“Help! I’m drowning. I can’t swim!” are words I never thought I’d utter. I’ve always been a fair hand at aquatic pursuits, but this is no ordinary dip; I’m up to my eyes in a bubbling hot spring with a snowboard clamped to my ankles. It’s all my own fault, but I’d like to survive to explain my shortcomings, if one of my prostrate buddies would just rescue me.
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 borne of high jinks — 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 dimwitted. 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 av gas and an afternoon...

But I digress… I’m here to sample wild volcano cones, Russian style, and lots of ‘em. Kamchatka is a vast fish- shaped peninsula borne 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 here who can help you achieve this, so I latched on to the best of the bunch, ‘Lost World’ adventures, who, it seems, can organize practically any kind of itinerary from one end of the peninsula to the other, from sightseeing to heliskiing.

I can’t think of anywhere else in the world that has so many perfect cones just begging to be ridden. Even in the capital, Petropavlovsk Kamchatsky (PK), volcanoes are everywhere you look. Climb in a Russian MI-8 chopper and you can be carving runs down a 9,000 foot Avacha volcano inside 20 minutes. Now that’s local.

Hop off at the summit and fly down a monstrous 35 degree chute flanked by rugged saddles and knifedges. Crisp runs up high give way to powder and wide snaking valleys below, where a waiting whirlybird might whisk you to nearby 11,335 foot 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 8,000 feet for a five-mile run.

I’ve never felt more out of control or as highly charged — a whisker away from disaster and five miles inside of pure rapture. Kamchatka volcanoes are rugged, uncompromising, hard to get acquainted with — something like a Vodka session with the local guys while riding A backing bronco.

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 bumper 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’ — a 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.

We stopped by our driver Fyodor’s Dacha to test the quality of his vodka, caviar, smoked salmon, Russian cheeses, fern salad, ravioli and Rabbit Stroganoff, all cooked on a glowing wood stove in the middle of the forest.

Laden with this cargo, we carved deeper furrows behind the Buran on a 20 km. uphill weave through forest trails and open country, all the while reeling in those giant volcanic peaks. Fyodor obligingly towed us straight up insanely steep slopes, and left us to romp and crash back down again.

Come the crispness of evening, Jack Frost started nipping at me everywhere. Fyodor reassured, “If you are shaking with cold you are still alive.” Time for the hot springs again. We opt 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 kilometre 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 km 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 stay here nibbling local salmon, snowflakes melting on hot noses.

We wearily repaired to a lonely mountain cabin, nearby where we met some indigenous Kamchatka people, the Koryak, some of who still live in caribou skin tents and hunt using ancient methods — albeit with a little help from Mr. Winchester and bendy western fishing rods. As an honoured guest, I was immediately offered a bear’s penis bone but politely declined, citing possible repercussions at customs back home. The Koryak nodded their heads in understanding, then presented me with a hulking great bear’s paw instead. Thinking that refusal of this would lead to ever larger bear parts being offered, I wrapped up the dinner plate-sized gift in a (very) old T-shirt and made a show of happily stuffing it in my pack. In return I offered a few quick cook packs of freeze dried ‘expedition food’ which they immediately cooked up — and wished they hadn’t. A morass of half-reconstituted chicken curry didn’t go down all that well; I’m sure the poor devils thought I was trying to poison them. I offered some orange juice, but doubtful faces revealed my trust factor had plummeted.

Over mugfuls of their black currant tea, I learned that visitors are encouraged to sleep with the womenfolk, to avoid inbreeding. I’d like to help their cause and bring in fresh blood, except the girls do have this distracting habit of smearing their bodies with fish oil and/or urine (keeps away the mosquitoes). Still, the Koryak have a good time with their Shaman rituals and magic mushroom feasts. Who am I to judge? Besides, they kindly offer to take us on a dogsledding safari.

It’s funny how once you get used to one form of snow locomotion, another can easily terrify. The dogs looked wild, gnashing at trees and anything within chomping distance. As I cowered in terror from my perch on the sled, our Koryak driver explained that they were ‘just keen to break the sled.’ Somehow, a dozen wildly howling hounds snatching me through the woods didn’t seem such a great idea. When they lunged off, I was sure: The Buran was immediately relegated to sedate status.

The world raced by in freeze-frames of jagged motion, framed by my borrowed sable-fur hood. The driver yelped a seemingly random series of whoops, whistles and wails but every dog reacted instantly, pricking up their ears and snapping back into line. Downhill runs were a romp — dogs stretching full gait, sled airborne over bumps and facefuls of paw-flung snow.

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 7 p.m. for nine hours. For ages I gazed down at icy peaks bathed in an endless sunset, ice floes in the Arctic Sea and frozen river beds etched with trade routes. Pure magic.
Next time I go, I’ll loosen the snowboard straps before taking the plunge.
Dosvidanya!

Words and Photos By: Steve Rothwell
Action Photos by V. Gumenuk

Getting There
For year-round access to Kamchatka — Aeroflot fly from LA to Moscow four times a week, linking with daily flights to Kamchatka’s international airport at Yelizovo.
Aeroflot in LA
Tel: (310) 281-5300
Fax: (310) 281-5304
9100 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 616, Beverley Hills, CA 90212

Best Time To Travel
Best snowboarding time is from early March to late May. Gets a bit mushy after that, but there are still plenty of good runs up high until well into June.

Russian Visas
It’s a lot easier these days to obtain a Russian tourist visa; one needs only to secure a ‘letter of invitation’ (usually by fax) from a Russian tour agency or company and present it to the Russian Consulate in your country. However, tourism in Kamchatka is new and only a handful of local firms are fully equipped to meet the needs of the foreign tourist. Following a recommendation from Kamchatka’s Government Tourism Department, I went with a company called ‘The Lost World’ on the basis of their ability to tailor an itinerary to meet my requirements, and their reputation for providing reliable interpreters.

Contacts
Nikolay Kruglyakov
‘The Lost World’ Kamchatka Travel Company
4/1-4 Frolova St.
Petropavlovsk- Kamchatsky
Russia 683002
Tel/Fax +7 (4152) 198328
Email: info@travelkamchatka.com
Kamchatka Government
Tourism Department
Tamara I. Tutushkina, Deputy Chairman
Administration building 1
Lenin Square
Petropavlovsk- Kamchatsky
Russia 683040
Tel: +7 (4152) 112355
+7 (41522) 28022
Email: kra@syvaz.kamchatka.su