Estuary - Location - Height - Coordinates

 /   / 56.209083; 162.484361 (Kamchatka, mouth)Coordinates:

River slope Water system Russia

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Country

Russia 22x20px Russia

Region District Water Register of Russia

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Pool code GI code

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Kamchatka(in the upper reaches Lake Kamchatka listen)) is the largest river of the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East. It flows into the Kamchatka Gulf of the Pacific Ocean. In some parts of its channel Kamchatka suitable for shipping. The villages of Milkovo, Klyuchi and the port of Ust-Kamchatsk are located on the river.

Geography

The length of the river is 758 km, the basin area is 55,900 km². It originates in the mountains of the central part of the peninsula and before its confluence with the Pravaya River is called Ozernaya Kamchatka. From the confluence of the Right and Ozernaya Kamchatkas to the very mouth, the Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky - Ust-Kamchatsk highway runs along the river bank.

In the upper reaches it has a mountainous character with numerous rifts and rapids. In its middle course, the river reaches the Central Kamchatka Lowland and changes its character to flat. In this area Kamchatka The riverbed is very winding, and in some places it breaks into branches. In its lower reaches, the river, bending around the Klyuchevskaya Sopka massif, turns east; in the lower reaches it crosses the Kumroch ridge.

Nature

The river is rich in fish and is a spawning ground for many valuable species of salmon, including Chinook salmon, so industrial and recreational fishing is carried out. In the pool Kamchatka Introduced silver crucian carp, Amur carp, and Siberian mustachioed char are also found. The river is often used by tourists for water trips from Ust-Kamchatsk.

The river valley is the place most widespread coniferous forests on the Kamchatka Peninsula. The species growing here are Okhotsk larch ( Larix ochotensis) and Ayan spruce ( Picea ajanensis).

Tributaries

The river has a large number of tributaries, both to the right and to the left along the flow. Largest tributaries: Kensol, Andrianovka, Zhupanka, Kozyrevka, Kreruk, Elovka - left; Kavycha, Kitilgina, Vakhvina Left, Urts - right. The most significant of them is the Elovka River.

Some channels of the Kamchatka River are quite long, and were taken into account in the Water Cadastre as rivers, for example Protoka Kamenskaya, whose length is about 30 km.

Hydrology

The nutrition is mixed, with a predominance of underground - 35% (due to a significant part of precipitation seeping into permeable volcanic rocks and replenishing groundwater reserves); snow is 34%, glacial - 28%, rain - 3%. Flood from May to September, low water from October to April. The average flow rate near Nizhnekamchatsk (35 km from the mouth) is 965 m³/s. It freezes in November and opens in April - May.

The river valley is in a seismically active area with active volcanism. During volcanic eruptions, a collapse is possible mudflows due to the melting of glaciers into the river basin. The most significant was the mud-stone flow associated with the catastrophic eruption of the Bezymianny volcano in March 1956, during which the mudflow spread along the Bolshaya Khapitsa River, one of the tributaries of Kamchatka. In some places, due to the release of hot springs, the river does not freeze throughout the year.

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Notes

Topographic maps

Links

• Kamchatka (river in the Kamchatka region) // Great Soviet Encyclopedia:

Excerpt characterizing Kamchatka (river)

Actually, I can say from the bottom of my heart that I was very, very lucky with my parents. If they had been a little different, who knows where I would be now, and whether I would be at all...
I also think that fate brought my parents together for a reason. Because it seemed absolutely impossible for them to meet...
My dad was born in Siberia, in the distant city of Kurgan. Siberia was not the original place of residence of my father's family. This was the decision of the then “fair” Soviet government and, as has always been accepted, was not subject to discussion...
So, my real grandparents, one fine morning, were rudely escorted from their beloved and very beautiful, huge family estate, cut off from their usual life, and put into a completely creepy, dirty and cold carriage, heading in a frightening direction - Siberia...
Everything that I will talk about further was collected by me bit by bit from the memories and letters of our relatives in France, England, as well as from the stories and memories of my relatives and friends in Russia and Lithuania.
To my great regret, I was able to do this only after my father’s death, many, many years later...
Grandfather’s sister Alexandra Obolensky (later Alexis Obolensky) and Vasily and Anna Seryogin, who voluntarily went, were also exiled with them, who followed their grandfather by their own choice, since Vasily Nikandrovich for many years was my grandfather's attorney in all his affairs and one of his closest friends.

Alexandra (Alexis) Obolenskaya Vasily and Anna Seryogin

Probably, you had to be truly a FRIEND in order to find the strength to make such a choice and go along at will where they were going, as they go only on own death. And this “death”, unfortunately, was then called Siberia...
I have always been very sad and painful for our beautiful Siberia, so proud, but so mercilessly trampled by the Bolshevik boots! ... And no words can tell how much suffering, pain, lives and tears this proud, but tormented land has absorbed... Is it because it was once the heart of our ancestral home that the “far-sighted revolutionaries” decided to denigrate and destroy this land, choosing it for their own devilish purposes?... After all, for many people, even many years later, Siberia still remained a “cursed” land, where someone’s father, someone’s brother, someone’s died. then a son... or maybe even someone's entire family.
My grandmother, whom I, to my great chagrin, never knew, was pregnant with my father at that time and had a very difficult time with the journey. But, of course, there was no need to wait for help from anywhere... So the young Princess Elena, instead of the quiet rustling of books in the family library or the usual sounds of the piano when she played her favorite works, this time she listened only to the ominous sound of wheels, which seemed to menacingly counted down the remaining hours of her life, so fragile and which had become a real nightmare... She sat on some bags by the dirty carriage window and incessantly looked at the last pathetic traces of the “civilization” that was so familiar and familiar to her, going further and further away...
Grandfather's sister, Alexandra, with the help of friends, managed to escape at one of the stops. By general agreement, she was supposed to get (if she was lucky) to France, where at the moment her whole family lived there. True, none of those present could imagine how she could do this, but since this was their only, albeit small, but certainly last hope, then giving it up was too great a luxury for their completely hopeless situation. Alexandra’s husband, Dmitry, was also in France at that moment, with the help of whom they hoped, from there, to try to help her grandfather’s family get out of the nightmare into which life had so mercilessly thrown them, at the vile hands of brutal people...
Upon arrival in Kurgan, they were placed in a cold basement, without explaining anything and without answering any questions. Two days later, some people came for my grandfather and said that they allegedly came to “escort” him to another “destination”... They took him away like a criminal, without allowing him to take any things with him, and without deigning to explain, where and for how long he is being taken. No one ever saw grandfather again. After some time, an unknown military man brought his grandfather’s personal belongings to the grandmother in a dirty coal sack... without explaining anything and leaving no hope of seeing him alive. At this point, any information about my grandfather’s fate ceased, as if he had disappeared from the face of the earth without any traces or evidence...
The tormented, tormented heart of poor Princess Elena did not want to come to terms with such a terrible loss, and she literally bombarded the local staff officer with requests to clarify the circumstances of the death of her beloved Nicholas. But the “red” officers were blind and deaf to the requests of a lonely woman, as they called her, “of the nobles,” who was for them just one of thousands and thousands of nameless “license” units that meant nothing in their cold and cruel world ...It was a real inferno, from which there was no way out back into that familiar and kind world in which her home, her friends, and everything that she had been accustomed to from an early age remained, and that she loved so strongly and sincerely... And there was no one who could help or at least give the slightest hope of survival.

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About Kamchatka

Rivers and lakes of Kamchatka

Rivers

Large amounts of precipitation, the presence of permafrost, long-melting snow in the mountains, low evaporation, mountainous terrain serve as the reason for the development of an exceptionally dense hydraulic network within the Kamchatka Territory.
In Kamchatka there are 140,100 rivers and streams, but only 105 of them have a length of over 100 km. Despite their insignificant depth, the rivers are extremely deep.
The Kamchatka River (length 758 km) and the Penzhina River (713 km) stand out sharply in size. Most Kamchatka rivers flow in a latitudinal direction, which is due to the meridional nature of the main watersheds: Sredinny and Eastern ranges.

Kamchatka rivers They have a mountainous character in the upper reaches and a calm character within the plains. When they flow into the sea, many of them usually form spits, and at their mouths there are underwater shafts and bars.
Within the mountains, rivers flow in relatively narrow V-shaped valleys with steep slopes and have a fast, often rapids flow. The bottom and slopes of the valleys are composed of large coarse clastic material (boulders, pebbles, gravel). As rivers approach the plains, the size of the material composing the valleys and river beds decreases; The flow of rivers slows down and becomes calmer. In general terms, the coastal lowlands are a combination of flat marshy areas concentrated mainly near the coast, undulating, hilly interfluve areas and wide river valleys. Within the hilly plains, river channels branch into channels and branches, and on the coastal lowlands they form many bends and old rivers.

Mountain rivers are distributed exclusively within mountainous regions. Basically, they correspond to the upper sections of rivers, but on large rivers this pattern is violated. Often, when crossing the spurs of ridges, rivers in the middle and even lower reaches acquire a mountainous flow due to the large slopes of the valley.
Rivers within mountainous regions with maximum elevation differences have rapids-waterfall channels. They are characterized by alternating rapids and waterfalls with segments of stagnant zones. Such rivers are usually small in size and flow along the bottom of valleys with steep slopes. The length of such sections ranges from a few percent of the entire length of the river (if the river downstream flows into the foothills and plains) to 100% (small rivers and streams flowing throughout their entire length within mountainous regions).
As the relief gradually flattens out, the rapids and waterfalls disappear, but the nature of the flow still remains turbulent. In addition, as tributaries flow in, the size and water content of rivers (i.e., the amount of water flowing through a cross-section of a river in a certain period of time) increase. Such rivers are most characterized by a rectilinear channel shape with separate single islands and forced bends (bends in the river channel). The formation of such bends is due to the fact that the river flow tends to go around rocky ledges, composed of strong, indestructible rocks. rocks, and thereby acquires a tortuous shape.
In some areas, mountain rivers form large erosion holes, the depth of which is tens of times greater than the average depth of the river. Such holes are good refuges for fish, since the current speeds in them are sharply reduced.

On the large rivers of Kamchatka you can also observe areas with rapid flow. Narrow valleys with steep slopes and high current speeds (> 1 m/s) may be due to the restriction of rivers by spurs of mountain ranges. On rivers that, in general, do not have a deep and flat channel, there are always sections with a significant slope, leading to a sharp increase in flow speeds, which, due to the shallow depth and rockiness of the channels, makes the flow turbulent. Such rivers, as a rule, flow in a single channel and only a few islands divide the flow into branches. The islands here are high and represent clusters of large pebbles, overgrown with birch and alder bushes. Open pebble banks form above and below the islands.
The most beautiful banks of mountain rivers attract attention. When approaching the ridges they take on the appearance of high rocky ledges. The mosses and lichens growing on them give the rocks a red-brown or green color.
When moving from mountainous to flat conditions, the steepness of river valleys and the flow speed sharply decrease. For these reasons, the flow power becomes insufficient to move river sediments (boulders, pebbles). This material is deposited directly in the river bed, forming peculiar islands called sedges. As a result, a bizarre and very dynamic pattern is formed from many ducts separated by islands. These types of channels are most common in the lower reaches of small rivers.
One more distinctive feature of these rivers is the presence of a large amount of driftwood (various sizes of logs and branches) in the riverbed, which is associated with the rivers exiting into the forest area. During periods of spring snowmelt, as well as after heavy rains, the water level in rivers and flow speeds increase, and the flow of water intensively erodes the banks. As a result, a huge number wood material falls into the river and is deposited downstream in the shallows - near islands or coastal spits. That is why the largest creases (accumulations of branches, cramps, as well as entire tree trunks) lead to the breaking of the river into channels, some of which have the opposite direction to the main flow of the river. As a result, the use of rivers for rafting purposes along almost their entire length turns out to be impossible.

Distribution of rivers by basin. All rivers of the Kamchatka Territory belong to the basins of the Okhotsk and Bering Seas and the Pacific Ocean.
The rivers of western Kamchatka flow into Sea of ​​Okhotsk. Most originate in Sredinny ridge. A smaller part originates in its foothills or peat bogs. In the upper reaches they flow in narrow gorges with numerous rapids and waterfalls; on the plain, their valleys become wide (up to 5-6 km), the banks are low, and the flow is slow. The rivers form channels and are replete with sandbanks.
Swamp rivers represent a sharp contrast to clear, rapid mountain streams. Their bed is mostly narrow and deeply cut into the peat. The water, as always in swamp streams, is dark brown in color and the flow is slow. After rains they swell greatly. They usually start in small oval or round lakes.
The largest of the rivers flowing into the Sea of ​​Okhotsk is Penzhina river(713 km). The river originates in Kolyma ridge and flows into Penzhinskaya Bay. The largest tributaries of the Penzhina are the Oklan and Chernaya rivers. Other rivers in the western part of Kamchatka include: Bolshaya, Tigil, Icha, Vorovskaya, Krutogorova.
The rivers flowing into the Bering Sea are even shorter than the rivers of western Kamchatka. Most of them have a pronounced mountain character all the way to the mouth. The most large rivers originate in the Sredinny Ridge: Ozernaya(length 199 km), Ivashka, Karaga, Anapka, Valovayam. WITH Koryak Highlands flow into the Bering Sea Vivenka, Pakhacha, Apuka.
Directly to Pacific Ocean The rivers of south-eastern Kamchatka flow into them. Of these, the largest are Zhupanova, Avacha And Kamchatka.
The most big river edges, Kamchatka(length 758 km, drainage area 55.9 thousand sq. km), unlike other Kamchatka rivers, it flows along a large section of its length Central Kamchatka plain and has a mountainous character only in the upper reaches. The river has many tributaries. Of these, the largest: left - Kozyrevka, Fast, Elovka; right - Shchapina And Big Khapitsa.

The rivers of Kamchatka are surrounded by a landscape that is completely unique in terms of vegetation. In conditions of high humidity, which is typical of flooded river floodplains, truly monstrous grass grows, in which an adult person disappears headlong. They are accompanied by bushes, all together creating a truly impassable thicket.
One more characteristic feature floodplain landscape - animal trails. Even in the wildest regions along water bodies there are trodden paths along which you can move freely (unless you meet a four-legged club-footed friend on it).

Lakes

In Kamchatka from above 100 thousand large and small lakes. By nature they can be divided into six types. Each type is confined to a specific region of the region.
1. Numerous crater and dammed lakes are common in areas of ancient and modern volcanism. Crater (sometimes with hot water) lakes are small in size and located at a considerable altitude. Dammed lakes were formed as a result of the damming of rivers lava flows(Lake Palanskoe).
Small pools often form where hot springs emerge hot water. Lakes associated with volcanism also include large caldera lakes (Lake Kurilskoye).
2. Oxbow lakes form the second large group. They are located mainly in the valley of the Kamchatka River.
3. On the coasts, mainly in the estuarine parts of rivers, there are lagoon lakes, separated from the sea by spits. They are of considerable size. Lake Nerpichye, for example, is the largest lake in Kamchatka. Its area is 448 square meters. km, depths range from 4 to 13 m.
4. Discharge lakes were formed as a result of the splitting and subsidence of individual sections earth's crust. They are characterized by the simplicity of the outline of the banks. (Lake Dalnee near the village of Paratunki).
5. Another type is formed by glacial lakes located at the foot of the ridges, where they sometimes form a typical landscape.
6. Peat lakes are widespread within the region.

Many lakes were formed under the influence of several factors and cannot be classified into any specific type.
Small, well-warmed lakes are home to silver crucian carp and pike. In some lakes there is Amur carp.
At the same time, the lakes are wonderful spawning grounds for salmon, and Lake Kurilskoe And Nerpichye are among the best spawning grounds in the world.
Some lakes are an exceptional phenomenon. An example is Lake Kurilskoye, an ancient caldera filled with water. Among the volcanic lakes of Russia there is not a single one that is anything close to it in structure. With a relatively small size (77.1 sq. km), the lake has great depths (306 m) and belongs to the deepest lakes in Eurasia. The panorama of the lake is unique. It is surrounded on all sides by majestic volcanic cones. The shores and underwater slopes are steep and rocky. Ancient lake terraces are visible on the slopes of the volcanoes.
Islands rise from the bottom in the form of peaks, one of the islands, a triangular Alaid rock.
The lake is fed by numerous mountain streams mixed with the waters of hot springs. One weakly freezing river, Ozernaya, flows out of it. The lake is one of the most important spawning grounds for sockeye salmon.
In the craters or calderas of many volcanoes there are lakes that do not freeze all winter, so ducks and swans often spend the winter on them.

Palana is a small picturesque river flowing in the north of the Kamchatka Territory. In its upper reaches, the river forms many beautiful rapids, which attract the bulk of tourists.

The name "palana" comes from an old Koryak word that means "threshold". And the river fully lives up to its name - originating from Lake Palansky, it forms a long chain of rapids and waterfalls at its source. Many of these waterfalls are very picturesque and beautiful.

Apart from the rapids, Palana has nothing else to boast of. The river is about 140 kilometers long and is used mainly to satisfy the various economic needs of the region. In addition, its waters are home to many varieties of commercial fish, which is why Palana is also popular among local fishermen.

Zhupanova River

The Zhupanova River is located on the Kamchatka Peninsula, its length is about 240 km. Flowing into the Kronotsky Bay, the river forms a vast estuary, which bears the same name. The Zhupanova River has a typical mountain character and is considered a corner of virgin nature untouched by civilization. Five species of salmon spawn here. In addition, the river basin has become a habitat for many animals, such as the brown bear, reindeer, fox, sable and many others.

Sport fishing is practiced on the river.

In the next five years, it is planned to build small hydroelectric power stations on the river; unfortunately, this will lead to flooding of part of the valley, which could have a detrimental effect on the inhabitants of this ecosystem.

Rivers of Kamchatka

More than six thousand large and small rivers flow through the region, but only a few of them have a length of more than 200 km and only 7 are more than 300.
The largest rivers: Kamchatka, Penzhina, Talovka, Vyvenka, Oklan Penzhina River, Tigil, Bolshaya (with Bystraya), Avacha.
The insignificant length of Kamchatka rivers is explained by the close location of the main river watersheds from sea ​​coast.

There are two main ridges on the peninsula - Sredinny and Vostochny, which stretch in the meridional direction. From the outer (western) slope of the Sredinny Range, rivers flow into the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, from the outer slope of the East - into the Pacific Ocean. And those that arise on the inner slopes of these ridges flow into the central valley, along the bottom of which the largest river of the peninsula, the Kamchatka, flows.

The rivers of our region, although shorter, are deeper than rivers The European part of the USSR: from each square kilometer of drainage area they receive 15-25 liters of water per second - almost twice as much as in Europe.

Types of rivers

Based on the nature of the river flow, the regions are divided into several groups. The most common are mountain ones, the sources of which lie near the main watersheds. They are the largest on the peninsula and are formed from melting snow. However, they receive most of their nutrition from groundwater. Some of these rivers flow throughout their entire length within the mountains, the other part only in the upper reaches.

In mountainous regions, rivers flow in narrow valleys with steep slopes. They, as a rule, have a fast rapids flow, and when they come out onto the plains, they are calm: they break up into numerous channels and branches, strongly meander (loop), forming many oxbow lakes. Near the sea, the flow of rivers is slowed by tidal waters. Their mouths often turn into long estuaries, which is especially typical for the west coast. When they flow into the sea, they usually form “cats” and “spits”; bars are observed at the mouths (bars are shoals created by a tidal sea wave, making it difficult for ships to enter the mouths).

The upper reaches of Kamchatka, Avacha, Bystraya, Tigil, Penzhina and others are very characteristic of mountain rivers. TO lowland rivers include Kamchatka, Penzhina and others in their middle and lower reaches.

The third group is dry rivers. They cut through the slopes of volcanoes and carry their waters to the receiving pools only in the summer, when the snow melts. During the rest of the year, water seeps into loose volcanic rocks and rivers disappear from the surface of the earth. An example is Elizovskaya and Khalaktyrskaya.

The rivers have a mixed diet. Most of them are groundwater and water obtained from melting snow in the mountains and valleys. The role of ground nutrition increases in low-water years, and snow nutrition, on the contrary, in high-water years. Rain power is significant for the rivers of the west coast, where its share in some years can be 20-30 percent. There are rain floods here in the fall, sometimes exceeding the spring flood in height.

Freezing and opening. Due to the abundant ground supply, ice cover on many rivers is unstable, and there are large ice-free areas and polynyas. In winter, ice often appears only near the coast, places with fast current and the middle of the river are usually ice-free. Freeze-up begins in November or even December, and only slightly earlier in the north of the region. In the north and northwest, where climatic conditions more severe, medium and small rivers at riffles freeze to the bottom, forming ice dams.

The opening of the rivers occurs in April - early May, in the north of the peninsula - somewhat later (in the middle and end of May). The opening is accompanied by spring ice drift, which is especially typical for rivers in the northwestern region.

Water content.

Its main indicator for rivers is water flow. It increases downstream as the basin grows. Thus, the average annual water flow in the upper reaches of the Kamchatka River is 91 cubic meters per second, in the lower reaches it is ten times more. Water content also depends on precipitation and the nature of the underlying surface. For example, the Penzhina River has a much larger drainage area than the Kamchatka River, but its average annual flow is less.

The Kamchatka River flows through the lowland located between the Sredinny and Eastern ranges. Having cut through the Kumroch ridge with a narrow valley - an area called “Cheeks” - it flows into the Kamchatka Gulf of the Pacific Ocean.

In the upper reaches the river has a mountainous character. Fast, greenish-turbid waters rush rapidly from the Ganalsky and Sredinny ridges. Swift streams rush between the stone banks, tear off stones and carry them far downstream. Stones piled up in the riverbed form riffles and rapids.

Below the village of Pushchino the current becomes smooth. The river becomes flat and begins to meander strongly. Its width in the area of ​​the village of Milkovo is 100-150 meters.

The further down you go, the wider and deeper it becomes. The wide floodplain along which the river laid its winding channel with many branches and oxbow lakes is covered with a green carpet of meadows interspersed with fields and forests. In many places the forest comes close to the river and forms a dense wall of green hedge. In its lower reaches, the Kamchatka River widens to 500-600 meters, and its depths range from 1 to 6 meters. Numerous rapids make the river fairway unstable. After large floods it changes its position. This greatly complicates navigation.

The river freezes in November and opens at the end of April - beginning of May. Among the numerous tributaries, the largest are Elovka, Tolbachik, Shchapina.

Along the banks of the river are the villages of Milkovo, Dolinovka, Shchapino, Kozyrevsk, Klyuchi, Ust-Kamchatsk, etc.

Kamchatka is the most important transport route of the peninsula. Passenger trams, boats, and barges travel along it. Shipping is carried out almost to Milkovo. IN large quantities the forest is rafted. Salmon fish enter the river and its tributaries to spawn. The mighty northern beauty river is an interesting tourist route for summer hikes.

Lakes of Kamchatka

There are over 100 thousand Kamchatka lakes, but their water surface area is only 2 percent of the entire area of ​​the region. Only four lakes have an area of ​​more than 50 square kilometers, and two have an area of ​​more than 100.

The lakes are varied and attractive. They often present a unique and amazing panorama.

Not far from the village of Semlyachiki there are the remains of the old Uzon volcano. Its top was demolished by a colossal volcanic explosion, and at an altitude of more than 500 meters a huge caldera (bowl) with an area of ​​about 100 square kilometers was formed. This area contains a lot of springs, streams and small lakes. Many of them are filled with boiling water and constantly seethe, indicating the violent activity of the volcano. One of them is especially remarkable - Fumarolnoe. Its area is about 40 hectares. The water in it is always hot. Ducks and swans winter here.

There are many lakes like it. One of the most beautiful is Khangar. The huge stone bowl of the volcano of the same name rises to a height of 2000 meters. It is very difficult to climb to the top. It is even more difficult to go down to the lake along the steep walls of the crater. Doctor of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences A.E. Svyatlovsky, who overcame all these difficulties, drove around the lake in a rubber inflatable boat and decided to measure the depth. However, the hundred-meter rope did not reach the bottom.

Tectonic processes - the rise and fall of individual sections of the earth's surface - led to the formation of a number of lakes. Of tectonic origin are the lakes Dalneye and Nizhnoe in the area of ​​​​the village of Paratunka and one of the deepest and most beautiful lakes in Kamchatka - Kurilskoye.

The largest lakes:

Name Location Mirror area (in sq. km)
Nerpichye(with Kultuchn) In the estuary of the Kamchatka River 552
Kronotskoe West of the Kronotsky Peninsula 245
Kuril In the south of the Kamchatka Peninsula 77.1
Azhabachye In the area of ​​the village of Nizhnekamchatsk 63.9
Big South of the village of Oktyabrsky 53.5

Thanks to the invaluable work of S.P. Krasheninnikov, an ancient, poetic legend about the Alaid volcano has reached us:

"...The aforementioned mountain (Alaid) stood before at the declared lake (Kuril); and since its height took away the light from all other mountains, they were constantly indignant at Alaid and quarreled with her, so that Alaid was forced to leave from anxiety and to go into solitude on the sea; however, in memory of her stay on the lake, she left her heart, which in Kuril is Uchichi, also Nukhguni, that is, Pupkova, and in Russian it is called the Heart-Stone, which stands in the middle of the Kuril Lake and has a conical shape. Her path was the place where the Ozernaya River flows, which began on the occasion of this journey: for as the mountain rose from its place, the water from the lake rushed after it and made a road for itself to the sea.”

Kuril Lake is surrounded by volcanoes. Its banks are steep and steep. Numerous mountain streams and hot springs flow here, and only the Ozernaya River flows out, which freezes briefly in winter. Kuril Lake is the deepest on the peninsula (306 meters). Its bottom is below ocean level.

A similar legend was recorded by Krasheninnikov about the origin of another lake - Kronotsky. This is the largest freshwater lake in the region. In area it exceeds Avacha Bay. The greatest depth is 128 meters. It arose due to the fact that colossal masses of lava, poured out from a nearby volcano, blocked the valley through which the rapids and noisy Kronotskaya River runs, and formed a dam. According to legend, the lake was formed because the Shiveluch volcano moved to a new place of residence and on the way carelessly broke the tops of two hills. The “traces” of his feet, filled with water, turned into lakes. In particular, these include the Kharchinskoye and Kurazhechnoye lakes, well known to residents of the village of Klyuchi.

In the lower reaches of the Kamchatka River lies the largest of the brackish lakes - Nerpichye, the remnant of a bay that separated from the sea after the coast of the peninsula was slowly raised. Its depth is 12 meters. It consists of two lakes connected to each other, one of them is called Nerpichye, and the other is Kultuchnoe. The surf and the river took part in its origin. The name of the lake indicates that the sea animal found here is the seal (a type of seal). Kultuchnoye comes from the Turkic word kultuk - lagoon.

Lagoon-type lakes are common on the western coast of the peninsula. They form at the mouths of almost all large rivers of the Western Kamchatka Lowland. Lagoon lakes have an elongated shape.

The most numerous group of lakes are peat lakes. Their clusters can be found in the Western Kamchatka Lowland, Parapolsky Dole and coastal plains east coast. Such lakes, as a rule, are small, have a round shape and steep shores.

The lakes of Kamchatka are located at different altitudes above sea level and are heterogeneous in their temperature and water regime. They also have different periods of freezing and opening.

The greatest rise in water level is observed in the summer, when the snow melts in the mountains. The height of the level of coastal lakes depends on tidal sea currents. The greatest amplitude of level fluctuations in the lagoons of the west coast reaches 4-5 meters. The lagoons and lakes of the sea coasts freeze in December - later than in the interior regions of the peninsula, and open in late May - early June, although some of them are cleared of ice only in July

The rivers of Kamchatka have enormous reserves of energy. Their abundance, high water content and mountainous character create favorable conditions for the construction of hydroelectric power stations, but our rivers are mostly spawning grounds for such valuable fish species as salmon. And the spawning grounds need to be preserved.

The shallow lakes of Kamchatka, which warm up well, are used for breeding silver crucian carp - a tasty and nutritious fish. Amur carp and sterlet are also bred here.

The largest rivers of Kamchatka are reliable transport routes. Goods, materials, equipment, and construction timber are transported across Kamchatka, Penzhina and some others.

Over six thousand large and small rivers flow through the territory of the Kamchatka Territory.

The Bolshaya River, which flows into the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, is the second most important fishing river after the Kamchatka River. The history of the development of the peninsula as an administrative unit of the Russian Empire began with it.
Geography
The Bolshaya River is formed by the confluence of two large Kamchatka rivers: Bystraya and Plotnikova. Source of the river Bystraya is located on the north-western spurs of the Ganalskie Vostryaki ridge, where two more large rivers - Kamchatka and Avacha - originate from the slopes of the Bakening volcano, called the “Kamchatka Peak”. The length of the Bolshaya River (with the Bystraya River) is 275 km, the total fall is 1060 m.
First, the Bystraya flows south along the Sredinny Ridge, along the Ganalskaya tundra, and after merging with the river. Plotnikova, having already formed the river. Large, turns to the southwest. In the upper reaches of the river. The ancient villages of Ganaly and Malki are located in Bystra. On the western coast of Kamchatka the river. The Bolshaya River spills into a vast estuary and flows along the sea coast to the southeast, where it flows into the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, forming the huge Bolshoye Lake at its mouth. Navigable from the mouth to Oktyabrsky village.
Story
V. Martynenko in the book “Kamchatka Coast. Historical navigation" (1991) writes: "The largest river of the Kamchatka western coast - the Bolshaya - has been known to Russians since the end of the 17th century, since the famous campaign of the Pentecostal V. Atlasov, who marched with a detachment in 1697 along the western coast of the peninsula from the Ichi River to the Nynguchu River ( Golygina). In the “Drawing of the Kamchadal Lands Again” compiled at the turn of the 17th-18th centuries, its author, the Siberian cartographer S. Remezov, based on the results of Atlasov’s campaign, marked the Bolshaya River with an explanatory inscription: “fell into the Penzhin Sea with many mouths.” The Sea of ​​Okhotsk was originally called Penzhinsky or Lamsky. In 1707, the Bolshaya River was noted in the report of the Cossack Rodion Presnetsov with a variant of the distorted local name - Kiksha. The toponym Kiksha (Kyksha) is also found on some old Russian drawings of Kamchatka and probably goes back to the Itelmen word “kyg”, which means “river”. The origin of the Russian name was later explained by S. Krasheninnikov: “It is called big because of all the rivers flowing into the Penzhin Sea, it is the only one you can walk along from the mouth to the very top.”
At the beginning of the 18th century. Russia was actively developing the Far Eastern borders of the empire. Russian sailors paved a sea route 603 miles long from Okhotsk to the mouth of the river. Bolshoi and in 1703-1704. They built a winter hut several tens of kilometers above the mouth, which was later called the Bolsheretsk fort. In those days, the river did not wind along the coast, but flowed straight downstream into the Sea of ​​Okhotsk (Fig. 2). Near the mouth there was a large bay, extending to the south (such bays in Kamchatka have been called “kultuks” since ancient times, hence, by the way, the name of Lake Kultuchnogo in Petropavlovsk, it was once a bay of Avachinskaya Bay).
The entry of ships into the mouth of the river. The large one was quite safe in good weather and high tides, and ships entering the bay were reliably sheltered from storms.
We find in S. Krasheninnikov’s “Description of the Land of Kamchatka”:
“Chekavina, in Kamchatka, Shkhvachu river, two versts from the mouth of the Bolshaya... It is worthy of note because seagoing ships spend the winter there, for which reason the barracks for the guards and storage sheds from the Kamchatka expedition were built there. Ships enter it during rising water, and during receding water it is so narrow that you can jump over it, and so shallow that ships fall on their sides, but this does not cause any damage to them because its bottom is soft.”
Thus, in those days, Chekavinskaya harbor served not only as a shelter for ships, but also served as a kind of dry dock.
According to some historical information the mouth of Chekavka was dug artificially. A geologist by training and a traveler by life, the German scientist Karl von Ditmar, being an official of special assignments for the mountainous part under Governor Vasily Stepanovich Zavoiko, studied Kamchatka.

Map of Ditmar. Reconstruction of Semenov.
This is what he writes in his book “Trips and Stays in Kamchatka in 1851-1855”:
“October 3 (1853 - author's note). They say that in former pre-Russian times, the bag-shaped bay of the Big River, which currently goes very far to the south, opened into the sea at its southern end, but the Kamchadals, who then lived here, decided to dig up a spit opposite the mouth of the river in order to create a closer and more accessible place for migratory fish. a path convenient for fishing. It ended with the fact that during the work the dam suddenly burst, and many people died in the immediately gushing water. Soon after this, the old, southern channel was completely swept away by the waves. Through a new, artificially made channel much further to the north, then, in the first time of Russian rule - the time of prosperity of Bolsheretsk - ships entered the bay to dock as if it were a calm, deep harbor. Opposite the mouth of this bay in the sea, on the side of the mainland, at the very confluence of the river. Bolshoi Bay (Povorot), a small village of Chekavka arose, where goods destined for Bolsheretsk were unloaded. There were several residential buildings, many shops and a lighthouse with mica glass to indicate the mouth of the Bolshaya to ships. Chekavka was, in fact, the harbor of Bolsheretsk, located 20 versts above, and served for Kamchatka for many years as the only point through which the peninsula was in communication with Russia through Okhotsk.”
It was from the Chekavinskaya harbor that the rebel Kamchatka exiled settlers, led by the Polish confederate Mauritsy Benevsky (Benevsky), captured the galliot “St. Peter,” fled to the south, eventually reaching China and then France.
Naval historian A. Sgibnev in his work “Historical Sketch” major events in Kamchatka from 1650 to 1856." writes:
“On April 30 (1771 - author's note) Benyevsky and his accomplices moved onto rafts and went down the river. Bystry to Chekavka (that was the name of the wintering place for ships near the mouth of the Bolshaya River, where two huts and a barn were built to store goods delivered from Okhotsk - author), taking with him all the people he arrested. Having taken possession of ships and a barn with government supplies on Chekavka, he ordered the ship “St. Peter" as more reliable."
In the gulf, ships that came from the Aleutian and Kuril Islands and Okhotsk or were heading there from Kamchatka defended against Chekavka. The calm Chekavinskaya harbor was essentially a maritime suburb of the Bolsheretsky fort. But already at the end of the 1850s. The channel leading to the sea was covered with sand, the river began to make its way into the ocean to the south and formed a new mouth there.
The German scientist and traveler Georg Adolf Ehrmann, who was in Kamchatka 24 years earlier than K. Ditmar, put a slightly different configuration of the river mouth on his map. Large (Fig. 3). The names of the Bolshaya, Bystraya, Utka, Kikhchik, Amchigacha, Nachilova, Goltsovka, Baanyu (once it was called Bannaya, and now Plotnikova) and others mapped by A. Erman have survived to this day. But R. Chekavina at the mouth of the Bolshaya disappeared from the maps. We can safely assume that Chekavinskaya harbor became the first seaport of Kamchatka.
Mouth of the Bolshoy River
Entering the mouths of Kamchatka rivers has always been unsafe for sailors. On the so-called “bars” (emphasis on the second letter “a”), where rapidly flowing fresh waters and sea swells, there are always crowds of water, ripples, chaotic whirlpools, high waves, swells and unpredictable current directions. Our rivers can suddenly change their fairway, and the sea can wash sand where yesterday there was a deep channel.
Let us turn once again to the book by V. Martynenko:
“In the Russian history of Kamchatka, the overwhelming number of shipwrecks and emergency situations. The first in this tragic series is the boat of the Second Kamchatka Expedition “Fortune”. Having set out in 1737 on the instructions of V. Bering from Okhotsk to explore the Avachinskaya Bay, the ship under the command of navigator E. Rodichev crashed when entering the mouth of the Bolshaya. Among the survivors was student S. Krasheninnikov, a researcher of Kamchatka.
Seven years later, the fate of the “Fortune” was shared by the sloop “Bolsheretsk”, a small vessel built in Kamchatka from birch forest and therefore called “beryozovka”. Launched in 1739 and assigned to the expedition of M. Shpanberg, the ship in the same year sailed to the shores of unknown Japan, and in 1742 repeated this voyage. Upon returning from the Japanese campaign, the Bolsheretsk crashed at the mouth of the Bolshaya River.
In 1748, a similar tragedy happened to the galliot Okhotsk under the command of navigator Bakhmetyev. The galliot, anchored opposite the Bolsheretsk mouth, was thrown ashore by an autumn storm and broken. Most of the crew, including the commander, died.
In October 1753, misfortune befell three ships of the detachment of Lieutenant V. Khmetevsky, sailing from Okhotsk to Bolsheretsk. Waiting for a favorable situation to enter the mouth of the packet boat “St. John", gukor "St. Peter" and the double-sloop "Nadezhda" were thrown ashore by a storm in various areas of the west coast. It was possible to fix and launch only one of the ships - the gukor "St. Peter". This was the same ship that the sailors who survived the tragic winter built from the remains of V. Bering’s packet boat of the same name. But the saved namesake of the famous ship, the captain-commander, was destined to have a short life. Two years later, while sailing from Yamsk to Okhotsk, the gukor was thrown by a storm to the western coast of Kamchatka and was finally defeated near the mouth of the Vorovskaya River.
In the forty years that have passed since the opening of the sea route from Okhotsk to Kamchatka, the Ust-Bolsheretsk coast has turned into a real graveyard of ships. In 1766, the largest disaster occurred, which essentially doomed the large naval expedition under the command of P. Krenitsyn and M. Levashov to failure. The expedition began sailing from the port of Okhotsk on four ships on October 10, 1766.
Crash
Documents from those years provide a clear picture of the outcome of this expedition.
"Brigantine "St. Catherine". Commander Captain 2nd Rank P. Krenitsyn. Leaving Okhotsk in mid-October along with three ships equipped for discoveries on the Eastern Ocean, they were separated and were all thrown ashore in different places. "St. Catherine", which had a strong leak throughout the entire journey, upon arriving at the Kamchatka coast, already standing opposite the Bolsheretsk mouth with only one remaining anchor and two rivers, with lowered yards and topmasts, on the night of October 25, it was thrown ashore on its left side near the Utka River, two miles from it to the south... and was defeated. With great difficulty, the team moved to the shore, when the water had already subsided, the commander was the last.
Gukor "Saint Paul". Commander Lieutenant Commander M. Levashov. Upon arriving at Bolsheretsk, he stood at the mouth of the Bolshaya River, waiting for full water, and on the night of October 25, having both ropes burst, “in common with the servants of the consultation,” he threw himself ashore at Amshigachevsky Yar to the north, seven miles from the mouth of the Bolshaya River.
Bot "Saint Gabriel". Commander - navigator Dudin 1st. Upon arrival at Bolsheretsk, he managed to enter the mouth of the Bolshoy River, but for further passage he expected full water and on the night of October 25 he was thrown ashore. Galiot "St. Paul". Commander - navigator Dudin 2nd. Having been separated from three ships, he passed or was carried into the Eastern Ocean by the first Kuril Strait and on November 21 reached Avachinskaya Bay, but, met here by ice, he was again carried out to sea, wandered for a whole month, lost his bowsprit, yardarm, all sails and ropes and, already having neither water nor firewood, he set off straight to the shore and jumped out to the seventh Kuril Island. In a quarter of an hour the ship was completely wrecked. 30 people were killed, and 13 were saved, including the commander. Kindly received by the residents, the unfortunate sufferers spent the winter on the island, eating whale oil, roots and shells, and the next year they moved to Bolsheretsk.”
LIGHTHOUSE
Nowadays, the only Bolsheretsky lighthouse in this area, which is a tall white tower with 5 black stripes, stands still former village Zuykovo on the left bank of the river. Large near its mouth (see Fig. 1). Igor Maltsev writes about life at this lighthouse (http://ruspioner.ru/university/m/single/2732).
A little personal
I have a lot of memories associated with the Bolshoi River and its mouth. For example, from July to the end of October 1972, I worked on the sea tug “Captain Zagorsky” of Kamchatrybflot. By order of Kamchatrybprom, we were then engaged in towing dinghies with dismantled fish plant equipment from the disbanded Kikhchinsky fish processing plant in the village. October. Once a week, the Zagorsky (draft 2.5 m) entered the mouth of the river. Large with two heavily loaded 100-ton dinghies dangling from the back on the “brangs”. To the captain’s credit, there were no incidents when entering the bars during the three months of these “cruises.” Leaving the river into the sea with empty boats was also always a gamble.
I remember seals filling the bars with black dots of their heads. Apparently, it was there that they were guaranteed hearty lunch. In the 1980s, I was tasked with transporting the Ufa tanker from Oktyabrsky to Petropavlovsk, which had stood for many years in the river near the village on “dead” anchors as a transshipment tank for fuel oil bunkering for the village’s boiler house. Once upon a time, “Ufa” was “buried” here by captain Radmir Aleksandrovich Korenev, a famous Kamchatka writer.
Having difficulty tearing the tanker away from the shore, we lowered it downstream to the mouth, where we stood near the shore for three weeks to wait for the next double tide (simple tides in this area are small - up to a meter). The withdrawal of "Ufa" from the river. The big and further towing of the ship to Petropavlovsk, and then to Thailand, where it was sold for scrap metal (“for nails,” as sailors usually say), is worth a separate adventure story.
Another memory of the mouth of this river is associated with the work on compiling “Information on Stability” for the modernized vessels of the MRS-80 and MRS-225 types, which belonged to the collective farm named after. October Revolution. It was in the winter of 1977. A caravan of small fishing seiners was anchored at the mouth of the Bolshaya in the fall, before the freeze-up. Then they froze into the ice. We, two designers of the Kamchatka branch of the Central Design Bureau of the VRPO Dalryba (there was such a powerful design bureau in Petropavlovsk at that time), had to carry out the inclination of the ships, that is, record the curves of their restoration to an even keel after an artificially created list using a special device - an inclinograph , and then, based on the obtained sinusoids, calculate the behavior of the vessel under various loading options. It was possible to carry out the heeling experiment only on calm water, that is, during the “stopper”, when the tide “squeezes out” and stops the flow of the river. We cut ice-holes in the ice, used nets to get ice out of them... In general, this was another job that the crews of the ships and A. Avdashkin and I successfully coped with.
The languid wait for the “stoppers” was brightened up by fun fishing for the abundant smelt there (the lures were soldered themselves from brass hunting cartridges) and trips with shovels and sleds to the “burial sites” of canned fish from the Oktyabr fish processing plant. In those days, any “substandard” can of canned food (with a dent, scratch, and sometimes even with a crooked label or fuzzy lithograph) was classified as “unliquid”. These completely edible canned goods were taken to a spit closer to the mouth of the Bolshaya and buried in the sand with bulldozers. They ate them (flounder in oil or tomato sauce, natural canned salmon, etc.) and fried smelt. Once a week, a tractor with drags brought bread. This epic was especially memorable for my close acquaintance with the noble fisherman of Kamchatka, holder of many orders, the famous captain of MRS-433 and simply good person Grigory Samsonovich Krikorian.
Catfish
In the 1980-90s, many times in winter my friend and I traveled from Petropavlovsk to the river. The big one is behind the smelt. The more than 200-kilometer journey to the village of Oktyabrsky was brightened up by the stories of the then most popular G. Khazanov, recorded on a tape recorder in an old Muscovite. In the Oktyabrsky area there are very large smelt- catfish. On successful trips we brought home several hundred of this “cucumber” fish. The Bolshaya River is still a tasty place for lovers of winter fishing.