THE LAND OF FIRE AND ICE
Paragraph 1
‘It was towards the end of our first day’s trekking through the wilderness in Kamchatka, that
our guide, Nikolai, pointed to the huge clawed bear prints freshly sculpted in the mud.
“Myedved!” he said, although it was hardly necessary. No other animal could have left so
large a print. Farther on, broken vegetation showed where the bear had been grazing. During
our three weeks of trekking, we sometimes saw a freshly caught salmon dropped by a mother
bear carrying food back to her cubs: obviously, these enormous animals were common. The
Kamchatkans claim that their bears—up to two and a half metres in height and 700kg in
weight—are the largest in the world, bigger even than Alaskan grizzlies. Although we saw
only two, we felt that a great many more must have seen us.
Paragraph 2
In late summer, when we were there, the bears were attracted to the lakes and banks of the
rivers where the salmon gather to spawn. They are not usually aggressive but a mother bear
with cubs could be extremely dangerous (a Japanese photographer had been killed and partly
eaten a few days before our arrival). Alexander, the salmon fishing warden living with his
wife in an isolated cabin by the Zhirovaya River, kept a revolver strapped to his belt. When
he put three of us ashore from his motor boat for an hour or so during an expedition down
river, he left with us his double-barrelled shotgun and a supply of cartridges. Nikolai was
armed not with a gun but with a bottle of super-strength vinegar, the fumes of which (he
assured us) would deter any grizzly that came too close.
Paragraph 3
Even to most Russians, Kamchatka, nine time zones east of Moscow, is remote and exotic. In
schools, ‘to be sent to Kamchatka’ is to have to go to the back of the class, and some
Muscovites even believe that Kamchatkans have tails! Kamchatka is a vast land, a peninsula
600 miles long, projecting southwards from the Pacific coast of Siberia, most of it mountains
with peaks of up to more than 16,000 feet, with permanent snow at half that height. The
climate is extreme: in Kamchatka’s only large town, a good June in summer is said to be one
without snow.
Paragraph 4
Bears are not the only potential hazard. Sometimes known as ‘the land of fire and ice’,
Kamchatka has a greater concentration of volcanoes, many of them extremely active, than
anywhere else around the Pacific Rim. We found hot springs at almost every other camping
place, and at one camp in the forest beneath the approach to Dzendzur volcano, we had an
authentic mud bath in the expanse of hot, soft clay, bilious green streaked with orange and
red. Some harmless-looking pools were scalding hot, whilst others contained potentially
lethal concentrations of chemicals. On the approach to Mount Mutnovsky we passed the
recently erected memorial to a geology student who had gone too close and fallen into what
was in effect a cauldron of sulphuric acid.
Paragraph 5
Kamchatka is not, therefore, a place for foreigners to explore on their own. To begin with,
outside the capital town, there are hardly any proper roads. To get anywhere requires either a
helicopter or an enormous off-road truck with vast wheels, whose tyres can be inflated and
deflated by the driver from inside his cabin whilst the vehicle is in motion. Such a vehicle is
essential for coping with deeply rutted tracks across the tundra and dried-out river beds.
Where we trekked there were no villages or settlements, no grazing animals and very few
paths. The few people we did meet were like our own support team: tough, self-reliant
Russians carrying enormous packs and capable of fending entirely for themselves in a
beautiful but potentially hostile environment.
Paragraph 6
Trekking in Russia is seen as a serious test of endurance and an opportunity to use the
practical skills needed for living in the real wild. Training starts young. Nikolai’s nine-year-
old son was expected to cover the 18 kilometres between camp sites on his very first cross-
country skiing expedition. There were no concessions for us either: the possibility of meeting
a bear dictated that we all walked close together and, whatever the gradient, the pace was
brisk, with no more than ten minutes rest in the hour.
Paragraph 7
Balotniky, or marsh boots, are essential equipment. Thinner and more versatile than
fisherman’s waders, they’re worn not with socks, but with felt cloths wound round the feet.
On snow fields, scree slopes or precipitous volcanic cones, they’re worn rolled down below
the knees. But in summer, lowland Kamchatka is extremely wet with dense jungles of eight-
foot-high growth and there, for much of the time, they’re rolled up to the hip. For the many
river crossings, we wore balotniky and stumbled thigh-deep through ferocious currents of
gushing water, but emerged completely dry.
Paragraph 8
When we first arrived in Kamchatka at the beginning of August, snow was still deep in the
gullies on one side of our camp site, whilst on the other the first Alpine flowers were in
bloom. Unbelievably, after only a few days and with a change of altitude, we had walked
through midsummer into early autumn. Beneath the indigenous birch trees which grow low
and twisted to withstand the weight of winter snow, the undergrowth glows with spectacular
fairytale fungi, many of them edible: shining dinner plates of startling red with white spots,
brilliant yellow and rich chestnut brown. Out on the tundra there were berries by the million,
purple, blue and black; the first, swollen with crimson juice, were the sweetest. However, the
best supplement to trekking food were the salmon which in some stretches of the rivers could
be seen lying in shoals. The taste of salmon steaks cooked over a wood fire was
incomparable. Female salmon also provided ikra, the mass of brilliant orange caviar, each
bead a plump bubble of salty liquid, eaten by the tablespoonful.
From Britain Kamchatka is literally half a world away—but worth every effort required.
Comprehension Questions
a. Give two details of the evidence that shows 'Myedved' - or bears - (line 4) were nearby
during the trek. [2]
b. In what way could a bear be 'extremely dangerous' (line 13)? [1]
c. Give two features of Kamchatka that show why it can be considered to be ‘remote’, ‘vast’,
and ‘extreme’ (lines 20, 22 and 25). [2]
d. (i) Explain why bears were ‘not the only potential hazard’ (line 27) in the land the writers
trekked through.
(ii) Give two details of dangers they encountered to support your answer. [3]
e. (i) How do the writers feel about ‘the few people we did meet’ (line 42) during their trek?
[1]
(ii) Give a detail from the text to support your answer. [1]
f. In what way did balotniky prove to be ‘essential equipment’ (line 51)? [1]
g. (i) During their first days of walking, the writers found something changed ‘unbelievably’
(line 60). What had changed? [1]
(ii) Give one detail from the text that shows how they noticed. [1]
h. Using your own words, explain the writers’ different thoughts about Kamchatka in parts of
their travel they describe. Give three details from anywhere in the text to support your
answer. [3]
