Kamchatka expedition
Travelling inside the crater of the active volcano Ksudach
Inside the crater of the active volcano
Fascinated by the memories of Kamchatka nature, I am once again returning to a distant peninsula in the Pacific Ocean. I was inspired to continue my journey by the desire to reach the easternmost point of Kamchatka - Cape Africa in the Bering Sea and the dream to descend by motorbike into the crater of the active volcano Ksudach.
The huge crater of the Ksudach volcano is surrounded by vertical walls. Inside the crater you can see a huge red crater. This is Steubel's crater, the site of a huge explosion in 1907. The eruption was so strong that volcanic dust was blown into the upper atmosphere and spread across the planet. A crater and a lake were formed on the site of the exploded cone, which were named after the German volcanologist and traveller Moritz Stübel. There are no roads to the volcano. It was necessary to cross fords, drive through mountain passes, wild forest and volcanic ash.
Another volcano I wanted to get close to during this trip was Shiveluch volcano. The name Shiveluch is translated from the ancient language as ‘smoking mountain’. It is the most active volcano on the Kamchatka peninsula. Eruptions, when Shiveluch destroyed everything within a radius of tens of kilometres, occurred more than once. One of the most recent eruptions of Shiveluch is described as follows: the area to the east was plunged into darkness. A huge amount of blasted material was thrown up to 15 kilometres away and covered the ground with a layer of several metres. All forests and shrubs were either buried or burnt, and all living things that could not fly or escape in time were killed.
The most distant point of the Kamchatka trip is Cape Africa. This cape is the beginning of the underwater ridge connecting the continents of Eurasia and America. Cape Africa is the easternmost point of Kamchatka. My journey to this cape was to the edge of Kamchatka land. Many kilometres of wet tundra, mountain ranges with white caps, endless black beaches with volcanic sand, beautiful bays, reefs and a lot of animals - this is what I met on this trip!
