Paratunka (village)

The village of Paratunka is located at the intersection of the highway leading to the city of Vilyuchinsk and the Paratunka river.

The climate is transitional from marine to continental. Summer is cool (average temperature in July and August + 13-14 ° С), winter is somewhat colder than in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky (average January temperature –9 ° С). The average rainfall is up to 1120 mm per year. Due to the fact that the village and the resort area are surrounded on all sides by hills, the average annual wind speed is much lower than in the regional capital.

Among the main advantages of Paratunka is thermal hot water coming from the bowels of the earth. Due to this, without CHP and other power plants, it is possible to supply hot water to houses without additional heating, which significantly saves the regional administration. Also, an additional advantage associated with the lack of CHP is air purity.

In 1703, a detachment of Cossacks under the command of Rodion Presnetsov went to the Avacha Bay and then to the Paratunka River.

Local tribes considered the hot springs the dwellings of evil spirits and did not visit them. In 1805, the naturalist physician Langsdorf , a member of the Kruzenshtern expedition, visited the sources and made a description of them.

During the reign in Kamchatka, the governor of Rear Admiral V.S. Zavoyko, the Paratunky keys were at the zenith of fame. They were created swimming pools with locker rooms. A wooden church was built near the source. In 1879, the exiled physician B. I. Dybovsky made a great contribution to the study of sources from a medical point of view. They were studied and described by expeditions led by F. P. Ryabushinsky (1908-1910), as well as A. Zavaritsky, with the participation of Academician B. B. I. Piip ^[6]

Near the village in the battles for the establishment of Soviet power in 1922, the commander of the partisan detachment G. M. Elizov was killed , in whose honor the city of Elizovo and the region of the same name were named .

The development of the sources is connected with the name of the teacher P. T. Novograblenov, who from the 1920s published works on the hot keys of the peninsula, and also followed Paratunsky sources ^[7] .

After the war in 1950, the Central Institute of Balneology of the USSR equipped a complex expedition with the goal of balneological use of sources ^[6] .

In 1967, the world's first freon-based small geothermal power station was launched in Paratunka, the remains of this station are still preserved near the village of Thermal ^[8] .

Paratunka is a large balneological resort based on the Lower Paratunka springs , which are typical low-mineralized nitrogen alkaline siliceous terms. According to the ionic composition, sodium-calcium sulfate-chloride with a temperature of 42.5 ° C, alkaline (pH 8.1) ^[9] . The main active ingredients are silicic acid (up to 80 mg / l). Thermal (up to 61 ° С) nitrogen mineral water and sulphide silt mud of Utinoe Lake. In connection with such an abundance of healing mud and thermal water, more than 30 hotels, tourist recreation centers and sanatoriums have been built. Near the village is the sanatorium of the same name. Due to the unique properties of water, the eponymous thermal water spray “Paratunka” is produced.

From Paratunka you can make walking and car day trips to the volcanoes Vilyuchinsky, Gorely, Mutnovsky. Snow cover lasts from November to June inclusive, in connection with which there are all conditions for skiing, heli-skiing , snowmobiling.

There is a good but dangerous asphalt road to Paratunka. On the sides of the road there are a lot of villages, several recreation areas, many sanatoriums, recreation centers. There is a regular bus service ( minibuses ). Helicopter communication is also possible.

• Kamchatka
• Thermal
• Nikolaevka (Kamchatka Territory)
• Middle Paratunsky sources

• Paratunka - article from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia .
• Dictionary of modern geographical names / Rus. geo about . Mosk. Centre; Under the total. ed. Acad. V.M. Kotlyakova . Institute of Geography RAS . - Yekaterinburg: U-Factoria, 2006.
• Piragis A.P. Settlements of Kamchatka
• Paratunka in the Arctic Encyclopedia