Chekov Peak

Saturday Ocober 6th opened with a thick fog across the city. As we packed for a day-long hike up Chekov Peak, thoughts turned to warm jumpers and beanies.


We were a group of about 20 people, who hiked together. Masha organised the trip as a birthday celebration for herself- and she did a good job of organising the weather too!

Chekov Peak is, I've been told, about 12 km walk from the city. After the walk, we began to climb. There were some very steep parts of the path- not rock climbing or cliffy, but hard going for someone of my fitness level. The ground was mercifully dry. I can imagine us all sliding down from the top in the mud!





With Masha

But whatever pain we individually went through was all but forgotten once we'd reached the summit. We could see the Sea of Ohotsk to the west; the city lay still thickly covered in cloud below to the south; mountains lay wherever we turned. The forest was radiant with some of the brightest autumnal colours I've seen.



Around the top we found a ground-covering plant carrying loads of red berries- brusnika, I don't know what they are in English. Like a mouthful of pure Vitamin C, we ate all we could. A resident of Sakhalin can never get too much of the stuff.



We were really slow going. What takes a relatively fit person 5-6 hours to travel took us a good 9 hours: it was dark as we walked back along the road into the city- again under the thick cover of cloud, with not even a start to light our way.