Another amazing day in Kamchatka!

Well yesterday would be pretty hard to beat!

Yesterday as I wrote in my last blog we awoke to perfect conditions, check out this shot of the sun rise over Koryaksky!

At 9:10am the Heli came to pick us up out side the hotel. It lands in a clearing just by the hotel carpark, there’s not much around the hotel which is situated at a natural hot spring in the countryside about 40mins from Petropavolosk.

As we had such a good time in the North yesterday we decided to head North again today.

The snow had been good on the Northern slopes yesterday and so today we flew North to the ‘Sharp mountains’ with a detour first to the North East to grab a couple of descents on a new mountain range on the Northern side of Koryaksky.

At first glance there didn’t seem to be much in the way of good snow and big lines so we headed for the highest peak in the range and swung around to find just what we were looking for on its sheltered Northern facing slopes.

Charlie drops in for some perfect turns.

With no tracks to follow jeff looks a little lost in the Kamchatka wilderness.

Steve powers into a heel side powder turn.

We did a couple of nice lines here, the terrain was very different being so close to Koryaksky this range is completely Volcanic and the features are all shaped by Lava flows. Because of this you get some quite narrow channels to ride down and so we rode big faces with narrow exits. It felt great powering down a big face with all your focus centred on the narrowing below before charging through into the wide open valley and the waiting heli.

It looked like it was going to be hard to better these runs in this range and so we decided to follow our plan to head now West to acces the ‘Sharp Mountains’ from the North. This way we’d be flying South though the peaks and so get a good view of all the Northern slopes and lines en-route.

It didn’t take long for us to spy out a nice looking range of peaks with some amazing looking lines facing in just the right aspect. We pointed the pilot towards our chosen peaks and watched as the lines got nearer and it quickly became clear that we had made a good find.

As we approached we could see four or five amazing looking lines spread out along a sharp jagged ridge running East/West either side of a triangular central peak with all the lines running into the same central pick up spot, Perfect!

The first line was an obvious choice, a big central couloir probably about 100m wide at a perfect 38 degrees. We quickly got into action and found our selves jumping out onto the ridge just to the left of our drop in spot. I had a sneaky look along the ridge to the right to look into what I was considering for our next drop and nearly exploded with excitement as I looked over the cornice into what could only be described as a perfect Alaskan style couloir, steep, straight and deep.

I dropped into the first choice descent and cranked a turn to test the snow pack, perfect! I released myself into the pull of gravity and powered into some long deep turns screaming down the face as the rest of the team started to whoop it up behind.

Jon in powder heaven!

Mark all alone in Kamchatka.

Run number 2!

Charlie at it again!

Seb targets a great steep line.

We arrived at the heli with grins spread across our faces as we looked back up at where we had come from and where we would be going next and the four or five other lines surrounding us !

Yep! Like I said ‘Yesterday, would be pretty hard to beat’.