Travel blog
Hiking to the Khibiny Mountains - romance and difficulties of everyday hiking
Usually, people go to the Khibiny Mountains from Kirovsk. There are many routes and even more options for combining them. I chose an alternative option - not standard, but it can’t be called unique either – from Imandra station almost diagonally through all the Khibiny Mountains to Kirovsk (see route map below).
It is basically impossible to come up with a unique route here – The mountain range is small in area, walked and crossed by several generations of hikers and simply nature lovers, skiers and freeriders, not to mention geologists. In connection with this fact, a big surprise for me was the complete absence of people on our route, although traces of their presence were encountered literally at every step. It seemed like it was the season and it seemed like people were supposed to meet quite often, but we met the first living person only at the end of the fifth day of the journey, near Lake Maly Vudyavr, literally a few kilometers from Kirovsk.
But the weather pleased us with its diversity — from the impenetrable rain curtain, when it was difficult to even walk, to stick your nose out of the tent, to the bright sunny sky and almost heat.
But these are all general words, I would like to describe it in detail, in relation to the points and days of our hike.
Day 1. The branded train Moscow - Murmansk runs from Moscow to Imandra station in just over a day and arrives quite conveniently – at 5.37 in the morning, you have time to sleep before the hike, and the whole day ahead.
From the station (small, deserted, the train stops for only a minute - you barely have time to jump out of the car with a large hiking backpack) along the tracks back we walk along the road for about a kilometer to a suspension bridge over the Goltsovka River. You can also cross it via a railway bridge, but using a suspension bridge is more convenient and enjoyable – the bridge sways under the weight of our bodies – first adventures :)
Then we go a little further from the tracks and through the forest zone along a country road we walk about five kilometers along the mountain to the entrance to the gorge we need. There is a path leading there, which is very easy to miss – She walks so little, you can immediately see – They rarely come here.
The trail immediately climbs quite steeply up the gorge and after about a kilometer takes us to the bald surface of the mountain, where the wind blows quite a bit and the forest no longer grows, only mosses, lichens, and rare bushes. We move on, the landscape becomes even harsher, the first snowfields appear (it’s never hot here in August) and it leads us to Yumekorr, translated from Khibiny into Russian - Gorge of the Dead – an eerie place where once in the Middle Ages Swedish invaders were stoned, one must think, not without the help of our domestic Susanins.
We pass through the gorge, making our way among huge boulders and snowfields, first testing them for strength – in many places the snow from below has melted – you can fail. Descent – rise – descent again – although not high, these are mountains and no one expects to see straight roads here.
The weather is already very cloudy in the morning, and towards lunch it starts to drizzle nasty rain. Around four o'clock it intensifies and I decide to stop, setting up camp on a flat area near the Meridialny stream, fortunately we have already passed double the norm today and this point is literally a kilometer from the planned point of the second night, although much higher, there is no forest and there is a fire here there is nothing to dilute from. It’s always easier to walk on the first day, so we walked a lot without any problems.
We put up tents, quickly cook dinner on gas and eat in them – by this time the rain is very strong, the wind is seriously testing the strength of the tents, wisps of torn clouds are flying several tens of meters above us, the landscape is not pleasing to the eye.
Day 2. In the morning a surprise awaits us – clear sky and bright sun. Due to the altitude at which we are located (about five hundred meters above sea level, but for the north this is already a decent altitude), it is not at all hot, but the sun can make any landscape and any altitude pleasant.
Cheerfully and cheerfully (even though our legs are already aching after yesterday’s double trek), we prepare breakfast, pack up the camp and move down – along Meridialny to the Goltsovka River, and then up along it – to its source and already real, high mountains. You could have come here straight away from Imandra along the river, but the hike through the gorges seemed more interesting to me.
It’s warm in the forest, mosquitoes, scatterings of blueberries, but after three hours we rise again to where the forest does not grow, into the kingdom of winds, stones and mosses. Not far from the source of the river, we set up camp on a flat area equipped by our predecessors, have lunch, leave our things in the tents and, lightly, go to the radial exit to the Fersman Circus. This is a small compact valley of a round shape, surrounded by mountains, looking like a huge – a few kilometers away is the circus arena. Well, Fersman – Russian and Soviet mineralogist, founder of geochemistry and discoverer of the Khibiny apatite deposit, many things are named in his honor here – peaks, passes, streams, circus…
We climb Fersman Peak (the second highest mountain Khibiny), from above looking at the tents we left in the distance, which seem like colored dots from here, and begin our trek to the ridge. According to the plan, we should go around the entire circus along a circular ridge, but the weather makes its own adjustments – Having climbed the ridge, we find ourselves in a dense layer of clouds, in which we can no longer see not only the surrounding landscapes, but also where we should go. And since there is no path here and you have to walk among huge stones, further continuation of the path along the ridge becomes pointless and even dangerous. We begin our descent, I navigate using the navigator on my phone, which shows the point of our location, but there is no relief or any markings in it – only the direction of movement can be determined. And that’s good! Without a navigator, in the mountains, in complete “milk” It’s easy even for very experienced people to get lost and go in the opposite direction. On the descent, here and there traces of people are visible between the stones, that is, we are descending along one of the passes that exist in this area – Arsenyev East and Arsenyev Western, but which one we are on is difficult to understand.
We reach the tents, the clouds have dropped lower during our trek and now the tents are sinking in a dense layer of moisture – There doesn’t seem to be any rain, but everything around is completely wet.
I cook dinner in a tent – It's too wet and windy outside even for gas burners. This is a common thing, tested many times on various hikes, especially in the mountains, when cooking “outside” There’s simply no way because of the wind, but this time I relaxed – an awkward movement and two pots with almost boiling water, like dominoes, knocking over one another, they fall, flooding the tent, one of my shoes, burning the floor of the tent with the edge of a hot burner and making me loudly and aloud remember “all mothers.” First of all, of course, yourself and your clumsiness. Water is scooped out of the tent, blotted with all possible means, the floor is patched, the pots are filled with new water, but dinner is postponed for almost an hour.
Day 3. I wake up at 6 am – Today we face the difficult Arsenyev Vostochny category pass. However, looking out of the tent, I understand that the hike is postponed – the density of the cloudy milk surrounding us is such that it is difficult to see an outstretched hand. With such visibility, going to the pass is simply dangerous. We sit and wait for “weather from the sea.” About two o'clock in the afternoon it becomes clear that today we will not go anywhere, fortunately on the first day we passed double the norm and we had an unplanned spare day. But if this happens tomorrow, you’ll have to take risks and go – Otherwise, we won’t be able to complete the hike on time, but we have purchased return tickets, and some participants in the hike have to go to work the next day after returning...
About four in the afternoon, tired from endless sleep and sitting in a tent, I decide to walk to the pass and reconnoiter the situation. During the hour-long journey there and back, I get so wet that there is not a single dry piece of clothing left on me, even the bottom one, but I can’t see or understand anything – That's how dense the water curtain is. Cooking in a tent again, sleeping in anticipation of the worst case scenario, but…
Day 4. … but nature again gives us an unexpected surprise – We wake up in an absolutely sunny and beautiful world. We quickly have breakfast, pack up camp and go to the pass. It becomes clear that the day before yesterday we descended precisely along the pass along which we must now climb – Arsenyev East. It’s not easy, it’s steep, you have to walk between huge, terrifying-looking boulders of stone, which, as it seems, could fall out of their place at any moment and crush you like a bug, but in reality everything turns out to be not as difficult and scary as it seems: )
The entire pass – We cover the way up and down in three and a half hours, compared to the planned six. Then we walk for about another hour through unpleasant stone fields and along the bed of the Fersman stream, entering the forest zone, where it is much warmer, mosquitoes and scatterings of ripe blueberries.
We set up the camp not far from the Belaya River, near a picturesque lake, in a place equipped by our predecessors. The evening fire pleases with its warmth, drives away mosquitoes, but attracts us until complete darkness falls.
Day 5. For breakfast, oatmeal with fresh blueberries.
With regret we leave the hospitable place and walk for a couple of hours through a pleasant forest area in all respects, but then we leave it again into a lifeless, windswept space near the source of the Belaya River and in front of the entrance to the Ramsay Pass. The source of the river is immediately full-flowing and is born from many springs, which, not far from each other, gush out from under the stones with powerful water springs. The area is slightly swampy, so you have to avoid it.
Here we are faced with a dilemma and a collective decision: set up a camp and, lightly, take a long roundabout route through passes and stone rivers to the top of the highest Khibiny mountain - Yudychvumchorr, and in the evening return and spend the night in cold and windy place – but that was the plan, or go to the Ramsay Pass and reach Lake Maly Vudyavr that day, where you can again spend the night in a comfortable forest area, leaving for the last day a lazy and leisurely 4-kilometer trek to Kirovsk and a tour of the city. The weather and the trials endured take their toll – everyone is inclined towards the second, simpler option and we continue moving. Moreover, we have already visited the peak of Fersman, and it is only 30 meters lower than the peak of Yudychvumchorr.
The Ramsay Pass, named after the Finnish geologist Wilhelm Ramsay, who at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries was engaged in the study of the Kola Peninsula, is not difficult in terms of its passage, but is a wind tunnel through which masses of cold air pass at great speed, from -why is the entire bottom surface here – solid snowfields, compacted over the years. After 650 meters of the high part of the pass, the trail goes down, but for a long time along and through the snowfields – It’s colder here than anywhere else in the Khibiny Mountains.
Along the trail there are a couple of medium-sized waterfalls and spectacular views from behind. Then we enter the forest zone again, but it is very swampy, the path winds its way through the thickets and it is extremely unpleasant to walk along it. However, all this does not last long and in the evening we come out onto a flat, well-trodden road that leads to and along Lake Maly Vudyavr.
We set up camp before reaching the lake on a place equipped for this purpose and very convenient – We didn’t go to the lake, its shores on our side are swampy, and it’s already late evening and I don’t want to search for a suitable place to camp on the shore and spend an extra half an hour on it.
It was here that the first living person we saw in the Khibiny looked into the light of our fire. He turned out to be a free traveler (as they call themselves) – a tramp from Belarus who wanders all summer by car and hydro in Karelia and the Murmansk region. He used our fire to prepare some kind of siblimat in an amount that, in my opinion, would not be enough to feed even a cat, my phone (his own was “broken”) to view his future routes, he blamed us for we are not as free as he is and we don’t want to wander around the world without money and goals, and he went to spend the night in his tent, which for some reason he put very far from us – on the swampy shore of the lake. We didn't see him again.
Day 6.We didn’t get up very early – Today we had a simple day in every sense of the word. We walked four kilometers to the outskirts of Kirovsk, took a bus and drove to its center. Here, first of all, we went to the kebab shop – Five days on a camp ration will turn anyone into a lover of fried meat and other delicacies. Then we rented one apartment for all of us through booking.com for a day and went to take a shower. Some were walking around the city, while others were washing off the sweat of the hike and enjoying the Internet TV, others were buying groceries for the trip. I managed to drop into the Apatit museum and exhibition center, created and supported by the city-forming enterprise of the same name. Entrance to the museum is free, and it represents the widest, one of the richest collections of minerals in the world – both those that form the basis of the Khibiny, and throughout the world. If you are in Kirovsk, I highly recommend visiting. This is a modern brick building with a tower and a clock in it – visible from almost everywhere in the city.
That's all. Well, if you would like to go hiking in the Khibiny Mountains, but for some reason you don’t know or are afraid to do it yourself, contact us – I’ll advise you, help you, and eventually take you there.