The World's Purest Ice
Lake Baikal is the world's oldest (25 million years) and deepest (1,642 meters) freshwater lake, holding roughly 20% of the Earth's unfrozen surface fresh water. During winter months from January through April, the entire surface freezes into an ice sheet up to 2 meters thick.
Because Baikal’s water is exceptionally pure—kept clean by endemic amphipod crustaceans that consume organic debris—the ice freezes with uncanny glass-like transparency. Visitors walking across the frozen lake can look down through 40 meters of clear crystal ice directly into the abyss below.
Deep organic vents release methane gas continuously from the lake bed. As gas bubbles rise toward the cold surface, they become trapped at various depths in the ice, forming eerie stacked columns of frozen white spheres frozen in time.
Turquoise Ice Blocks (Hummocks)
As wind pressure and temperature shifts flex the thick ice sheet, cracks fracture across miles of surface. Slabs of ice push against one another, creating jagged turquoise ice hummocks that glitter like raw cut diamonds in the Siberian winter sun.