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In the remote far east of Russia, the land still roils with the primordial forces that created the Kamchatka Peninsula, where 11,552-foot Kronotsky Volcano towers above nearby peaks, tundra, marsh, and forest.
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As summer’s exuberance fades, sunset colors steal across tundra dimpled with ponds in Uzon Caldera. Tourists may visit this basin and the nearby Valley of Geysers on a few carefully planned paths—the only public access to the 2.8-million-acre reserve.
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Born when a volcanic cone collapsed some 40,000 years ago, the Uzon Caldera continues to steam in places where magma heats the groundwater to a sizzle. No more than eight miles wide, the rock-rimmed crucible holds at least 500 geothermal features, from hot springs to mud pots.
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A skittering bird and a lumbering brown bear left prints in the mud at a hot spring in Uzon Caldera. Among the largest of their family worldwide, brown bears can grow to over 1,200 pounds. More than 700 thrive in the reserve.
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Racing to pack on pounds before winter grips the reserve, a brown bear hunts for fruit in a blueberry patch reddened by September’s chill.
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Pearls of mist frame a bog star in a river-edge meadow, one of more than 750 plant species found in the reserve. Collecting is prohibited here, but in other parts of Russia, folk medicine prescribes infusions of bog star for intestinal illnesses.
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Rolling off Kronotsky Volcano, an autumn storm billows toward the tundra. This vast tweed of feathery grasses, red bearberries, and green crowberries attracts grazing reindeer, berrypicking bears, and curlews that swoop in by the thousands to strip the bushes of their fruit.
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Every six hours or so, tons of water shoot a hundred feet into the air during the minute-long eruption of the Velikan—or giant—geyser. More than 20 such plumes punctuate the four-mile stretch of the Geysernaya River Basin known as the Valley of Geysers, along with dozens of smaller gushing vents and hundreds of hot springs. The largest geyser there blows off 60 tons of water, but only once or twice a year.
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After an eruption in the Valley of Geysers, steaming water flows over rocks stained by heat-loving algae and bacteria. “The valley is unbelievably colorful,” says Laura Williams, a senior adviser to the World Wildlife Fund in Russia. Volcanic clays, minerals in the water, and microorganisms rimming hot waterfalls and springs all contribute to the rich palette.
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In another Uzon Caldera mud pot, a slurry of volcanic earth and superheated water burbles in endlessly changing patterns. Up to eight miles wide, Uzon simmers and hisses with over 500 geothermal features, including hot springs and steam vents.
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Bronzed in fall, ferns that surround a steaming mud pot in Uzon Caldera risk a scorching from spatter. Come spring, though, they’ll get an early start at growing as the heat quickly melts away winter’s thick cover of snow.
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Strong winds and heavy snows have kinked and twisted stone birches so dramatically that they have acquired the nickname “drunken forest.” One tree even grows with its stunted trunk on the ground and its branches thrust skyward like arms in a triumphant gesture of survival.
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Traveling to favorite spots for catching salmon, generations of bears have worn a path along a river bend. Coho, chum, chinook, and humpback salmon all spawn in the reserve’s clear-running rivers.
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Country folk once stuffed pillows with the silken fibers of cotton grass. Like a dandelion, this plant unfurls a head of fluff that will allow its seeds to float lightly in the wind. Known locally as pushitsa, this member of the sedge family grows in marshy areas across northern Eurasia.
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In early morning mist that rolls in from the coast, two brown bears tussle like teenagers. “I was at this spot a year earlier and saw these bears doing the same thing,” says John Paczkowski, a biologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society. “They sparred for about 40 minutes, taking breaks to eat a few berries.” Bears in the Kronotsky reserve often encounter each other at salmon streams and seem to socialize more here than in some other food-rich areas.
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Whipped into shape by winds gusting over snowcapped Kronotsky Volcano, stacked lenticular clouds blush in the last light of day. Among the world’s most perfectly cone-shaped peaks, the mountain last erupted in 1923.
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Twin craters crown the 6,089-foot-tall Krasheninnikov Volcano, one of several in Kronotsky Nature Reserve. This peak on the east coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula last erupted about 400 years ago, but ongoing volcanic activity has amazed travelers since the region was discovered in 1697. “As for the fire-breathing mountains and springs of Kamchatka,” wrote 18th-century explorer Stepan Krasheninnikov, for whom the mountain is named, “one can hardly find another place on earth where they are in such abundance in so little area.”
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Day breaks over a landscape that evokes the dawn of Earth itself, illuminating steam that seethes between ridges at the base of Mount Zubchatka, named for its jagged appearance. Such beauty is transcendent but vulnerable.
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