The second largest concentration of geysers on earth, about ninety of them plus hot springs packed into a six-kilometre basin on the Kamchatka Peninsula, with rock at 250 degrees C only 500 metres down. A local scientist, Tatyana Ustinova, found it in 1941; serious study waited until the 1970s and foreign visitors were not allowed in until 1991. A mudflow buried two thirds of the valley on 3 June 2007, though it recovered better than anyone expected and the great geyser Velikan came through it. Inside the Kronotsky Nature Reserve and part of the Volcanoes of Kamchatka World Heritage Site, and the only realistic way in is by helicopter. About three thousand people a year manage it.
Russia
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