We trekked up the slopes of Mutnovsky, but the muddy trail ended at a sheer drop carved out by winter avalanches. Cautiously, we lowered ourselves down the washout, then onto and across a precipitous, snow-covered ice field before heading up through a break in the mountain’s cone. This tectonic crack was filled with glacier ice. We hustled through this ice pass, apprehensively glancing skyward at the large boulders in the ice wall high above.
Off the ice, we climbed along the rock banks of a waterfall and up into the crater floor, passing blue ice caverns, hissing vents, twirling sulfur clouds—all chaos and upheaval. It was beyond description. I kept trying to remember: “Avoid holes; don’t breathe fumaroles; don’t get close to bubbling mud pools; stay on white ash crust.”
We ventured on in silence, following Maxim, for this was new turf for Yuri. Mutnovsky is a composite stratovolcano, with many craters collapsing within a central crater, all connected by a glacier system. The next pit held a deep turquoise-blue lake, but no one else would venture beyond this point, so I took it alone.
We had not seen a soul for three days until just that minute. A few tourists from Eastern Europe appeared and chatted briefly. I then followed one of them into the last crater, climbing up a knotted rope, hoisting myself over the muddy rim, crawling warily onto a greasy inner ledge. This was the crater responsible for all the “smoke” coming off the mountain. The sides of this inverted cone seethed with hundreds of active vents, hissing, spitting, the wind whisking their plumes into huge columns escaping off the top. This was Earth’s soul, I thought, awed. Yuri’s only comment: “I’m not impressed with fumaroles.”
Next day, we followed the tectonic crack down the mountain flank to a waterfall that was so deep, it seemed to resonate into the Earth’s crust. The zigzag fissure continued downhill, eventually turning shamrock green, covered in sparkling wet moss. Even in the fog it was spectacular, and at last Yuri was energized. It was all Maxim could do to keep him from hurtling down the crack face to investigate. He seemed to want to find the center of the Earth.
Hiking off the eastern side of Mutnovsky, we trekked through the immense Dachny fumarole field, where geothermal energy is being harnessed to produce electricity for most of the peninsula. And the next morning, the sun rose through an orange and blue lenticular cloud.
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