with Anisifor Krupenin, local Itelmen guide. They arrived there in April by dog sled. For tourists, the only practical way to get there by helicopter. Due to its inaccessibility, the Valley of Geysers kept its secret for a very long time. And it remained unknown both to local Indigenous people and to the first researchers in Kamchatka — Stepan Krasheninnikov, Georg Steller, Karl Dietmar, and Vladimir Komarov.
In the middle of the last century, access to the Valley of Geysers was open to anyone who could get here. But tourists were able to inflict huge damage even to this formidable local nature. For many years, this part of the biosphere reserve of the park was closed. Tourists returned there only in 1993, since then a visit to the Valley of Geysers — a part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site — is only possible as part of an organised group.
The main attraction of the excursion in the Valley of Geysers is the eruption of the Bolshoy Geyser, which lasts 3-4 minutes. Its eruption cycle is about 70 minutes, sometimes a little less. The geyser erupts almost as spectacularly today as it did a long time ago. A wooden observation deck was built right in front of it, and the geyser performs an encore — erupting a column of steam almost 10 metres high. When it calms down and gets quiet, the Great Geyser looks like a pot of boiling water spraying in all directions. It look as if someone shoukd turn down the heat, but the water suddenly falls down somewhere deep into the rocks.
An hour in the valley passes way too fast, it seems you do not have time for anything. Time is subordinate to the eruption of the Great Geyser, it must be calculated precisely so that you are on the observation deck on time and do not miss the main show of the Valley. Impressed, we are boarding the helicopter again. Another short flight and landing — now in the Nalychevo Valley.
According to our excursion plan, the next stop is a swim in the Nalychevo hot springs and lunch. We have to change our clothes in a small wooden house on the shore pretty quickly (we have only half an hour to swim), and try to get into into the hot river. But surprisingly, it is not just warm. It is crazy hot, like in a devil's cauldron! We need some time to adjust to this heat. I try to step in while exhaling, but it is impossible to stay in hot water for a long time. My body warms up quickly in there, and after a few minutes it seems that even my brain is melting.
Well, I cool down later in the helicopter, somewhere on the way to Yelizovo. The whole way back, exhausted and overwhelmed with emotions, I stay by the window, looking at the beauty beneath: the tundra, forests, mountains and volcanoes. Upon landing at the heliport in Yelizovo, I am given a certificate stating that I was in the Valley of Geysers, one of the Seven Wonders of Russia. One of the world's major geyser fields.
Can foreign travelers visit the Valley of Geysers in Kamchatka?
Yes, foreign travelers can visit the Valley of Geysers as part of an organized helicopter tour. The route is located inside Kronotsky Reserve, so visits are regulated and groups are accompanied by reserve staff.
Do foreigners need a special permit to visit the Valley of Geysers?
The Valley of Geysers is visited through licensed tour operators, and the operator should check all current requirements for foreign citizens before the trip. Travelers may need standard Russia entry documents, migration registration and, for some Kamchatka routes, additional coordination or border-zone permits. Requirements can change, so they should be confirmed with the tour operator before booking.
How do tourists get to the Valley of Geysers?
The Valley of Geysers is reached by helicopter from airfields near Yelizovo or other helicopter pads in Kamchatka. The flight takes about one hour, and the route depends on weather conditions.
How long does the visit to the Valley of Geysers take?
According to Kronotsky Reserve, visitors usually spend about 2–2.5 hours in the valley. The walking route follows boardwalks and is about 1 km long.
When can access to the Valley of Geysers be limited?
Access may be limited in May and June because of the breeding season for bears and the nesting season for birds. The operating schedule should be checked in advance.
The Four Seasons of Russia project is supported by the Russian Geographical Society www.rgo.ru
The trip to the Valley of Geysers is recommended by the Russian Geographical Society.
Also read about Kamchatka:
Mutnovsky Volcano on Kamchatka: How I climbed into the crater of an active volcano
Trekking to Vachkazhets Mountain range
Kuril Lake: something about the life of bears and humans
Climbing Mount Camel
The Small Valley of Geysers
Avacha Bay
Volcanoes of Kamchatka
Kamchatka: Life-hacks and tips
Translation: Irina Romanova, Instagram: @astrabella1
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