GORELIY VOLCANO TREK
August 2, 2010

The Goreliy is an active volcano in Kamchatka having a beautiful summit crater with a small lake inside. Unfortunately, due to inclement weather, we had to return before getting to Gorely's top, however the trek has been in any case interesting because of the picturesque surrounding landscape.

	With a 6WD bus, the group reaches the trail head for Goreily volcano, staring from the base camp. The trail head, where the trek to Gorely volcano begins, is located at an altitude of about 1150 meters and about three hours of strenuous, but not technically difficult trek, are required to get to the summit crater.

	Climbing the Gorely volcano, I can often see small Saxifrage flowers and other small plants growing directly into the pumice soil.

The trail for Gorely volcano crater passes near, and sometimes thru, small snow fields.

Once on the higher part of the Gorely volcano, the weather deteriorates suddenly, with many nasty clouds surrounding the volcano's top.

Once at 1650 meters, just a few hundreds meters from the volcano's summit, the group has to return back due to the clouds, the fog and some rain starting to come down. The Gorely volcano is interesting because of a blue lake inside the summit crater and because of the panorama that can be seen from the top. Getting up and see nothing because of the clouds and fog has actually no sense, so everybody prefer to go down out from the clouds and enjoy at least some sun in the lower part of the volcano.

In the lower part of Gorely volcano, the weather turns to nice again.

During the afternoon, the weather improves furthermore but unfortunately there is not enough time to re-schedule the trek to Goreliy volcano, so all that we can do is to enjoy the spectacular landscape from the road going back to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.

The 6WD bus parked on the road from Mutnovsky/Goreily base camp to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.

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