Inside Volcano
Volcano Mutnovsky is situated 70 km south of
Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. This giant is calm, but showed its power
15 times in the century. The entire massif comprises four cones of
volcano.
Mutnovsky Volcano is the most spectacular phenomenon in
Kamchatka, and is a complex of four superimposed volcanoes. Each
volcano has produced a separate crater, which have collapsed into
each other and are linked by a glacial system.
You will enjoy the unique form and construction of this volcano.
Some scientists call Mutnovsky volcano "Somma- Vesuvius". A deep
depression surrounded by cliffs lies in the center of the volcano.
Glaciers descend from a sheer drop of the terrace along its edge.
Volcanic gas and steam clouds are gathered deep in the crater and,
slowly creeping along the slopes, rise as a white column. On the
top of this mountain you can see a big snow-white glacier, a little
sulfur sandy river and the biggest femoral field in the world. The
streams of dangerous gases pull out and break the landscape - so
the land is breathing. You meet some sulfur smell, which calls and
attracts you go far and far to get know this wonderful and
dangerous volcanic massif.
The walk up the gorge is largely on banks of hard snow and firn
ice, that has accumulated in winter avalanches off the gorge walls.
Much of the surface is covered in wind-blown ash, and some of it is
melted into little astrugi pinnacles; the caldera drainage flows in
snow caves on the rock surface, and is sometimes seen or heard deep
in crevasses or collapse areas. The gorge walls are cut in coarse
rhyolitic pyroclastic flows laced with thin dark dykes. The
caldera's eastern glacier lies ahead where it melts out on a steep
rock slope, aided by a series of fumaroles; steam from these has
created ice tunnels that emerge in the glacier snout. Climb the
slopes of volcanic tephra and glacial till on the right, and
descend slightly to the snout of the western glacier, which is also
advancing over fumaroles. A way between the ice and the caldera
wall passes beside various geothermal vents; these include
fumaroles, mud pools and solfataras, and their style may change
within hours as melt-water from the adjacent glacier seeps into the
ground and is boiled at very shallow depth. A lake is sometimes
dammed up behind the glacier; at other times it drains through the
ice, leaving a flat bed of reworked ash pitted by solfataras and
boiling mud-pools. Streams emerge from the snow and ice fields, and
flow back under the glacier toe. Picnic lunch may be taken at some
spot away from the fumaroles that are active at the time of the
visit The caldera floor is at an altitude of about 1540 m, which is
still 800 m below the ice-capped summit of the Mutnovsky volcano.
The walk continues up the western snow-fields below the caldera
wall cut in thinly bedded pyroclastic flows that are probably old
surge deposits. The glacier on the left has its source in the stage
4 caldera, which has coalesced with the main caldera that is
largely of stage 3. A steep scramble aided by rope handlines leads
up coarse welded pyroclastics to a knife-edge ridge between the
caldera and the active crater. The steam plume from the active
crater rises far above, but when the wind blows it around, the
vigorous fumaroles and solfataras that are its source can be seen
on the crater floor. The crater is about 350 m across, and its
walls drop nearly vertically for over 100 m to its flat floor of
scree and inwashed ash.
Search for this stash in an area directly inside Mutnovsky
volcano crater.
Have a fun!
Small note on cache maintenance: cache has been
planted with assistance from our russian guide Oleg, who is
interesting in geocaching as a novice and he will take care about
this cache, during his guide expeditions into volcano.