Caviar, Bears and Typhoons in Kamchatka

Somewhere on the coast of the Pacific Ocean we had a rendezvous with some American trash.


More than 250 years ago a German scientist trekked to the coast of Kamchatka to comb the beaches for rubbish. Last month I jumped at the chance to do the same.


Kamchatka has been a place with a magical allure for me ever since I read that if a Russian child gets a low mark in school and is sent to the back of the class, he's told sidi na Kamchatke, or sit in Kamchatka, because the peninsula is about as remote as it gets.


Locals refer to it as living on the periphery, but its mystery is more than just distance or inaccessibility. With its peninsula thumb stuck into the Pacific Ring of Fire, Kamchatka bubbles with active volcanoes, has 1,000-odd earthquakes a year and brims with some of the most rare wildlife in the former Soviet Union.


Last year I climbed Mount Elbrus with the Adventure Club, an organization set up by explorer Dmitry Shparo that arranges ecological and historical expeditions, and when I heard that they were going to Kamchatka, I was eager to go. The three-week expedition, which was sponsored by Kodak and Nestl?, was designed to promote public awareness about ecological problems.


In the mid-18th century, the famous German naturalist Georg Steller went to Kamchatka as part of the Great Northern Expedition.


The Russian expedition was one of those grand, ambitious, brave and often foolhardy adventures to map unknown lands that the world was once fond of. As England sent out and lost various explorers in Africa and the Arctic in the 19th century, Russia, a century before, sent out a mission to find the end of its lands. In Peter the Great's day, the map of Russia tailed off into the unknown to the north and east.


The Great Northern Expedition, headed by Vitus Bering, was a 10-year epic attempt that not only attracted the country's best sailors and explorers, but teams of academics who studied the history and nature of the newly discovered lands. Classic books about Siberia's history, flora and fauna that are still used today came from the expedition.


Although Steller would go down in history as the discoverer of new species, including Steller's sea cow, his beach-combing has always been somewhat overlooked. So overlooked that his analysis of the 18th-century flotsam and jetsam has never been translated from the German. But that mattered little to our expedition. Our aim was to trek to the ocean and collect 20th-century debris to compare with the 18th-century debris hidden in the scientific German of Steller. The strong currents of the Pacific meant that much of what we would find was likely to be from the United States.


Leading our journey was Sergei Yepishkin, a voluble geographer besotted with travel and history. Half-blind without his tinted glasses, and in his army clothes looking rather like Peter Sellers playing a South American dictator, Sergei was an amenable, eccentric leader who could ramble on for hours about the Great Northern Expedition. Eight years ago he'd helped find Bering's body on another Adventure Club expedition, and he left for Magadan within a few days of returning from Kamchatka.


More than 250 years ago, the explorers headed for Kamchatka with a ship full of supplies to keep them alive for years, a crew of 5,000 and the backing of the tsarist government. We climbed out of an official navy jet with 100 tons of luggage, six bags of sukhariki, 48 people and one pet rat, after a 12-hour flight that included a picnic by the runway in Novosibirsk when we stopped to refuel and another refueling stop at a closed navy base in the Far East.


After being picked up in Petropavlovsk Kamchatsky by soldiers from the Emergency Situations Ministry, one of our sponsors, we spent a night at the local army barracks before being loaded onto army trucks and driven to our starting point 80 kilometers away.


Our host that first night, a cheerful mustachioed major, rattled on about the people the emergency workers had saved from the area and the luggage they'd recovered - but not the owners of the luggage - from a volcano that looms over the camp. Although earthquakes and volcanic rumblings are common in the area, searching for lost mushroom hunters is more common for the local emergency workers. That day they had just returned from collecting 40 kilograms of berries for the camp to make its own jam. Our dinner was very Kamchatkan: local fried salmon semen - which I mistook for chicken in bread crumbs - and paporotnik, a long scallion-like fern native to Kamchatka and Eastern Siberia.


The next morning we climbed aboard three army trucks and bumped to our base camp on a stony shore of the Poratunka River.


We saw our first bear tracks on the road to our camp, and from then we went everywhere in pairs. The next day as we walked up the only road, fresh tracks ran down the middle, showing us the way. Early one morning later in the trip I heard the pained roar of what could only be a bear with a sore head.


The first night was spent drinking and singing and staring at the splendid August sky, high and wide with pulsing, shining stars. Anatoly Melnikov, an explorer who has skied to the North Pole and knows what he's talking about, would point out the constellations and his daughter Anna would sit nearby, counting the stars fall away. August is the month when the sky begins to tumble, and as satellites wandered slowly past above, falling stars zipped to oblivion. I half-heartedly counted five falling stars one night; Anna gave up after 20.


On one such night, three of us went skinny-dipping in the Pacific with a midnight sky above us. Screaming with anticipation, we rushed into the sea, to be met surprisingly by almost warm bay water.


We didn't stay long. Someone had seen a bear near that part of the shore earlier, and as we hopped out onto the soft sandy beach, one of the guys screamed and began running naked down the beach faster than I'd ever seen him move. The other guy then roared and chased after him, leaving me alone with, presumably, the bear as host.


I hate running naked, so luckily before I could get much above a jog, they returned to explain that they were only running themselves dry.


We began our trip to the ocean by climbing up into mountain meadows dotted with a few wild flowers. Old cedar trees dotted the path, making for easy firewood, which burned with a soothing scent like church incense. We stopped for the night after an easy hike past a mountain waterfall and down a clay path into a local reserve. At the top a sign warned drivers: "Before you go down this hill THINK about who will drag you out again."


The area is brimming with hot springs - delicious, relaxing 40 degree Celsius water, which sends you out pink and raw before a dip in a medicinal mudbath. A camp "jacuzzi" followed - a shower made from hot water gushing from an abandoned gold mine.


Serious trekking began the next day as we began forcing our way through gnarly forests and crossing a dozen mountain rivers as we edged closer to the ocean. It was slow going since half of us hadn't brought waterproof boots, so we squelched our slow way through. The mountain rivers rushed their cold, furious way to the ocean, and we slowly crossed. Thigh-deep at times, we created chains of piggy backs to carry our rucksacks and, being a gallant Russian trip, the women across the rivers.


From here on we had a huge larder at our disposal.


I'd just walked through a couple of rivers in my Nikes when Lyosha Sokolov, one of the younger members of the expedition, suggested chirpily that I stand in the middle of the river and drop the net that he'd just found on the riverbank. Soaking wet, I swore silently, said "of course," dropped the net and caught my first ever fish, a humpbacked salmon.


Lyosha dragged it to the bank, and it flopped there. Not used to seeing my dinner die slowly before me, I told Lyosha to hit it on the head.


He grabs a stick. The stick falls on the head, BOING the stick bounces back up, fish flips tail in discontent, BOING, BOING, BOING, BOING, POP - the fish's eyes pop out with an audible slurp. A humane death.


Ten minutes later we had five salmon. We left a trail of red caviar leaking behind us as we walked back proudly to the others. That night we camped in a forest swarming with flies and mosquitoes but feasted on salmon.


Over the next few days, we had fried salmon, boiled salmon, fish soup, a delicate fried trout, fried salmon semen and tubs of homemade caviar.


Recipe: Take one female salmon, cut it open and extract eggs. Separate eggs one by one from the membrane, salt and leave overnight. Eat by the spoonful for breakfast.


Caviar is so plentiful in Kamchatka you can buy it for 100 rubles ($4) a kilo in local markets. We met three local poachers camping out by a river to make caviar who gave us a large tub for free.


They also gave us a kilo of meat from a bear they had just killed after it attacked them. Not ecologically friendly but bloody delicious.


Later I heard that a Japanese tourist had been dragged from his tent on the Kuril Islands and killed by a hungry bear. I slept in the middle of the tent that night.


Rain came and came for the next days before we broke out into the open from the forest and finally saw the calm Pacific Ocean hugged tight by the curve of the rolling hills of the closed bay. Tramping through the long, lush grass and swampy ground, it felt like a walk into the heart of Asia, far, far away from Russia.


After a day of collecting debris, we were forced to return to our base camp since the route into the next bay took us through water that was too deep and dangerous. From there we hitched a ride up to the Mutnovsky volcano to walk to another bay, but after a three-hour trek we reached a stunning valley stretched out below us invitingly. Unfortunately, without climbing equipment we had no chance and returned to camp around the volcano.


Our tents were at the base of a waterfall that flows down from a bubbling land above. At the top, steam swirls constantly from the ground. Small geysers spurt forth malevolently, and pools of water and mud bubble intensely. One stream pours down cold water, another boiling water, and bathers ease into hot water farther down the hill once the two have mingled. It's a strange sight, and you can't help wondering whether the ground will collapse underneath you or explode.


Mutnovsky is the most accessible of the volcanoes in Kamchatka, with a well-trekked route up to the top. After climbing for two hours across slopes scattered with a shower of rocks like a lunar landscape, we found ourselves facing a glacier at a 45-degree angle, 500 meters long and with boulders smiling up at us from below.


Another one of similar size followed it. Without crampons or sticks, we crept across, to be met by the grave of someone who hadn't fared so well.


After four hours we reached the top. It was again an alien, uneven land of bubbling pools, steam, jagged rock and dirty, crumbling glaciers, although I was somewhat disappointed as I'd expected a Hollywood scene of a large bubbling cauldron of lava.


We had been told to turn back before 5 p.m., and as we did a typhoon descended upon us, eager to wrench us up in the air as we began the downward climb.


Crossing the glacier was not easy. Every few meters, the group stopped to crouch and lean into the mountain slope as yet another gust of wind blew in and tore at us. We were lucky and no one fell, although once I managed my way across, I promptly lost all sense of proportion and slipped five times on a much smaller, positively innocuous glacier farther on. Luckily, the wind was so strong that it was impossible to fall behind and we all flew back to our tents.


Later that night, Anatoly's tent blew down, only the second time that had happened to him in 30 years of exploration. Luckily, we were only on the edge of typhoon Olga, which had killed more than 50 in the Philippines.


That night as it began to rain, we took cover in a deep, hot-spring-fed wooden tub near another waterfall. Roasted within, raindrops on top, we relaxed before all seven of us returned to a three-man tent, a few drops of vodka, a tape of Pesni Nashevo Veka and a cup of tea.


Bliss on a camping trip is simple things, an extra portion of sukhariki or a birthday cake made from biscuits, but three weeks in Kamchatka, no matter how beautiful it is, is hell without good people.


Although Sergei Yepishkin was the leader of the trip, the heart was Nikolai Karavayev, a math teacher from Perm, an ever-cheerful, stout man with the vitality of a thousand. Most of his year is spent on trips with schoolchildren, and he was called Uncle Kolya by most of the group by the end.


Once when we were at about 1,500 meters heading toward the Mutnovsky volcano, we were attempting to get a lift from one of the trucks delivering material to the geothermal power station being built there. We'd camped on a slope the night before with a ferocious wind tearing at us continually. The next morning, after porridge and coffee, we hid from the wind in the ditch beside the road, waiting for any form of transport. Planks were quickly placed across the ditch, and about 15 people sat down on them, looking like the audience in a theater. Singing began, and they sang and sang and sang. Anatoly, a barrel of a man in his fifties with a swirl of thick, off-white hair, began to dance.


Traditional songs followed pop songs followed Soviet songs and war songs and peace and worker songs and love songs. Everyone knew the words - even if some of the older generation drifted off for a few numbers - but there was a wonderful collective spirit and once we got our lift, the singing continued. Nikolai, who is strong and tanned, takes center stage and sings a comic love song about having a harem while perched on the knees of one of the girls and flirting with a couple of the others. We even pick up a few extra hitchhikers on the way and sing around them.


Another time, we sat on a mosquito-infested path waiting for somebody to find out if there was a way out to somewhere (there wasn't), and singing buzzed around my head as much as the insects.


Nikolai is the deep baritone whom you can always hear; Galina, the TV journalist, comes in on the old ones in a soft, sometimes creaky voice; Anya bubbles with enthusiasm and leads the singing like a mother hen while scribbling away in her diary; Nastya sings softly to herself and I sing the first few lines before fading quickly.


The results of the expedition will be published later this year. Half of our group spent the time collecting rare insects, plants and doing chemical experiments. We only made it to one bay, unfortunately, and there wasn't that much trash, American or otherwise, but that's an excuse to return to Kamchatka.