|
|
 
|
 |
 Russian Snow Cones Boarding Wild Volcanoes June 7, 2000
I have to go under for the third time before they can stop howling enough to lend a hand. It was a nice enough idea born of high jinx — to snowboard into a hot spring, but I'm a very long way from home and it seems this is no shield against stupidity.
Not since I steered my sister's tricycle into a canal have I felt so utterly moronic. But in my defense, this is Kamchatka, the way out back of eastern Russia on the cusp of the international date line — and it can do funny things to you. Just getting there is surreal — it's nine time zones ahead of Moscow, way east of the last stop on the Trans-Siberian Railway but only a domestic flight. A whisker further and you're in Alaska. It's early April and Kamchatka's international airport at Yelizovo is nicely frozen over and all around lie disused snowy squadrons of fighter jets, a legacy of this former military stronghold, until recently closed, even to its own countrymen. Give me a tank of avgas and an afternoon... But I digress...I'm here to sample wild volcano cones, Russian-style, and lots of them. Kamchatka is a vast fish-shaped peninsula born of the Pacific Rim of Fire, studded with hundreds of volcanoes and steaming with more geysers and hot springs than a hundred Yellowstones. It's still winter so the only way to get about is by chopper, or on the ground by skis, dogsled or snowmobile. There aren't many companies out there who can help you achieve this so I latched on to the best of the bunch, Lost World Adventures, who seemingly can organize practically any kind of itinerary from one end of the peninsula to the other — sightseeing to heliskiing.
Hop off at the summit and fly down a monstrous 35-degree chute flanked by rugged saddles and knife edges. Crisp runs up high give way to powder and wide snaking valleys below, where a waiting whirlybird might whisk you to nearby 3456-meter Koryaksy volcano, named after Kamchatka's native people, the Koryak who first tackled this extreme cone eons ago on reindeer skin skis — and still do! Gape in awe at an icy 45-degree chute crazed by ravines and spur runs, and just launch out. It won't get any shallower than 30 degrees and you'll drop a true 2400 meters for a seven kilometer run.
I only need say that Koryaksky rules, but what I really dig about Kamchatka is how snow is a way of life. I abandoned the heli-boarding for a few days to cover some miles cross country with local friends. Kids get around on boards or skis towed by the family dog, the Koryak swear by the dogsled and fools like me agree to snowmoskiing which involves clutching a tow rope behind a Buran or Russian Snowmobile; essentially a hotted up fairground car on twin tank tracks. It handles like a tank and pulls like one too — rug up, hang on and go skiing cross-country without the sweat — except when the Buran gets bogged in a deep soft snowdrift. Then it's time to hear the beast's agricultural threshing at its very best. On the second day I shared the Buran rope with a young English couple, snaking through powdery virgin snowfields bathed in winter sun. On downhill runs we would slice past the bellowing Buran, sometimes startling a snowy arctic hare as we rounded a bend. Now and then we passed by Dachas — Russian holiday homes with many functions; a weekend retreat, a plot of land to grow vegetables, a place to get drunk and to court death in a Banya (Russian sauna), which involves lying in a 100 degree Celsius steam-saturated wooden cell while being set upon by a man with a leafy, yet very fragrant birch branch. Just on the verge of respiratory collapse it's customary to race out and dive headlong into deep snow and rest awhile. Only after repeating this process three times can you say you've done the Banya. I flaked out in the second sesh.
Come the crispness of evening, Jack Frost started nipping at me everywhere. Fyodor reassuringly offered, "If you are shaking with cold you are still alive." Time for the hot springs again. We opted for Opala hot springs, easily within rumbling distance of its volcano namesake in Kamchatka's southwest. Opala is more of a river though, and an eccentric one at that; it squeezes for over a kilometer between towering banks of rich foliage, its lucid waters revealing a mineral-rich crimson riverbed, its banks musically hissing with steam and spouting mini-geysers. Yet we languish midstream, safe from Opala's tantrums — buoyed by upwellings and lulled into bliss by blood-warm water, heady with sulphur and capped by a dome of glorious steam. I ask Fyodor if it makes him nervous, living within 30 kilometers of two live volcanoes in an earthquake prone zone. Broad smiles and expansive gestures are all the answers I need — it seems the benefits far outweigh the risks. Fyodor, apparently Kamchatka's hot springs connoisseur, invites us for a plunge in Kronozky Inlet where stands of bright blue fir trees pierce the snow, having survived the last Ice Age by their proximity to steamy springs, just as we are evading the chills of the snowscape today. Maybe we might live a little longer if we stayed to nibble the local salmon? After so much adrenalin it was tough to leave Kamchatka, although flying back to Moscow was tops — an ultimate redeye flight that froze time at 7pm for nine hours. For ages I gazed down at icy peaks bathed in an endless sunset, ice floes in the Arctic Sea and frozen riverbeds etched with trade routes — pure magic. Next time I go, I'll loosen the snowboard straps before taking the plunge. Dosvidanya. —Stephen Rothwell, MountainZone.com Correspondent
Contacts: |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
