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   Wild life Activities Places Zones Getting to and around Seasons Tours Kamchatka is good for many outdoor activities: climbing, walking, rafting, thrill-packed hunting and fishing, ski touring and heli-skiing – the latter is absolutely fantastic here! A trekking paradiseRobert Louis Stevenson created his Treasure Island as the perfect scene for his characters' adventures. When making Kamchatka, Mother Nature (obviously coming to some arrangement with the perverted course of Russian history) seemed to be preoccupied with creating a perfect terrain for dramatic, exciting treks... At the beginning of the 21st century very few places on Earth can claim such a high potential for picturesque treks, full of variety, as Kamchatka. Nonetheless Kamchatka does not see many attempts at running treks there on a regular basis – still less treks with good service provided. The time of easy living and cheap flights is long gone for Russian trekkers who used to make up the considerable tourist traffic during the Soviet period. Nowadays, walking or climbing in Kamchatka, you are more likely to meet a foreigner than a Russian, or no one at all. Heli-skiing, skiing and skidooing"Unique" is a hackneyed word, peppering travel agencies' catalogues, yet when it comes to heli-skiing in Kamchatka the word is just a statement of the obvious. The scenery of well-spaced, graceful volcanoes with smaller mountain ranges between them, stretches of wild taiga and tundra, dappled in April-May with patches of snow and views of the blue ocean beyond – all this just cannot be seriously rivalled in any other part of the globe. And these volcano tops, far away, misty, beyond instant reach are at your disposal (provided the weather plays along!) by the modern magic of the helicopter. After just 20–30 minutes' flight you are standing there, above the sweep of virgin snows without any trace of human presence. Several days of this skiing paradise, of mind-blowing descents, can make up for months and months of dull city existence. Kamchatka is a very snowy place, so on tundras and volcanoes the skiing season lasts until early May. Ski-touring ranges from modest outings to the "backyard volcanoes" (Avacha and Koryaksky) to quite serious trips to the Kluychevskoi group. A skidoo can easily tug 2–3 skiers and carry their rucksacks. With this machine (the powerful Russian "Buran", not the "Yamaha"), fantastic ski-touring routes, lightning fast and quite audacious, can be arranged. See Delicious Tumroks program in our Tours list. CyclingHigh tundras, dry river beds and volcanic plateaux with a lot of old roads can be an exciting terrain for experienced mountain bikers, provided they have good maps and navigating skills. For instance, you can cycle from Kozyrevsk to the hut under the Bezymyany volcano in the centre of the Klyuchevskoi Group. Or from Lazo village to Tolbachik volcano, from forests to volcanic desert, not to mention easier cycling trips in the southern group of volcanoes (Mutnovsky in particular), where population is denser and tourist traffic is a bit thicker than in the central and northern parts. RaftingUnlike Altai, Kamchatka is not a great place for serious lovers of this sport, but bits of easy and medium rafting through scenic places (plus fishing!) in multi-activity trips will be very attractive for those who are not keen on long walks.  |
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