Heritage Expeditions

Expedition Search

Kamchatka Peninsula & Beyond

Area:

View Slideshow images

Kamchatka Region covers an estimated 472,000 sq kilometers. 
Chukotka Region covers an estimated 737,700 sq kilometers.

Max Altitude:

Klyuchevskaya Sopka at 4688 meters is the highest volcano on the Kamchatka  Peninsula and also the highest volcano in Eurasia.

Physical Features:

Kamchatka is often called the land of Fire and Volcano’s. It is situated right on the border of the Asian and Pacific Tectonic plates. Mountain formation and other geological processes are still very active in this region. The present relief of Kamchatka reflects its rich geological past. The western coast is fairly flat, unbroken and featureless in contrast with the east coast with its numerous fiords, gulfs and steep slopes plunging down to the sea.
Kamchatka and the Kuril Islands are the only regions of recent volcanic activity in Russia. Earthquakes and eruptions are quite frequent and it deservedly belongs to the so called “Pacific-ring-of-fire”. There are about 300 volcano’s in Kamchatka, 29 of them are still active. 
The landscape of Chukotka is dominated by tundra interspersed with low mountains with some areas of taiga in the south and west.

History:

These regions were first inhabited about 15,000 years ago. The first settlers were ancient hunters, the ancestors of the North American Indians. 10,000 years ago local culture started taking shape with the arrival of groups  migrating from Asia to Alaska. They were the ancestors of the present Eskimos, Aleuts and Itelmen. Their culture and lifestyle were based on the peoples wide use of marine and continental flora and fauna.

The first explorers came to the region in the early 17th century. Between 1658 and 1661 Ivan Kamchatyi (from where the region gets it’s name)  crossed the Peninsula starting up the Lesnaya River from the west. The end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th centuries was a period when interest in the Far Eastern Territories and Kamchatka grew rapidly driven in part by the economic development of Russia initiated by Peter the Great.

In 1697 a group of Cossacks led by Vladimir Atlasov marched south of Anadyr to Kamchatka. He was the first person to describe Kamchatka’s world of wild nature, customs and traditions of the native people. In 1724 Tsar Peter the Great commissioned the Danish navigator, Vitus Bering to explore the seas of North Eastern Russia. He set out on his first expedition in 1725 but it was abandoned due to bad weather. In 1728 he returned and his ships St Peter and St Paul sailed into the sheltered Avacha Bay. Petropavlovsk, the capital of Kamchataka was named after his two ships.  He continued on to discover and map the Aleutian, Komander and Kuril Islands and to discover the strait named after him, separating Asia from North America.

Natural History:

This expedition traverses a wide range of habitats, more than almost any other expedition of its type.  From  Kamchatka’s birch forest and rocky coastline and Islands to the dry trundas of the Chukotka Peninsula.  The wildlife includes among other species caribou, wolves, brown bears and Arctic Fox. Marine mammals are numerous including walrus, Stella sealions and fur seals. The potential bird list is huge as it will include many of the Arctic migratory species.

Click here for a detailed Bird Checklist

Further Reading:

• Barratt Glynn - Russia in Pacific Waters  1715 – 1825, University of British Columbia Press. Vancouver and London 1981
• Frost OW (Edt) Georg Wilhelm Stellar - Journal of a Voyage with Bering 1741 – 1742, Translated Margritt A Engel and OW Frost. Stanford University Press. Stanford California 1988.
• Frost OW (Edt) Bering and Chirikov - The American Voyages and their impact,  Alaska Historical Society, Anchorage, Alaska 1992.
• Frost OW - Bering: The Russian Discovery of America
• Kushnarev Evgenii G - Berings search for the Strait, The First Kamchatka Expedition 1725-1730, Edt/Translated by E A P Crownhart-Vaughen
• Ford Corey - Where the sea breaks its back: The epic story of early naturalist Georg Stellar and the Russian Exploration of Alaska,  Alaska Northwest Books, Anchorage Seattle 1992.
• Reid A - The Shamans Coat, A Native History of Siberia.
• Sleskin Y - Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North.
• Sweetland Smith Barara, Barnett Redmond J (Edts) - Russian America: The Forgotten Frontier, Washington State Historical Society, Tacoma, Washington 1990.
• Knystautas Algirdas - The Natural History of the USSR, McCraw-Hill Book Company 1987.
• Blix Arnoldus S - Arctic Animals and their adaptations to life on the edge Tapir Academic Press, Trondheim 2005.
• Lincoln W B - The Conquest of a Continent, Siberia and the Russians.
• National Audubon Society Guide to the marine Mammals of the World, Chanticler Press Ltd 2002.
• Boner Nigel - Seals and Sealions of the World, Octopus Publishing group 2004. 

top