A Day Hike to the Blue Lakes National Park
One nice summer day, we decided to go for a hike to the Blue Lakes National Park located just 8 km drive from the nearest city - Elizovo. It is famous for its Alpine lakes, which are in the middle of the ancient crater of volcano. The bottom of each is covered with never melting ice, making an illusion of blue colour of the water in a sunny day. To go there, you have to hike up and up 28 km. Usually, it is a weekend trip, but we had just one day free, so decided to challenge ourselves and go for a day hike. So, having packed our day backpacks with a snacks and some stuff for a lunch we left the car park at around 10 am. After first 7 km, we approached a base camp, with some wooden shelters and campsite.
After a little rest and chat with the park ranger we continued our walk. The trail led us higher and higher and we enjoyed beautiful view of the mountains on the way.
6 km after we took a short rest. Here the most challenging part has begun. We had to cross the creek and climb up for another kilometre. Many years ago the creek water brought many large stones there and left some on the trail. Actually, it is hard to call a trail, you just climb up to the rock where the creek begins. (It looks like this from the down). But when we finally made it, our efforts were rewarded.
A beautiful view of the alpine valley, yammy berries, cute funny ground hog squirrels running around and, on top of it, the Blue Lakes. There were 4 or 5 of them, each had unique size and shape. The water was icy cold, so we just washed our hot faces, but I have seen some people bathing there. Crazy.
It is actually quite cold there, especially at night and there are no wood, so people do not camp there. And the snow melts only in a very hot summer. We made a fire and cooked lunch. Curious group hog squirrels came to us to check out our food. There are many tourists there and if someone leaves his food unattended, it will disappear in a minute. After lunch we took a little rest and started to get ready for the way back. Suddenly the dog of my friend (she took a poodle with her) became worried and restless. In a second we realized why. On the remote slope of the valley there was a bear! A big, wild, brown bear was gracefully going down the slope in around 100 meters from us. The wind blew from him, so obviously he could not smell humans. Luckily, we knew what to do and did not panic. Much. Quickly but without a rush, we made or way back to the exit from the valley and down the river. The bear probably even did not see us, they are quite short-sighted. The rest of the journey went without any events, we successfully reached the car and went home. It was a great hike and good memories.
Climbing to Viluchinsky Volcano
You might not believe me, but in June there is much snow in Kamchatka volcanoes. So one sunny summer day two of my friends and myself decided to go climbing there. Having left the city early morning we arrived to the foot of volcano in the afternoon, having wasted much time changing punched tyres. (Three at a time!) We made our way to the 80 m waterfall, falling from the slopes of the volcano to the glacier. Imagine, the snow there never melts. Then, we started to climb up to the left of the waterfall. Fortunately, there was still much snow, so it was quite easy to climb. In terms of equipment, we had just one ski pole each and one alpenstock. We took some nice pictures during the climb. But the surprise waited us on the top - there was no trail through the thick bush. Having a rest and some snacks we continued out trip, but the weather has changed dramatically. Only two hundred meters were left from the top, but we were exhausted and cold and decided to go down. It took us around 6 hours to go up and down, if not the weather, we would have reached the summit.
