More videos

Here's a few videos we made in Yakutsk with some couch surfers as a promotion for a local internet company.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLNddIQB__E

Also, we got in trouble for wanton destruction of the environment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZtoGXGBBqA

Enjoy!

Videos are up

I cut together and uploaded some video from the Russia trip:

In chronological order:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgTfBNhfAWs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYVq2qzMkFk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIsPRcz2uoo

Also a video of me playing a piano in Magadan:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0cmOHZEF6E

Enjoy!

Florida trip

Last weekend I took the opportunity to catch up with my friend and expert zoologist Vladimir in Florida before he leaves to other, less exciting places! The weather was just turning in downtown Pasadena as I took the metro to union station, and in light rain the flyaway shuttle to LAX airport. I had already checked in on line and received an electronic boarding pass on my phone, which I used to pass through security to proceed to the xray.

I wound up in a queue that led to one of the few backscatter xray scanners. For several reasons (privacy and ionizing radiation being at the top of the list) I opted to get frisked instead of zapped, although the guards were pretty annoyed about it, going so far as to suggest that opting for a frisk was an admission of guilt, which I thought was a bit over the top. As several people have demonstrated fooling x-ray machines is not particularly difficult and the so-called privacy safeguards are a complete joke.

Eg: http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1ASUT_enUS398US398&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=airport+scanner+privacy+breach

http://xkcd.com/779/

This refers to microwave scanners, but is similar in principle http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBfHMCiatK0&p=1AA6C5D94197406A&playnext=1&index=81

In summary, I find someone whose face I can see frisking me far less invasive than electronic measures, which I feel have been hastily rolled out with no real evaluation of the long term risks.

Killed time at the airport waiting for the flight (fortunately I was early), and noticed next to the boarding gate was a room entitled 'American Airlines rebooking office', which made me nervous. Not to worry, my electronic boarding pass had me on faster than anyone could actually check it!

I arrived in Florida, and after a short delay, drove with Vladimir back to a neighbourhood near the university, parked the car, then walked across a golf course to his office. Once there we talked Russia, travel, volcanoes, animals, science, teaching, academic careers, and so on for several hours. Having eaten about one decent meal in the last few days I was a bit hungry, but managed to eventually warm up some corn and Vienna sausage, which was a nice relief! Eventually, we retired to the floor of the office and slept, as Vladimir has moved out of his apartment.

The following day we battled blinding sunlight and drove to the Everglades. On the way we discussed the stories of several scientists who managed to defect from the Soviet Union, including a coral researcher (Slava Kurilov) who was prevented from leaving the country, but took a Russian based cruise that went 'close' to the Philippines. At the crucial moment he put on a wetsuit and jumped overboard - four days later he found land! Many years later he formed his own sea-based religion, and subsequently died by drowning in the bath.

Vladimir also told me about the state of universities in Russia. His alma mater is now best known for its UFO research, in which one self appointed expert built a flying saucer landing site with a few million tonnes of concrete, but is still waiting for the first landing.

At length we arrived in the Everglades, and took several walking paths around looking for interesting animals and plants. We saw many snakes, frogs (one was transparent under torch light), toads, alligators, baby alligators, herons, and lots of water. It had rained a lot in the past few days and the Everglades, which is essentially a very broad, shallow sheet of water flowing slowly to the ocean, had filled up a bit. Closer to the sea we saw several vultures and crocodiles, and many fish in the water. Later we checked out a few 'hammocks', or islands of rainforest that originate with crocodile pool digging and eventually evolve into Gaussian humps of hurricane resistant tree growth. Each hammock has its own subspecies of tree shells - shells that climb trees and hang there. Fireflies also blinked. By far the greatest feature was mosquitos, which became fierce in the evening as Venus and Jupiter came up. Apparently in the 50s a cyclist broke his chain at the end of a not particularly long path, and was actually killed by mosquito bites walking the bike the two miles back to the road.

On the drive back I saw a particularly excellent sign, advertising "BT's gentlemen's club - parking and entrance in rear". By now it was about 11pm and we were keen to eat something, so keeping an eye out we saw a Mexican restaurant, ordered ENORMOUS meals, and sat back as an old man with a saxophone played happy birthday in a very jazzy, pitch approximate way.

At length we returned to the office, looked at pictures of Russia, volcanoes, and watched Tim Minchin singing questionable songs. Vladimir told me about Mathias Rust, a man who used to fly people out of the Soviet Union on the one day a year that he knew the border guards were drunk. In 1987 during glasnost, he got the head of security sacked by landing his small plane on red square! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Rust

Next morning we drove to the beach for a swim. Vladimir explained that the beach with the pretty girls was 200 miles to the south - which I thought was TERRIBLE planning. Such is life. I didn't fully understand previously either, but there's a road which connects nearly all the keys, which is pretty cool. The water at the beach was very warm, so I was able to swim for nearly five minutes before I got tired and drowned. Well, not quite - I can touch the bottom! But despite living in the US for a few weeks I'm yet to undergo a positive shift in density, which is probably a good sign.

Next we visited the Miami Seaquarium, where I managed to catch a few shows and check out many animals. Lots of dolphins, seals, and manatees. I had never seen a manatee in person before - they really are huge sacks of fat with extremely fluid movements that float around eating stuff. Pretty cool really. Saw nurse sharks being fed a few fish, with the odd piranha floating around - they are quite spectacular fish. I saw a sea lion show, which was pretty clever, but also pretty corny - thoroughly aimed at young teenagers or little kids. Still, it was pretty cool seeing what they could do. A key different to the sea shows done at the Manly Aquarium that I remember (as it was explained to us) is that in Sydney the trainers deliberately make their gestures subtle, flexible, and constantly shifting to ensure the seals pay attention. At Miami, it was pretty obvious what the trainers were doing, and that the sea lions weren't really paying attention. Meanwhile a heron managed to steal a few fish, which I think was probably part of the show. Another part of the show is getting splashed, which was pretty funny.

One hour later I went to the dolphin/killer whale show, in which Miami's killer whale (Lolita, her mate Hugo died a few years ago) and 5 pacific white sided dolphins did all sorts of clever stuff. The dolphins were really fast, and able to jump 5m out of the water. It reminded me of a paper on animal creativity I read a while ago, in which dolphins were trained to improvise moves. It took them a few weeks to catch on, but then they went nuts to the point that the trainers could no longer deduce any structure to the moves. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetacean_intelligence#Creative_behavior)

The killer whale was also pretty cool, carrying the trainer around, jumping, making big waves, and splashing everyone - not bad for a whale that's longer than the radius of the tank it's kept in! The ethics of keeping whales in tanks is an ongoing question - there's many excellent resources on the web if you're interested. It reminded me of a story I saw in one of Australia's many excellent whaling museums. In Eden (on the southern NSW coast) there used to be a killer whale called Tom who would tow the whaling boats out into the bay, then help his pod herd other whale species close to the shore, where the humans would spear them. Tom and his family would eat the lips and tongue of the killed whales. His skeleton in the museum shows dental wear where he held the rope, although its age at death is much smaller than the duration of this behaviour, suggesting that perhaps Tom's grandfather began helping the hunters. Aboriginal Australians also have stories of killer whales helping them hunt whales from canoes!

Soon it was time to drive to the airport, where I discovered that I'd somehow managed to book my return flight on the wrong day (in fact 3 days previously, well before I'd even left LA). I'm not sure how this took place, as I'm usually pretty careful. Perhaps the online booking system shunted me towards a cheaper fare on a different date without making it obvious, but in any case, after a 2 hour foray into the depths of stupidity and terrible customer service, I forked out another $300 cash (as the previous transaction had got my card blocked by my bank - apparently budget airlines are common recipients of credit card fraud) and made the plane with at least 60 seconds to spare. Budget airline indeed!

On the flight back I spent most of the time up the back in the galley chatting to one of the air hosts - with no inflight food service, they have time on their hands. As a former member of the navy, he had an interesting take on the current administration's attempt to repeal 'don't ask, don't tell' - apparently when he was in the service a gay man outed himself to obtain a discharge, but being annoyed with the process, attempted to out several other men in the unit. Of course even insisting you're straight is grounds for dismissal, so it was just a pain. In essence, the presence of this rule gave people who were belligerent or didn't want to follow orders a way to do so without suffering direct consequences. He also confirmed my suspicion that most gay members of the armed forces are usually the most competent fighters in a unit. The other half of the conversation was about the horrors of the job as a flight attendant. Apparently a few months before an attendant (Steven Slater) flipped off a passenger, stole some alcohol and excited the aeroplane (while it was taxiing) by the escape slide. Style!

On another occasion he delivered a baby, though I never found out if it was named after him. What excitement.

In due course I arrived at LAX, then found a taxi driver who had missed his fare, who drove me swiftly to Pasadena for a very reasonable price and some excellent conversation about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism amongst expat communities before and since 9/11. He was a Lebanese (christian) immigrant, and had heard about the race riots in Australia a few years before. I'm still not sure what the upshot is, but the process of integration is never helped by nationalism, which in my mind is one of the four great evils of the last century (and probably more generally, together with racism, sexism, and religious extremism).

All in all, a very interesting weekend, well worth the huge set-back in terms of homework!

Moving to the US

Before I went to Russia I had largely finished packing for the move, so when I arrived in Los Angeles, toting 7 cases on a trolley, and unpacked in my allocated room, I was surprised just how many enormous books I had brought. I guess there had to be some reason for there being 160kg of luggage!

I soon met my house/apartment mates, who are pretty cool, and explored the local area, though I have yet to sample the Pad See Iew of every Thai restaurant in town.

Last week was orientation week, which consisted in equal measure of procedural lectures (sleeping opportunities) and a series of quite excellent parties with themes like western, hawaiian, etc etc. On Friday I joined a group and climbed part of the San Gabriel mountains for a great view of LA. Photos may be updated shortly. So far it has been sunny every day, the last few days were very very hot as well - easily in the 40s.

Most other administrative boredom has been organised, I have a telephone number, a bank account, and so on. Tomorrow classes begin - I have 10 timetabled, but solid assurances that more than five will result in severe singeing and probably premature death. So I'll see what the tone is this week!

For those who are interested, an excellent website on earthquakes is http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqscanv/. The server is just down the road.

Almost time to begin work for the year! I auditioned for a piano part in a chamber ensemble - I'm pleased to report the resulting train wreck was entirely fitting given my abilities...

Vladivostok and last post

The airbus made a hard landing in Vladivostok, and after the requisite period waiting for luggage and fending off the taxi drivers with particularly pointy teeth. I got a lift into the city (with a 30% discount on the excessive ripoff, meaning I only paid about twice as much as I should have...). After about an hour we arrived at a hotel I thought I could stay at. The woman at the front desk stated with a perfectly straight face that no single rooms were available, but I could take a triple room (for three times the price). I must have looked particularly stupid! After about 10 minutes, however, she 'remembered' that there was a single fare option available, with the possibility of sharing a room.

In the end, I did share a room, but in the morning the fellow (Maxim) insisted I share breakfast with him, which saved me the trouble of shopping for my own! I spent the next two days walking around finding the places I had seen on my previous trip in December 2006 and buying gifts for friends. I usually put of buying heavy stuff until the last stop before home, but there it is time to cut loose!

One particular highlight was the weather, which after 4 weeks of chasing autumn, finally turned to summer again for two days. On the first of September all school children return to school dressed up and with flowers. I visited the museum and was particularly impressed by the exhibition on early sea explorers, including La Perouse. I took advantage of my knee returning to normal to meet with a local couchsurfer Alyona and climb a nearby hill, look at the view, and also to visit the lighthouse at the harbour entrance, accessed by an eroded tidal isthmus. Vladivostok is currently having two new bridges built, partially in preparation for the APEC summit. Even though Moscow is paying for the construction, there are concerns that the city will not be able to afford maintenance!

All too soon it was time to leave. I woke up at 4:15am on the second of September, took a cab to the airport, and took a flight to Beijing. There I was in transit basically all day. I spent some time looking at a 3D TV screen display, which was pretty cool, and compiling statistics of my travel, most of which I have already published here. At length we boarded a flight for Sydney via Shanghai. As we cleared immigration in Shanghai I met Matias Hyde, an Argentinian man who is starting a bike ride from Australia to Spain. His website is www.matiashydetravels.com - it looks a lot nicer than my one!

In Sydney quaranteen asked me to open my bag - there was apparently food buried right at the bottom. When I unpacked it, though, all we could find was a balled up wadd of thermal underwear. Probably not consumable by anyone. Luckily, dad met me at the airport. Now I am safe at home, worried only that my unpacked stuff will cover my bed and prevent me from sleeping!

Photos! Kamchatka photos are now finished (8 shots from the last day added), and photos from Vladivostok and the flight home are up as well. They can be found here: http://picasaweb.google.com.au/CaseyHandmer/Vladivostok?feat=directlink

All the photos can be found here: http://picasaweb.google.com.au/CaseyHandmer

Overall, I think it was a pretty crazy trip, and I've been surprised and thrilled at how well most of it went. The trip lasted for 77 days, and in nearly every one I tried to do something which I thought would probably fail, but I succeeded just often enough to keep on trying.

In 10 days I will move to California to start a PhD at Caltech in theoretical physics (think Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory). I do not anticipate regular updates on the thrilling sequence of events that will be the next five years of my life, but I may occasionally find time for a photo or two of the lovely Pasadena.

Last days in Kamchatka

The day before yesterday I was awoken at 7:53am by a frantic text message 'wake up, be at the hotel as soon as possible' - presumably there was some chance a helicopter would fly before 3pm (or not at all!). Within 15 minutes I was at the bus stop, and soon enough found myself at the hotel (on the other side of town), where I handed over a frightful amount of money, signed some paperwork, and then headed for the airport.

 

This time there were about 22 people, mostly Russians, taking the helicopter to the hopelessly remote 'valley of the geysers', the second largest geyser field in the world (after Yellowstone). The only other way of getting there is walking, and it takes about 2 weeks. Our guide gave us the safety chat, and insisted we wear set-belts, probably to prevent everyone changing sides to look at stuff as we zoomed past. The helicopter went through its 5 minute preflight warmup, then the engines strained to life and we leapt from the ground as daintily as a frightened elephant.

 

The flight took us north past the home volcanoes Koryaksky and Avacha (at that moment being climbed by about 1500 people as part of a volcano festival), Jeponova, and into the Kronotsky Nature Reserve. At this point large, steep, angry looking cone appeared on the horizon - Karimsky Volcano, so active it is a perfect cone within an older caldera, smoke and ash billowing from the top. Not far away the volcano Maly Semyachik with a large lake in the crater. Once deep blue, the lake is now a white colour, and has always been acidic. Soon we banked to the left and entered a steep-sided canyon with vegetation reminiscent of the cliffs in the Altai.

 

The upper parts of the valley are filled with steam, and we landed quite close to the central building and ranger lodge. Here we could see the results of the landslide that occured in the winter of 2007, apparently without being noticed by anyone until after enormous boulders had stopped about half a metre from the lodge. The landslide also blocked the valley, forming a lake and drowning about a third of the geysers.

 

Discovered in 1941, the geyser field is caused as water seeps down fault lines to hot magma about 1700m beneath the surface (associated with a nearby volcano). This water then bubbles to the surface, forming an intermittent spring, as well as many mud pots, hot pools, and other cool stuff. The plumbing of a geyser can be modelled as a very long vertical straw. Due to the geometry, heat flow by convection (or radiation) is essentially negligible, and so heat is transported by conduction, as well as phase changes. Under intense pressure, steam can form. Bubbles rise through the system until their heat is absorbed by colder water above and the bubbles collapse. I have no idea what the mean distance they travel is, but I suspect not far. Heat continues to be transported upwards, as well as outwards through surrounding rocks, and bubbles form and absorb in a manner analogous to a binary counter. When the counter overflows, so does the geyser, discharging a good quantity of water and resetting the system. It is for this reason that some geysers erupt with very regular periods. Another cool thing is that you can make a geyser erupt by pouring in soap - it affects the viscosity and surface tension of the geyser, releasing the pressure which is building up!

 

While we were there we saw many geysers erupt, including 'grot' (ie 'cave'), which apparently only erupts every few years, and discharged thousands of litres of boiling water about 10m into the air. We also took the opportunity to check out many other steaming holes in the ground, pools of boiling mud, and other awesome stuff.

 

Next we flew in the helicopter to the Uzon caldera, not far away, which are the remnants of a volcano that was most active about 300,000 years ago. The magma chamber emptied and the ground collapsed, forming a large ring of hills about 11km in diameter. In the middle are a series of hot lakes which contain sodium, potassium, sulfer, and aluminium (amongst other minerals). Apparently bears like one of the lakes in particular as the water helps to treat their paws, which can get itchy in summer. We saw enough bear tracks in the area that it seemed likely.

 

Next we flew back over the ranges (sadly without a view of Krashennikov or Kronotsky volcanoes, or the more distant Kluchevskoi group) to the Jeponova river, which was full of salmon in retirement after their spawning activities. We ate a lovely lunch of different varieties of salmon fish, bread, tea, juice, etc. I skimmed some stones and flew a kite. As we were leaving, two other helicopters landed - it was pretty awesome. Above the river (on which some people do rafting fishing trips) was the volcano towering into the clouds.

 

Too soon we had to fly back, arriving at Yelizovo heliport, receiving certificates to mark the occasion (I don't know why...), and of course waiting almost an hour for the airport transfer shuttle. Lost World Tours (the group through whom the agents I booked through booked, who in turn booked through the heli tours group, who leased helicopters from the airport...) seems to struggle a bit with timing...

 

I headed back to the flat, arriving exactly in time with Nina, Denis' mother, who was making a surprise visit and helping the electricity people check the meter. We managed to communicate what time my flight was leaving the following day, and make arrangements to hand over the key.

 

I walked to Tanya and the Australians (Kent and Olya)'s place with a bag full of Russian sweets, we ate dinner and had a 3 hour comedy session, in which we realised the potential of the Russian word for 'shield'. The other highlight was comparing idiom in which the word kitten (or kotyonok) is used. In English 'she was so happy, she was having kittens' seemed to be the most common. In Russian, the equivalent phrase was 'my boss was so happy, he must have run over a kitten'.

 

As I walked back I noticed fog building up near the coast, and the next morning, the entire city was again shrouded. I had been lucky to get the three day window in which I helicoptered and climbed Mutnovsky! With the traffic stopped I wasn't tempted to go shopping, so instead backed my bag and cleaned the flat to within an inch of it's life, and ate all the leftover food. Mmmm.

 

At 3pm Alexsei, Denis' father, arrived. We had tea, I unplugged the electronics, and then he insisted on driving me to the airport. He also insisted that my Russian, which is good enough for most things, was utterly incomprehensible when I said I was happy to take the bus!

 

Airports are boring, but after about 4 hours, I had cleared security (I beeped lots, so was waved through), and boarded the plane. The flight out, in the evening, was one long sunset, but the definite highlight was just after taking off, we punched through the fog, and instantly every volcano in southern kamchatka was visible, including Gorely, which was still erupting. =D. Only Avacha bay was filled with fog, which spilt through passes of mountains ringing the bay and into surrounding valleys. Some time later an airliner passed us going in the other direction at quite close range - but it only took 3 seconds. We were really moving.

 

The airbus made a hard landing in Vladivostok, and I had arrived. Kamchatka was 12 crazy crazy days of volcanoes, in a land that, being at the edge of the world, was never quite finished. I think I will certainly return, though timing is everything!

 

In the meantime I've uploaded photos from Kamchatka except for the flight out, so enjoy!

http://picasaweb.google.ru/CaseyHandmer/Kamchatka?feat=directlink

 

The weather improved

The weather finally improved a bit. I borrowed a bike and attempted to ride to the pacific ocean (maybe 12km), but ultimately failed, primarily due to my own incompetence. I saw a road on a map (old trick) and followed it, though it was rather muddy. I saw a barking dog on a chain (no problem), who was then joined by about 7 unleashed dogs who did not like me much at all. I decided to ride another way. I rode around the bottom of the bay until I had a great view of the southern part of the city and a bunch of sunken and semi-sunken ships, as well as Vilyuchinsky volcano, and saw the road curve in a huge arc below me down to the turn-off to the road which would go (via another route) to the ocean. Remembering that I had to ride back (and my knee wasn't real good for walking, though riding was okay), I decided to stop at the top, next to a small army base, and take lots of photos. Fortunately my clothes are now worse than my Russian, so I'm the definition of harmless. Also, Putin left the day before, so probably all the security personnel are still unconscious! I rode back, cooked a hearty dinner of some packaged something boiled or whatever (my memory is not clear - it was not an overwhelmingly amazing dinner), went through the usual routine of exchanging text messages with the travel agent, uploading photos, reading about Australian politics, and sleeping.

The next day I got up early, got a lift to the hotel, waited around for a few hours, got a lift to the heliport. There there were a number of mammoth MI-8 Russian helis sitting on the tarmac, but due to the delays from weather, they were all pretty booked out. I realised at that point that the group I had booked through didn't exactly have priority, and in the end I took a helicopter to Kurilskoye Ozero instead. The preflight safety talk was rapid, in Russian, and can be summarized thus 'the exit is the door you came in through, and you can open the window to take photos'. Which was pretty cool. Soon enough the jet spooled up (best noise in the world) and, incredibly, 7 tonnes of Russian aluminium and steel became airborn and rapidly zoomed south through a series of narrow wooded valleys and past literally hundreds of volcanoes! At some point we popped through a hole in the cloud and then were in sun, the tops of the tallest peaks poking up through the sea of white below. The lake appeared on the horizon and with a shudder and a clatter, the helicopter began to descend, flying low over an island (disturbing hundreds of birds), and landing next to the lodge. Our guides were two interesting local girls with reasonable English, and we soon stumped off down a path accompanied by a ranger with a flare and a big gun to the bear observation platform. Sadly, no bears appeared here that day, so after a rather mediocre lunch (that was rather heavy on packaging) we flew to the lake's (current) outlet to try our luck at the salmon counting station there. Salmon, I hear you ask? Kurilskoye Lake is the world's largest salmon spawning ground. The lake formed 8400 years ago with a rather large volcanic explosion, and is actually much deeper than the surrounding ocean. Once deeper still, the ancient outflow to the pacific was blocked by the formation of a number of new volcanoes around the crater rim (now well over 2000m high!), and a new outlet to the sea of Okhost formed, causing the lake level to drop more than 40m. 

At the salmon counting station we walked through the camp to a bridge built across the river with a net designed to direct the salmon through narrow gates where they can be counted every hour or so. Salmon waiting for the opening scudded back and forth creating a serious surface disturbance. By far the most excitement, however, was a dozen Kamchatka bears swimming in the river catching the salmon and carefully eating the salmon eggs, then other parts before discarding the head. The bear uses the back of its non dominant arm as a platform to hold the unlucky fish on! Of the bears, 4 of them were cubs of various ages, and the bears quite frequently swum, splashed, stood up, fought, and basically did everything else their contract required of them. I melted a set of batteries taking photos, but was probably the least photo-ey person there. Half our group were middle-aged Korean tourists, all of whom had cameras which were either obscenely enormous or absolutely minuscule. Mine has got to the point where I have to squeeze the bottom if I want the zoom to work, etc etc! After a while we had to vacate so the counters could do their counting, so we reboarded the helicopter, watching the pilots go through some intricate choreography involving flicking switches, and then feel the five bladed rotor's collective thump into position and once again we were airborne. These helicopters can easily carry a (small) car, so if I can somehow raise the $25000/day running costs, I might move into one permanently! Also they're kinda loud...

We flew to the base of a nearby volcano where there was a lake that steamed with water at 43C. The clouds had lifted to the point where nearby volcanoes were visible to about half way up, creating the impression that we were surrounded by steeply sloping columns covered in trees or tundra. Soon, however, we had to get moving again as the weather was not improving. As we flew back towards Gorely volcano (which has recently become much more angry) the clouds parted and the impossible landscape of twisting gorges, glaciers, pinnacles, layers of ash and ejecta, and the superposition of maybe 40 generations of volcanic activity was illuminated by streaks of light which seemed to rotate in real time as we cruised by at 260km/h. Too soon we circled the heliport and made a rolling landing on the short airstrip. Russian helicopters are built with wheels rather than skids. We eventually drove back to the hotel where I ordered a 3 course meal, then ate the other tour groups 3 course meal as well (they had spare). Back to the flat and sleep.

Today I woke up, again, absurdly early (maybe 5:40am), and took a cab across town to the hotel where I was met by our tour guide for today. A four hour drive in a Mitsubishi Delica (a 4wd people mover) took us via the museum of natural disasters (an extensive rocky/ashy plain) to the base of Mutnovsky volcano. The path winds inwards towards the caldera up a steep-sided slot canyon, revealing bit by bit what you came for! The path largely was composed of a thin layer of mud over glacial ice that filled the base of the gorge (even in summer). Quite frequently one is surprised to find a glacier hiding beneath layers of exposed moraine, even quite far from a mountain or apparent source.

Mutnovsky is composed of three large craters. The first, largest, and oldest is cut by a deep river valley, and the opposite face is covered in a tumbling glacier, with enormous rocks perched above, vanishing in and out of mist composed part of cloud, part of boiling brimstone. The smell was... sublime. We left the glacier and climbed to a lookout, surrounded by fumaroles spewing out steam at temperatures between 150 and 300C, some sulfur subliming to form insane and quickly changing formations of bright yellow and almost green. With our sleeves over our mouth and nose we walked through a wall of steam (two distinct smells, one of sulfur, one like burning matches) into the more remote parts of the caldera. The stream flowed swiftly to our left, dotted with geysers and chunks of ice amidst a mozaic of rocks of all different colours. Above us the opposite side stretched steeply to the exposed edge of an ancient glacier with one particularly large rock teetering on top. The second caldera was filled by a glacier than nearly did a figure of 8 to reach it. The opposite wall was steep sided with several large water falls, the glacier was riven with crevasses that stretched lengthways, and periodically the area was filled with the sound of falling rocks as the volcano continued its rather fast journey to flatness. Volcanoes tend to erode very quickly as they are composed of unconsolidated rock (mostly). At this point the sun came out, and the glacier glittered white, while water pools in the bottom of the crater glowed deep blue. We risked a short walk on a precarious mud/dirt track to the third, and most active crater. This crater had a major eruption in 1970 and a smaller one in 1993, but today was largely obscured by huge clouds of sulfur crystals blown upwards by rising heat. In short spaces we saw the bottom - a deep hole filled with fumaroles and mud!

We turned around and made our way down to the floor of the second crater, walking on the glacier. I of course skimmed a few rocks on the lake between the ice, and then we headed back down the valley. As we emerged from the other end of the canyon, we had a terrific view across the plateau towards Gorely volcano. Composed of 11 major craters (from 3 intersecting volcanoes) the central one was continuing to blow large amounts of steam from its newly formed vent. Volcanoes in Kamchatka are more than capable of dumping cubic kilometres of dirt into the stratosphere, so it remains to be seen if Gorely's activity will continue to intensify, however at its current state it could (hypothetically) be approached with little danger. We drove down the slope to a rocky promontory, from which we had an excellent view of a waterfall. The canyon continues down the mountain, and beyond the end of the glacier, drops about 30 or 40 metres into a very deep canyon surrounded by steep rocky scree slopes - falls are not infrequent, according to our guide. The canyon cut the side of the slope, revealing many layers (each about 4 metres deep) of the volcanoes eruptive history; ash ejection followed by lava flow, and vice versa.

Back in the car and the drivers took a 'short cut' across a field of substantial boulders to the main road (built to service the geo-thermal power plant nearby), from where a 3 hour drive returned us to the hotel. This time I opted for pancakes only and headed back to the main road to catch a bus south to my flat before they stopped for the night. After about 5 minutes waiting, who should drive by but two people I met from the tour (and with whom I posed in front of Vilyuchinsky volcano in a handstand), who offered me a lift all the way to CRV, a drive of about 20 or 30 minutes. Thankyou!

Once here I had a quick shower, and contended once more with a towel which exceeds the size of the bathroom in every dimension. When using it many hands are required to keep the corners from the bath, floor, sink, and toilet bowl!

Tomorrow, with any luck, I will take another helicopter (at this rate I have spent about as much in 3 days as I did in the previous 3 months - which was kinda the point of hitchhiking!) to the valley of the Geysers, Karimsky, Maly-Semyachik, Kronotsky, Krashennikov, and Uzon volcanoes, etc etc.

In the meantime I uploaded photos from Magadan and Khabarovsk - now all that is required are photos of Kamchatka (of which there are a few) and photos of Vladivostok, which I haven't taken yet.

http://picasaweb.google.ru/CaseyHandmer/MagadanKhabarovskAndAeroplanes?feat=directlink

Biking

Heli to lake

Mutnovsky

Magadan photos