Lake Baikal is known as the oldest and deepest lake on Earth, containing 20 percent of all fresh water reserves. The water in the lake is so transparent that individual stones and various objects can be seen at a depth of up to 40 meters. In winter, this place turns into a kingdom of ice of various textures and shades from milk-white to emerald.
The first ice on Lake Baikal, seen from Olkhon Island. The area shown is the deepest part of the lake at more than 1600 meters. The shore in the background is more than 50 km from Olkhon.
The journey began with a 6 hour flight from Moscow. At landing in Irkutsk the commander of the crew delighted the passengers with the good weather forecast — sunshine and only -31°С degrees. The end point of the trip — the Olkhon island, it was still more than 300 km. On the way, the thermometer readings varied between -30 °C to -45 °C degrees. For the end of January is a perfectly normal temperature. During the year there are more than 300 sunny days. Olkhon is the largest island on the lake, on which there are several villages with a total population of slightly less than 2 thousand people. Communication with the mainland in the summer only by ferry, in winter with the onset of severe frosts the road is open across ice. In the offseason, the only transport is the hovercraft. The island is part of the Pribaikalsky National park, so industrial fishing is prohibited here. In the summer there is many tourists not only from Russia but also from other countries. Recent years, more and more tourists are coming in winter.
The Small Sea Strait. In the right part of the frame — Shamanka rock (Cape Burkhan) is one of the most famous places of lake Baikal and one of the nine holy places of Asia.
Old fishing boats on the coast of Olkhon island protect the shore during the autumn storms.
Often there are chunks of ice like huge diamonds.
The picture shows the southern cape of Ogoy island, which is characteristic of a rock resembling a dragon.
Lake Baikal is one of the most turbulent on Earth. Sometimes in windless weather there can be waves up to 6 meters high. The storm in good weather, when nothing boded, is explained by the tectonic nature of the appearance of the disturbance. Lake Baikal is unusual, almost everything is unique with non-freezing zones, mobile cracks, colossal overthrusts and bizarre ice splashes. All this is largely due to the strongest storms in the fall and early winter. With an ice thickness of more than 50 cm, it is relatively safe to travel by car, but there is a problem with ice hummocks, which can reach 2-3 meters in height. The cracks stretching for dozens of kilometers represent a serious danger (their width is from 50 cm to 2 meters), since they do not freeze throughout the winter and periodically narrow or expand. There are also new cracks often, which is accompanied by the sound of an artillery salvo.
The most difficult thing in photographing is to stand the whole day at a temperature of minus 25-30 degrees, at night the frosts were even stronger. In the ice caves had to literally crawl to avoid damaging icicles. The first time on the ice was even scary to walk. It was a feeling that you are walking along a thin glass, under which a black abyss with an unknown depth. On the ice, oddly enough, you could walk in ordinary shoes, it was relatively non-slip. Despite the considerable thickness of the ice, small cracks constantly appeared, even under the feet. The sounds that have arisen in this case could be used for the scoring of the “Star Wars”.
Озеро Байкал известно не только огромными запасами чистейшей пресной воды, но и своим идеально прозрачным льдом, местами достигающим толщины более метра. У берега дно просматривается даже на глубине в пару десятков метров.
Winter Baikal is a rather unusual place where nature shows what it is capable of. In addition to multi-meter splashes and piles of ice several dozen centimeters thick, there are also examples of much more elegant work. It is not uncommon to find ice floes that resemble certain objects or animals. This piece of ice, more than half a meter high, immediately reminded me of a sail, and the ice is so transparent that you can easily read a book through it.
The picture was taken near the coast of Olkhon, on the north-eastern side of the island, near the village Uzury, where the weather station is located. The village is surrounded by hills that are visible in the background in the photo and this is one of the few places on the coast where you can easily go down to the lake without any problems. Despite strong thirty degrees below zero, Baikal began to become covered with ice in these placesonly in the second half of January. Thanks to the clear sky and almost complete absence of powerful light sources, there was an opportunity to see a huge number of stars, unimaginable in the conditions of city illumination, especially the Milky Way. The ice in the foreground was highlighted with a flashlight. The backlight allowed to show well the beautiful structure of transparent ice with cracks and its characteristic emerald color. It was lucky that because of strong winds, the ice was practically not covered with snow. On all the experiments in the process of shooting it took almost three hours, more to withstand in the severe frost without active movement is very difficult. In addition, because of large temperature changes on Lake Baikal, cracks on ice are actively formed at this time of day, so it was rather risky to go far from the shore.
Сильные ветра нередко сдувают весь снег до самой земли.
In winter, the lake turns into the largest ice rink on the planet.
After severe storms in early winter, bizarre ice formations several meters high form on the coastal rocks of Olkhon Island. Despite the inclement morning, by sunset the wind had died down, the sky cleared, and the last rays of the sun illuminated the ice-covered rocks on the southern tip of Olkhon.
Looking out the window, I realized that the morning did not bode well. A fierce blizzard hid everything around me. On the other hand, this was the reason why I had come to Lake Baikal once again. Instead of hoping for a beautiful sunrise, nature gave me the opportunity to see a phenomenon that is not so common on Lake Baikal. The gusts of wind were so strong that one of them almost blew away my backpack with my equipment. This is not surprising, as the sarma is one of the most powerful winds prevailing on Lake Baikal, and its gusts can sometimes reach 40-60 m/s.
