Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Kamchatka Peninsula is in the Russian Far East, extending 1,250 kilometers into the Pacific. The Sea of Okhotsk borders its western coast, the Bering Sea its eastern coast, and the Kuril-Kamchatka Trench, reaching 9,600 meters deep, runs offshore below the Bering Sea.
The Kamchatka Peninsula contains around 160 volcanoes, 29 of them still active. Nineteen active volcanoes are included in the UNESCO World Heritage List as part of the Volcanoes of Kamchatka group. The highest, Klyuchevskaya Sopka, stands at 4,750 meters and is the largest active volcano in the Northern Hemisphere.
During the Siege of Petropavlovsk in 1854, a Russian garrison of 988 men with 68 guns successfully defended the city against a French and British force of 2,540 soldiers aboard six ships carrying 206 guns. Despite winning the defense, Russian commanders abandoned the port as strategically indefensible after the attackers withdrew.
Biologists estimate that a fifth of all Pacific salmon originates in Kamchatka. The peninsula supports all six species of anadromous Pacific salmon, and Kurile Lake is recognized as the largest sockeye spawning ground in Eurasia.
Kamchatka was opened to foreigners in 1990. It had been closed to unauthorized Soviet citizens until 1989 and to all foreigners until 1990, after the Soviet authorities declared it a military zone following World War II.
Vladimir Atlasov, commander of Anadyrsk, explored nearly the entire peninsula between 1697 and 1699. He built an ostrog at Verkhny-Kamchatsk and traveled to Moscow to report his findings. Earlier, in 1696, Atlasov had sent the Cossack Luka Morozko south as far as the Tigil River.