One of the hottest spots in the world (literally) disappeared from the face of the Earth a few days ago.
A large part of a nearby mountain collapsed onto the Valley of Geysers on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, which is also on UNESCO’s World Natural Heritage list, last weekend. The 6-kilometre-long valley, which boasts the second highest concentration of geysers in the world (around 90) and numerous natural thermal pools, is undoubtedly the most visited tourist destination on the far eastern edge of Russia, even though visitors have to dig deep into their pockets – the geysers can only be reached by helicopter.
The disaster occurred when a snow-covered summit broke off from a nearby mountain, triggering a landslide that buried the river feeding the geysers with hot water from the Kikpinič volcano. Millions of cubic metres of mud and rock destroyed most of the geysers, park warden Valerij Cipkov told Russian state television, and the landslide stopped just a few metres short of the hotel from which tourists set off to view the valley.
Global warming is not to blame...
“Such destructive catastrophes are usually the result of human error,” comments Laura Williams, representative of WWF, on the accident, “but this time it was all the work of Mother Nature.”
Although the topography of the landscape has changed dramatically, some Russians are taking it quite stoically and predict that it will not deter tourists. It is possible that the newly formed dam of rock blocking the water flow will turn the river valley into a large thermal lake and thus into a tourist goldmine.
Only for wealthy adventurers
The sparsely populated
Kamchatka, separated from Moscow by a nine-hour flight, was closed to tourists until 1990, but now several thousand people visit it each year.
The famous geysers can be found about 100 kilometres from
Petropavlovsk, the peninsula’s largest city. They were discovered only in
1941, but quickly became a fashionable destination for wealthy adventurers.
Today a helicopter trip costs around five hundred dollars per person.
Source: www.rtvslo.si