Two people are known to have died and a third is missing after an avalanche on Mount Kamen on the Kamchatka Peninsula on Friday 8 August 2014. All three were members of a climbing club from Yekaterinburg who were trying to ascend the notoriously dangerous north face of the volcano. Four other climbers were injured in the incident, three of whom have been kept in hospital. This is the second fatal incident on Mount Kamen this year, two climbers from Belarus having perished on the mountain in July.
Mount Kamen (center), with Mount Bezymianny to the left and Mount Klyuchevskoy to the right. Alexander Belousov.
4585 m high Mount Kamen is part of the Klyuchevskioy Volcano Group in the Ust-Kamchatka (East Kamchatka) District, along with mounts Bezymianny and Klyuchevskoy. The Kamchatka Peninsula lies on the eastern edge of the Okhotsk Plate, close to its margin with the Pacific and North American Plates. The Pacific Plate is being subducted along the margin, and as it does so it passes under the southern part of the Kamchatka Peninsula, and as it does so is partially melted by the friction and the heat of the Earth's interior. Some of the melted material then rises through the overlying Okhotsk Plate as magma and fueling the volcanoes of southern Kamchatka.
The approximate location of Mount Kamen. Google Maps.
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