I had got to hear about Baikal much earlier than this theme was learned during a geography lesson in school. Now young people sing nothing but karaoke, but 20 years ago there was no Russian family feast without a choral singing. And when people had already drunk a lot, someone from the older generation started singing “The Glorious Sea, Sacred Baikal” or “The wild steppes of Transbaikalia”. We, the children, didn’t understand the truth behind these words, but we were impressed with heroic stories and total enthusiasm, which we felt while listening to the performers. An incredible mix of Baikal’s geographical names, local nicknames of menacing winds and confused ideas about the region’s topography wandered in the children’s minds. According to the songs endless steppes were located around a formidable sea and there were impenetrable jungles inhabited by voracious predators. Vagrants and fine young men who were the Russian prototypes for “Pathfinder” from Fenimore Cooper’s novels lived there. We can say that the ideas laid about the lake in early childhood were the most romantic. And during the school years numbers were added to the naked romanticism, which established an aura over a place of miracles created by nature. The depth is more than a mile, there is one-fifth of the world’s clean, fresh water, and we can see a considerable number of animals found only here and nowhere else. That’s probably why almost every person dreams about visiting this legendary lake at least once in a lifetime. And, of course, I was not an exception. When they asked me if I wanted to go to Lake Baikal, I said “yes!” without waiting for the end of the question.
Almost 6,000 kilometers and four different kinds of transport were left behind. I had to change transport for three times and, finally, I got to Siberia, Lake Baikal. Gennady Misan, the director of the dive-center “BaikalTek” met our group at the Irkutsk airport, and took us to the island of Ol’hon. A wooden estate situated in Khuzhir, the main village of the island, was our place of residence for the next week. Before the trip I had thoroughly looked through the Internet pages concerning Lake Baikal and without any hints could indicate that Ol’hon Island was the largest island of the lake, located in its middle part, near its western shore. Its maximum length is 71 km, width is 12 km. The western side of the island is washed by the Small sea which is a huge shallow bay (or more precisely it is a strait). Its width is 20 km. But the bottom on the other side of the island is literally an abyss. The deepest point of Lake Baikal (1642 m) is only in 5 – 6 kilometers from the bank. But as a saying goes, seeing is believing so it’s better to go there than reread the published data a hundred times. After all, I came here with a specific purpose which is a detailed (in the literal sense of the word) exploration of ice in Baikal.
Immersions were carried out near Cape Khoboy during the first days (the northern point of Ol’hon). It is still deep winter in March on Lake Baikal. It’s 0 degrees in water and minus 20 above it and the ice separates these two layers. When I use the word ice, I mean, first of all, one of aggregate states of water. Do you remember from school physics course that it can be solid, liquid or gaseous? But I’d never seen so much of this physical state at a time: the weather was clear and the solid surface stretched for tens of kilometers, as far as one’s eye could see. Some spots were smooth, some swollen with hummocks, some were black because of depth that could be seen through the ice and some spots were milky white. Every day we had to cover 30 – 40 km to get to dive sites, and the icy horizon moved all the time ahead of us. And if we decided to travel to the north or to the south not 30 but 300 km, we always would see the same picture. Ice, ice and ice was everywhere. 30 thousand square kilometers of ice! But ice was so different in various places! It was even difficult to imagine what frost, wind, currents and the sun could have sculptured from simple H2O. Nowadays we are often delighted with ice sculptures shown during competitions often held in different countries. Masters cut statures of humans, animals, fairy-tale heroes and monuments of ice. You can’t see all this in Mother Nature’s workshops (or you can if applying fantasy). It creates mostly in the abstract style, but it’s no less talented because of this. As an example we should mention the artful design of ice stalactites formed on the bank rocks during the December storms. Icicles bend in imaginable and unimaginable forms, twist, untwist and intertwine. Their diameter is like pencil’s one but sometimes they are even thicker than a human hand. Ice that forms them may look like a glossy milk glass, crystal bars or quartz druzes. Under the icy bank caves and grottoes, ice crystals create something that is uniquely associated with the word “palaces”. And if the fairy tale Snow Queen really exists then she must live here!
During the journey time my standard reading was printouts of V. B. Shostakovich’s “The Ice on Lake Baikal” published in 1908. I managed to draw a lot of interesting facts from the book. That was how I learned that Baikal usually began freezing with the Small Sea on December 21. Freeze-up finished on the 16th of January covering an opened part of the lake near the island of Ol’hon. “...a young, newly formed ice is very thin... it is possible for a man to stand on the ice cover with a thickness of 5 cm, and when it is 16 cm horses are allowed to move there”. Nowadays “horses are allowed to move” is not relevant any more, and people drive there, and preference is given to off-road vehicles. Taking into account that ice thickness comes to 100 – 120 cm by March (the time of my arrival) it could stand even a tank’s weight. The reverse side of the “ice road’s” strength is difficulty in cutting an ice-hole for diving. A petrol-powered saw, of course, helps out, but even this device is unable to defeat the entire thickness of the ice in a single pass. Ice “cubes” from an ice hole must be removed in layers.
The ice-hole is cleared, the way down is free. If the purpose of diving is to admire the ice from under the water, the hole is usually made close to a “push”. Here’s how V. B. Shostakovich describes it in the article. “In their final state pushes are represented by slits, the edges of the slits are pressed against each other. A hummock, covering a slit like a dome, is formed of the gap broken edges.” The underwater view is also quite picturesque: there are disorderly piled ice floes, ice caves and grottos formed by an edge of one of the ice parts going down. Scientists explain the formation of “pushes” by thermal expansion of ice. It turns out that the night and day temperature difference at 20 degrees (and it is common for Lake Baikal) expands one kilometer of ice for nearly half a meter! And can you think about 10 or 20 km? That’s why ice is constantly in motion on Lake Baikal. When you go in the morning it’s a good riddance, and by the evening you have to lay the hook in a dozen kilometers to go round a six-foot swell formed under a fresh crack. Or you have to arm yourself with ice picks and shovels to clear a passage in it that a car could overcome there. Push formation is accompanied by a bang and crash comparable to the noise of a cannonade. And if it may cause some inconveniences on the surface, then it is much more unpleasant under the water. Our group once almost caught hell because of this natural phenomenon. We dived with a French group of divers to see a crack somewhere in the middle of the Small sea. The purpose of the immersion was to take photos and shoot interesting relief details of the lower part of the ice-surface. Operators and their models looked for picturesque cliffs and ice caves. There were no signs of surprises. Suddenly... Hardly the last swimmer had left one of the underwater ice caves as there was a heartbreaking crash and the ice that formed walls of the cave, piled up like a house of cards!
There are many terms that are used to describe ice on Lake Baikal. Several basic types of ice are mentioned in the Shostakovich’s work. They are “sokuy”, “osenets” and “kolobovnik”. Sokuy appears in late autumn at the lake shallows. Water freezes at the bank and waves, rolling on the edge, are touched by frost at night and that’s why the amount of ice gradually increases and moves towards the lake. Ice is white, opaque and porous with corrugated surface and can form swells which “sometimes reach the height of two yards.” Osenets appears when broken floating ice freezes. It’s also rough and opaque, one can noticed some fragments of damaged ice there. The next type of ice looks very picturesque, this is kolobovnik. It is formed by “balls” frozen in clear ice. The balls are chunks of floating ice which got spherical shapes. If the pieces are large enough they remind white plates laid out on the dark ice surface. In this case, the ice is called “tchashechniy” (“tchashka is Russian for a “cup”) or “tarelochniy” (“tarelka” is Russian for a “plate”). Clear smooth ice which has all these frozen installations inside doesn’t have its own local name, but from my point of view, it is the most interesting object for photo and video shooting. Water in the lake reminds distilled according to its chemical composition (or it’s better to say according to its lack). “Glass” of extraordinary optical purity appears when frost binds its smooth surface. If you look at people moving on the ice surface from under it, it is hard to believe that the thickness of the ice “window” is 80 – 100 cm. There is an impression that you can reach out your hand and touch them. Only bubbles of your regulator, hitting the bottom of the ice surface, give an idea about the true state of things in some degree. When you watch a diver through the surface between your shoes (he is floating in the depth of 10 meters), you feel a treacherous chill on your back from time to time, and you are afraid that suddenly the magic spell will be dispelled, and you’ll collapse getting into a deep abyss under your feet.
During the under-ice diving we were able to add information on V. B. Shostakovich’s types of Baikal ice. In principle, it is not surprising since the hydrologist wrote his work in 1908 when the lower surface of the ice was simply not available. And it was under the surface where we saw such a thing as underwater snow. Yes, yes it was snow (or something that looked like snow)! It is difficult to speak about its origin (wind could upset an ice floe with a snowdrift or maybe this was one of the stages of ice crystallization), but we could scoop this white substance and do real snowballs. And if talking about an aesthetic side of the question we all could write a separate treatise about it. Every dive brought new shots of unusual ice formations. Ice caves, grottos and tunnels formed by a push. Thin broken and frozen ice looked like tiles and resembled a fairy-tale dragon's teeth. With their heads down ice floes resembled sometimes the well-known mountain peaks (e.g. two-headed snowy lump definitely looked like Mount Elbrus). It is difficult to describe the full range of icy miracles that we had a chance to peep contemplating “mother nature’s” freaks.
Starting from April, the ice shell of the lake gradually gets thinner (1 cm in three days) and Baikal starts to lose its ice in May (in the northern part the break-up begins in the last decade of May). But winter is losing its power with great reluctance, and floating ice can be often found even in late June. Then follows a transient Baikal summer, when water temperature on the surface rises to 11 degrees (in shallow bays to 22 – 23). Then once again, nature starts its winter preparations. Presaging the ice kingdom to return, young shore ice appears in bays in mid-November.
Six days of diving flashed like an instant. Many of Lake Baikal wonders stayed behind the scenes, for example, the unique flora and fauna of the lake. It is asleep in winter. Only two dives gave us a possibility to see similar to corals Baikal sponges and an endemic of the lake gammarus which is a large amphipod crustacean. But there are more: the famous nerpa (Baikal seal), the unique live-bearing fish golomyanka and the Baikal sturgeon (Acipenser baerii). And it would be nice to meet omul of Baikal which is well known occupant of mysterious barrels from a Russian legend. Well, that will be the reason to come to Lake Baikal once again. Probably, this severe but generous place is like some kind of unknown virus that makes a person, who has visited the lake, come back here again and again. A famous French underwater cameraman Didier Noirot accepts this idea. I was fortunate to meet him during my stay with BaikalTek. He admits that there are only three places in the world where he is ready to come again and again. And one of them is Lake Baikal. Glorious and sacred Russian sea.
Some tips for divers. In January Baikal freezes. It often happens in the second half of January (very rarely, but sometimes this can be seen in late December). The ice thickness at this time is 10 – 20 cm. Ice is thick and clear but it is forbidden to go there by car. In February the ice thickness reaches 50 – 100 cm. Ice is thick and very firm. Cracks appear in early February as a result of temperature differences, you can travel on ice in a jeep. The best time is the end of February, early March. The thickness of ice is 80 – 120 cm. Ice is thick and very firm. This is the time when you can observe the formation of hummocks and of other different ice frills as underwater caves and tunnels. The water temperature during this time is 0 and the air temperature is –10, –25 C.
When you are there you should have 2 regulators for winter, a dry suit and the ICE DIVING certificate. But the most important thing is your desire, because you can get the equipment and ice diving training there, on the lake.
Text: Eline Feenstra
Pictures: Rene Lipmann and Olga Kamenskaya
Here, in the heart of Siberia, a rather extraordinary event takes place. Concealed by rising mountains the Earths interior slowly rifts apart, creating world’s deepest reservoir containing roughly 20 percent of the world’s surface fresh water. It is winter now; and the lake is frozen into silence. Only an icy wind sweeps across its surface. But, for us, it is time to go diving!
It’s about a one-hour drive from Siberia’s capital Irkutsk to lake Baikal. The landscape is dissolute and endless, yet surprisingly full of colour. Light yellow soils tint the shimmering snow planes and distant hills are covered with evergreen temperate forest and taiga. It is beautiful, calming.
Gennady Misan sits on the driver seat and rouses himself from the sobriety of the landscape. “Ready, guys!?”, he asks with a warming smile. It is the last hill to climb, in front of us lies also our planet’s most ancient lake: Lake Baikal.
It is like we are hitting something. Everything intensifies: the colours, the air and the Russian music coming from the radio. The sound of rocks crushing the sides of the vehicle on this unpaved road. Gennady speeds up towards the waterfront and before we can even think he throws the Mitsubishi in a spin. This is unbelievable! Frictionless the car turns on it axes. The ice is as strong as steel; baby blue and lined with vertical fractures that form a white labyrinth in this unusual substrate.
A minute later Tatiana Oparina arrives. Tatiana and Gennady are the owners of Baikal Tek, the biggest dive operation in the area. She pulls out a camping table to prepare local bread with bacon and mustard. Russian hospitality would not be hospitality without vodka and four little cups are filled to the brim. We sprinkle a few drops on the ice to ask for permission and prosperity. “It is an ancient tradition”, Tatiana tells us. The sweet vodka and sharp mustard immediately open up all my senses. Now, I can feel the icy wind blowing in my face, here in the middle of Siberia.
Diving safari
Lake Baikal is located in the south of Siberia between the Irkutsk Oblast to the northwest and the Buryat Republic to the southeast. The city of Irkutsk lies close near its southern shores and forms East-Siberia’s biggest economic centre with an extensive industrial sector. The landscape is rendered somewhat grey by a montage of mostly factories and Soviet apartment blocks. The city does, however, get a certain charm from colourful churches and the beauty of the Angara River.
Going back in time we leave this urban setting behind for a rural one as part of the ice diving safari we are on. Carried by two massive jeeps we travel from place to place in order to dive in unique environments. At night we stay at primitive settlements made up of traditional houses called isba’s. Isba’s are wooden houses that are still heated by old fashion stoves. A shared banya, which means sauna in Russian, provides extra warmth as well as bathing and forms an important social feature of the community here. During the day we eat on the ice, but at night we dine together with the locals.
Our first dive site is called Olkhon’s Vorota, situated on the southern shore of Olkhon, Baikal’s biggest island. This island is home to the region's indigenous Buryat people once descendants from nomadic tribes in Mongolia. Most of the population in the Irkutsk Oblast nowadays are ethnic Russian who migrated here around the 18th century.
Standing next to the maine, the Russian equivalent for hole in the ice, Tatiana attaches the robe to my BCD. It has been a while since I have been ice diving, but nevertheless I am ready. In fact I could not be more ready for the adventure that awaits me. Descending to a shallow bottom I perform a last equipment check and switch on my light. Unnecessary as natural daylight easily penetrates the crystal clear ice. But something lurks from a much darker depth; reminding us of why we are here.
Cold cuts through the thick neoprene gloves and the air I breathe becomes dense and heavy. In the distance, as the light slowly vanishes, a greenish hue shimmers between the frozen ceiling and the rocky slope. It feels empty, lifeless. But then, as if a window was opened to another world; a field of bright green sponges appears. Hundreds of them. Jumping out of the ground, statically frozen into this inhospitable environment. Adapting to the complete silence of this world, I find myself overwhelmed and mesmerised by a place so alien, yet nature in its wildest form.
Endemic
Lake Baikal counts a current estimate of 1550 animal and 1085 plant species, of which 80 percent are endemic. So is the L. baikalensis unique to the Baikal biotope, thriving due to its oxygenated waters and high dissolved silica content. Their skeletons are made up of silicates, which is rather unusual as most marine creatures consist of calcite or calcium carbonate, the main constitute of limestone. Tiny symbiotic algae are ensconced in the skin of the sponge and deliver energy by means of photosynthesis. It is because of these algae that the sponge has such a striking green colour. Besides this filtering organism, Baikal is home to a stunning number of 260 amphipods. The Acanthogammaridae is quite the extraordinary crustacean. Looking like an armoured weapon with vicious spikes running across its body, this 10 centimetre long creature is not afraid to come up close and check you out. The main fish is the Omul Salmon, Baikal’s trademark delicacy. But best known to Baikal is the nerpa, the solely mammalian representative and one of only two fresh water seals in the world. Though it is too early this time of year, each spring their pups come out on the ice to catch their first glimpse of sunlight.
Every winter the lake freezes entirely. Water temperatures reach just below zero degrees Celsius and we encounter weather ranging from minus 25 to plus 5 degrees Celsius. As we exit the maine’s, our suits literally freeze over and this makes it somewhat difficulty to take it of. We use two first stages as a safety measure in case a regulator free flows. A tender on topside monitors us during the entire dive via robes. Tatiana and Gennady enjoy many years of experience and employ comfortable, but most of all safe, practises.
Hummock
Rays of bright sun shatter off the steep cliff that makes up Khoboy Cape, bathing Baikal’s frozen plane with a heavenly silvery white colour. It is our second diving day and it takes a good two-hour drive on the ice to get here. Lines of fractured ice, called hummocks, run across the icy platform reflecting the light, similar to a room full of broken mirrors. Parked near one of the ice pinnacles a white Lada makes this idyllic world somewhat more tangible. The maine has frozen and it takes a good three hours to open it again. Gennady assures us the reward is worth the effort. “Wait until you get down there!”
He was right. Because of the full transparency of the ice, you can see the cars and people from below. I absolutely love that. Gennady leads us to one of the hummocks where big boulders of ice are frozen into the ceiling. Their unruly and violent formation reflects nature’s dynamic forces. In between we find little ice caves and niches, some just big enough to squeeze through. The ice feels somewhat rubbery, though rock hard and not slippery at all. Closing in on the island shore the ice forms a roof for tiny creatures that live on the rocky slope. Overthrown by the shadow of the wall, it is darker here; a bit spookier. But so amazing. It makes me feel alive. I am, after all, diving in a hidden world.
Sjamanka
With a depth of 1642 meters Baikal is known as the deepest lake. The lake contains roughly 20 percent of the world’s surface fresh water and its geological history counts back to an estimated 25 billion years. A geological heaven one might say! During the Soviet Union, research was only done by Russian Institutes and very little was translated. Nowadays the area is object of study of an international community and the past 15 years have proven some stunning scientific results. Lake Baikal is a sedimentary basin created by the movement of two tectonic plates that form a rift and strike slip margin, literally moving past and away from each other. The shores of the lake still move apart by several centimetres each year! Due to elevated topography around the lake, the Barguzin Mountains, hundreds of rivers flow into Baikal carrying big loads of sediment. There is only one river draining out of the system. That is the Angara river.
Close to Khuzhir, the main village on the island, the coast dips gently into the water. A huge rock pierces through the ice, playing with the setting sun in the background. The rock, known as Shaman Rock, is one of Asia most sacred places. The story of the God of lake Baikal, named Burkhan, tells the tail of a father and his 330 daughters, a metaphor for all the mountain streams flowing into the lake. When one of his daughters decided to brake free to join her beloved, a ‘warrior river’ in the West, her father threw a large rock to stop her. But his actions were in vain as the Angara river sprouts at the very south of Baikal.
A maine gives us access to the rock under water. It is believed that old Burkhan resides in a hidden cave. Huge ice sculptures form a layered dress around the weathered rock and it is easy to lose sight of each other. But when the visibility decreases and my regulator decides to malfunction, Gennady is right next to me to help me out. I feel safe and comfortable. Upon our ascent I notice a hut placed on the ice, quite close to the maine itself. On top Tatiana shows a conspicuous smile. It is time for banya! The hot steam is welcoming after a cold dive, but when we get too hot, there is really only one way out. Without much thinking I take a giant stride and enter the black water. Crushed by the cold of freezing water and stabbed by what I am pretty sure is a thousand knives, I break the surface again to breath. Within no time I am back on the ice, shaking from my own insanity. But I can only feel empowered by this pure contact with Siberia’s nature.
Spring
An historic locomotive provides shelter from the cold as we change into our drysuits. The 5100-kilometre railroad that connects the lake to Moscow ends here. The picture of what was once a vibrant destination on the Trans Siberia Express, gives now a desolate and nostalgic impression. It is the fifth day into our ice diving adventure and after a long drive from Olkhon we arrive in Listvyanka, a small settlement not far from Irkutsk. Today we conduct an open water dive as the stream of the Angara River prevents the water from freezing.
Thriving on a carpet of stone, the same green sponges form a dense temperate forest. Nothing reminds me of the static appearance we saw on our first dive. Now I can feel the energy and movement. Competing for any space available, these creatures are surely alive. And so are the prehistoric gamaruses, gastropoda, sculpin fish and much more. Moving back to shallower waters the white, almost tropical, sandy bottom get overlaid by a roofless water column and blue sky. Everything breathes. Diving here you feel spring is at the front door.
Pearl of Siberia
Listvyanka is a popular tourist destination due to its local fish market, colourful houses and stunning hiking routes. After building a dam in Irkutsk the water level has risen slightly, which caused minor flooding. An old pier serves as a beautiful dive site, called Krestovka. It wooden logs drifted off, and fill up narrow canyons in the rugged shelf. The pier itself is enclosed between the ice and shore, it parts are covered in a thick bed of green algae. And underneath lies an old rusty cannon, bright red due to iron oxidation. It forms a sharp contrast with the endless blue ice. It is weird, but it almost seems if the colours get deeper after a while. The air sharpens, and roughens us, into a heightened state of observation.
It is not for nothing that people visit this magical place from all over the world. Most will say they find spirituality here. I feel fortunate to see this place as a diver. Entering this hidden underwater world, in such an extreme environment, confronts you with this place in its own kind of way; you are literally in and on top of it. Our ice dive safari has proven to be one of the best dive destinations so far. We have only begun to grasp why lake Baikal is named as the Pearl of Siberia.
INFO BAIKAL
Gennady Misan and Tanja Oparina own BaikalTek. Their dive operation is the largest in the area and provides diving all year round, ranging from ice diving, live-aboards, seal safari’s, technical diving and daily diving. For more information: http://www.baikaldiving.ru/en/
Travel
There is a flight connection from Moscow to Irkutsk. The time difference is 5 to 6 hours depending if you leave from the UK or from the rest of Europe. Getting a Visa does require good organisation and should be obtained at your local Russian embassy.
Accommodation and Food
Because we are on an ice diving safari, we travel a lot and stay at many different places. Housing is primitive, but comfortable. The Russian kitchen is something to experience. On one hand it is mild and solid, but you find also a lot of raw fish, eaten in combination with Vodka!
People are followed by things to do,
People follow the money,
They try to escape shame and sadness.
And I follow, follow the fog,
The dreams and the smell of taiga.
(Y. Kukin)
Saloon of ship “Valeriya” is swaying quietly on the Baikal’s waves; the thoughts start moving quicker through the head hurried by the sound of the motor, and outside the illuminator there is only indescribable beauty. A thoughtful young man is sitting with his laptop, trying to lure in the muse and get some inspiration from her. This is probably the best time to start a ship journal about our adventures. So, get comfortable, pour yourself some tea, take a cookie, and listen.
To embrace the un-embraceable is the principal that our friendly group lives by. To create a route, that in two weeks would show the greatest lake in the world, and not miss out on any of the lake’s glories is as challenging as planning a trip to the Moon. However, as it is said our hands should not be bored, the body should not just rest on the sofa, and brains should not just follow the TV. We said – we packed – we went ahead. There were sixteen of us; out of the sixteen there were 5 adult divers, 3 children divers, 6 adult non-divers, 1 child non-diver, and entomologist Paganel. Our trip started at the delta of river Angara and went north, along Olkhon Island’s eastern shore, and further north past the eastern shore of the lake to bay Ayaya. Afterwards we headed back south, along the lake’s western shore, through the strait of Maloe More (Sea), and further to the south of Baikal. It is worth noting that the last time a trip of such scope took place was 10 years ago, and there was probably none before that. Our “Baikal Round-the-world” combined diving, fishing, underwater hunting, hiking and auto-safari!
Day one: The Empty Airport
The start of this trip was supposed to be quite simple: a flight from Domodedovo to Irkutsk and transfer to village Listvyanka, where we would board a ship that would be our home for the next twelve days. However, some of our team members were from an infamous children’s group “O-OOPS!”, hence the trip could not go completely according to plan. As Russian cartoon character, captain Vrungel, once said: “The ship will go as you name it”. So our first “OOPS!” came fast, and flight attendant’s sexy voice informed us that due to an inclement weather we are landing in Ulan-Ude (Buryat Republic) instead of Irkutsk.
We got off the plane and moved to a shaky building of the local airport to wait for the fog to lift off Irkutsk, and we started emptying weeklong stock of local buffet. When it was time for us to get back on the plane, our second unexpected “OOPS!” came along. Several passengers decided that they like it here just as well, and would like not to continue their trip on the plane. Maybe you can guess what happened next; it became impossible to take off the plane the necessary luggage. After talking with the loaders and arguing with the flight attendants, the plane took off. Quite unexpectedly, we received all 19 pieces of luggage in the airport in Irkutsk, and had only one hour remaining until our next destination. The weather greeted us with rain, but oh well. As one of my friends said, «That is life. Life is hard». When we got to the ship, we organized equipment in the boxes and people into cabins, and finally fell asleep.
Day two: Getting to Know Baikal
The first morning has proven right away that all the yesterday’s challenges were worth it. Mother Nature has really worked hard on this place. Olkhon Island’s steep eastern bank is covered with larch and goes straight down to clear blue water. We were enjoying the rays of morning sun and seriously doubted whether this beautiful landscape is for real. We took a walk on the pebbles along the water; we had a tough choice whether to dive or to take a better look around on the surface. However, the duty was calling and we had to start getting warm undergarments on and deal with dry suits. All of that was not tiring at all, but more so exciting – this is what we came here for.
Unfortunately, we were a little unlucky on this dive. The lake is very famous for its water transparency and visibility, but we got to see 10 meters ahead, and then … just green-and-blue mist. Even though we were slightly disappointed by this fact, we kept going deeper and were rewarded – the visibility kept improving, and at 30 meters we got the type of visibility that was promised to us.
Diving in the lake is its own genre. It is hard to imagine that you’re not in the salt waters of a sea or an ocean, but in fresh water, which is suitable for drinking. Beautiful underwater cliffs, covered with unique sponge, send mysterious vibes; if there are any magical creatures in our world, they definitely live somewhere around here. We got a chance to see some of such creatures - numerous snails and shrimp - gammarus; they all looked very interesting and unreal.
Day three: Nerpa
Ushkanii or Hare Isles are one of the most interesting places in entire Baikal, mainly because here there is a large habitat of Baikal seal, nerpa. This fresh-water seal is another wonder of the local nature, as its closest relatives live thousands kilometers away. These isles are a part of natural reserve and you need a special permit to see nerpa’s habitat. This permit you can get from local huntsmen, and then you go through island Tonkij, and hide in the rocks and bushes, that are covered with camouflage net. Nerpa is a very clever animal, with a personality, and most importantly with a great eyesight. If nerpa notices you, all you’ll see are nerpas’ heads bobbing in the water. I must say, they’re extremely positive creatures.
Diving was planned at another island, which has a name that speaks for itself Kruglyj (Russian for “Circum”). People, who named islands around here were incredibly “creative”, the archipelago has islands Kruglyj, Dolgij, Bolshoj and Tonkij (trans.: “Circum, “Long”, “Big”, and “Narrow”). There was not much improvement in the visibility on the small depths, so we had to go down to thirty again to take some good photos. We found lots of great sights, but we could not stay at thirty for long. The ship was awaiting us with a tasty lunch, fishing and relaxing time, and completely erased any regrets about not a 100% perfect diving conditions.
By the evening we reached Chivyrkuiskyi gulf, where there are sulphuretted hydrogen hot springs. The water here is warmer, a whole 17 degrees, and it gets up to 35 in the springs. It is good for you to sit in these mini-baths, but unfortunately they smell like rotten eggs, so it is hard to spend a long time there. By the way, do not forget to take any silver jewelry off yourself, unless you want to watch an intriguing chemical reaction.
Besides everything else, Chivyrkuiskyi gulf is rich in fish, especially pike, which spends almost entire year here. Luckily one of us practices underwater hunting, and we had a great pleasure to have some cutlets made out of freshly caught pike later.
Day four: Grinpin Quagmire
We reached almost the very north of Baikal – a bay with an interesting name Ayaya (interestingly, there is also bay Aya, evidently it’s one “ya” calmer there). The north of the lake is curious because it is practically uninhibited. There is only one town there, Severobaikalsk, and besides it only woods and huntsmen huts, with no roads leading to them. You can get to these places only by water, and there are only a few people who have witnessed this beauty. The first thing that gets your attention are mountain peaks, which are covered with snow and shine in the sun. Nearby there is a hard-to-reach, and hence almost untouched lake Froliha, which, as it is said, has some fish in it that existed back in dinosaur times. It is a shame to pass on such an opportunity to see this unique place, so sixteen of us took off on a hike, Lord of the Rings style. We were warned that the hike is seven kilometers long, but they forgot to mention what kind of paths we will be walking on.
We jumped around bog hummocks and fallen trees for about three hours, and our boots were soaked through. We kept expecting the hound of Baskerville to show up, but, trust me, the lake was worth it. I am still not sure whether there is any prehistoric fish in it, but that it is gorgeous – I promise. It’s a real forest lake, hidden among the trees, and not a lot of people go there. You can swim and drink the water, immersing completely into nature, especially if you realize that maybe only another dozen of people swam here before you.
A nice addition was a whole bag of orange cap mushrooms, which we were able to gather. These words are written right about an hour after the consumption of those mushrooms, and if you see text further on it means that mushroom dinner went well!
Day five: Shore of Brown Bears
Well, if you see this text, it means that mushrooms were excellent! It is known that there is only one way from the top, down. Hence once we reached the very north of Baikal it was time for us to move in the other direction. We went along the western shore of the lake, the northern part of which is called the Shore of Brown Bears. Truly there are quite a few of these fury state symbols here; however they come out to the shores only in June, to taste the water in the streams. We made first two dives near river Ledyanaya that flows out from mountain glacier. The night before, following the tradition, we pleased the great spirit of Baikal with vodka, and this time it granted us an excellent visibility (around 30 meters) and a great wall, that goes down to the abyss at a perfect straight angle. However, the water temperature got only to 7.5 degrees. The consequences of such temperatures came shortly, some of our regulators began to freeze and stand at free flow at thirst opportunity, even though they are proudly called “unfreezing”. Such conditions didn’t bring our mood down, and only added the necessary experience. Considering that half of the divers were children, who have a very limited experience of diving in dry suits, such conditions were a great practice.
In the evening our hospitable host, the huntsman, treated us with delicious, fresh grayling, and wonderful banya. To jump into icy waters of Baikal after banya is much better than running into the snow. While we were in banya a thick fog came down from the mountains to the water, so it seemed that from Russian banya we ran straight out into Turkish sauna. The whole scene was unforgettable, just imagine: a ship is barely visible through milk-white fog, somewhere at the end of sight a cold water is splashing, and a crowd of hot people are running towards it. A very curious cook, a huge druggie nicknamed Tyson, smoked grayling, for us. We’re not sure why Tyson, but just in case everybody hid their ears from him. And we say druggie, because while the fish was smoking, he watched the process very attentively and kept smelling the smoke… At the same time the huntsman kept telling us local stories about how the concentration of bears in this region reaches up to 36 animals per square kilometer, and that he regularly feeds one of the bears. Our imagination immediately created a picture how a real Russian man in Russian fur-hat is going into the woods with balalaika, drinks up a bottle of vodka together with the bear, and they start a fight. It’s not a surprise that this year’s Russian Olympic team has whole three gold medals in… wrestling!
Day six: Pokoiniki (The Deceased)
Early in the morning the weather was a complete contrast to last night’s calmness. The wind blew very hard, tearing off the suits, which were tied to the ship; and the ship’s bell rang all the possible alarms on its own. To tell you the truth, the weather here changes several times a day. After a shaky ride, we reached the shore with a very upbeat name Pokoiniki (Russian for “The Deceased”).
You have to agree that this name is a little bit strange for a very picturesque shore, covered with young larch, and inhabited by wild horses. Actually this name was given to the place after some expedition had some mushrooms around here and everybody passed away shortly. At first I thought that there must be something mysterious about this, but after looking around realized that there are simply no eatable mushrooms around here.
The dive went great despite of the weather and we were able to get a great photo with gammarus.
There was a big group of gammarusses, which were collected by one of the divers. Must be quite an interesting task….
We took a walk on the shore and tried to find wild horses, there is a herd of 19 here. Unfortunately we didn’t see any horses themselves, but saw plenty of their tracks.
Day seven: Olkhon
After we passed through the strait of Maloe More, our ship “Valerija” reached the largest island of Baikal. We already saw some of Olkhon’s gorgeous eastern shore, though the western shore of the island is cardinally different. Instead of the mountains covered with larch, there are just fields. We got into two vans, and following the so-called “road” drove to the north of the island – to “Three brothers”.
That is the name for three very picturesque cliffs – one of the most breathtaking place that I have visited in my life. The cliffs drop from almost 100 meters down to the turquoise water…The atmosphere is really magical. I would not be surprised if a dragon flew from behind one of the cliff, or if a group of elves started running towards us…
The most northern part of the island is just as beautiful; it is cape Khoboi (which in Buryat means “Fang”) and is called so because its flat cliff looks like some animal’s tooth. We sat down at the edge and dangled our legs. We ate hot uha (fish soup) made out Baikal omul, which was cooked over the fire, and truly brought us closer to paradise.
Day eight: The Pearl of Baikal
It is very interesting to follow how the shores’ landscapes change as our trip goes along. First we saw the majestic cliffs, which are followed by woods on the plains, fields follow woods, and the mountains covered with trees change fields. The lake may seem not that large, but there are so many various nature zones around it! Once we left the fields of eastern Olkhon we started to see mostly mountains covered with cedar and larch, with picturesque gorges in between them. The water changed as well: first of all, it became warmer and secondly now there was a lot more sponge and gammarus.
In the evening we reached bay Peschanaya that is called the “Pearl of Baikal”. The name may not be quite correct, as Baikal is one big pearl itself, but not the point… This bay is very cozy with a sandy beach that has “walking trees” on it. These trees are larches, roots of which were uncovered from the sand by the wind, and now resemble legs.
If you hike up the steep slopes to the top of the cliff that hangs over the bay you will see another wonderful view. Maybe this view is not as impressive as at Olkhon, but still worth a picture.
Day nine: Bolshie Koty
Have you seen a movie “The Cold Summer of 1953”? Bolshie Koty fishing village reminded me just of the village from that movie. It is not quite the village as you may think about it, but more so a mixture of a village culture with summer houses. The peculiarities of Russian villages are here all around, such as cows and horses quietly walking around. Sometimes I think that I would like to live like this as well, in a quiet village by the lake, heat a wood stove in a cozy village house, and in the morning go fishing in an old boat. Probably everybody who is daunted by the life in large cities has such dreams.
By the way, this village even has its own small museum. The two halls have exhibits of Baikal’s flora and fauna. Even though this museum more so reminds of a biology lab at school, for those who are interested in nature it is still neat (and if you’re not interested in nature, then why did you come to Baikal?). What else? Oh yeah, diving… Well an incredible place is Bolshie Koty!
Day ten: Kolchak’s Gold
Our voyage is slowly coming to an end and we got to the very south of the lake, where the Circum Baikal Railroad follows the shores. It is believed that several train cars crashed here during the Civil War, and that those cars were carrying gold bars of a famous admiral. The train cars are really there, at 110 meters deep, which is far beyond our recreational diving abilities. Nobody has found the gold in them thus far, but every diver still tries and hopes that he is the lucky one.
One before last dive of this trip was ironically made at a place called “One-before-last tunnel”. There are two interesting things around here. Firstly it is small blue gammarus, which hide under each stone. It is quite hard to take a picture of it, because as soon as you lift a stone of its head it runs under another one.
The second thing is a canyon that starts at 5 meters and goes down to 60. At 25 meters the canyon is crossed by a tree, which creates sort of a bridge.
The second dive was done at wall Katorzhanka. This is the place where the train cars have crashed. Wheels of one of them are at three meters, the rest are in the abyss. For those who are not interested in gas mixes and techno-diving, there is also a wall to see. There is almost no sponge here, but plenty of gammarus and interestinglandscape formations.
Oh yeah…. We haven’t found the gold…
Day eleven: Pozy and Buddhism
One of the songs says, “All our meetings are followed by separations”, and it was time for us to say our good-byes to the hospitable “Valerija” and to get off on the shores of Buryat Republic. Ahead of us there was a road trip to Ulan-Ude (thankfully not to the airport, but to a hotel), and then a visit to Ivolgin Datsan – a main center of Russian Buddhism. On the road we had a chance to try the main dish of Buryat cuisine – pozy. Pozy is like large pelmeni (ravioli) with an open top. You eat them with hands: first you drink the bullion through the top, and then eat the ravioli itself. When you eat pozy you have to drink tea with milk. As any student who lives alone, I know what good pelmeni is, and with all responsibility I say – this is much better.
Ivolgin Datsan is the largest Buddhist monastery in Russia, and it is located near Ulan-Ude. It is famous for being a home to the only known human who now lives in somatic state (a dream close to coma state). This person reached somatic state around October Revolution time (when he was around 60), and he is still alive. When he went to sleep he said that he will wake up when life will become unbearable and people will truly need his help. Apparently, not everything is that bad on our planet yet.
Besides him there a real alive people in the monastery none of who are Buryats, but natives of Tibet. Each of them specializes in some field: some are healers, some astrologists, and so on.
Once again I saw that Buddhism is a more humane and optimistic religion out of all existing. If I will ever start believing in god, it will probably be Buddha. There are no strict prohibitions, violence, self-torture in order to save your soul. Besides, Buddhism is very convenient: as you go around the monastery (clockwise, as the Sun) you will see “drums”, which have mantras put in them. To understand them you need to be able to read in Tibetan, you just have to roll the drum – and that’s it, you read the mantra and better your karma (and there are thousands per drum!). Convenient, isn’t it?
Day twelve: The Last “O-OOPS!”
Our trip was coming to an end, and as it is said in another song: “We’re going back to the chaos of the cities and into the traffic- and there is no escape”. We took a bus from Ulan-Ude to Irkutsk, and we spent our last evening in Siberia in an out-of-town hotel called “21st kilometer”. It is a very neat hotel complex made up of several wooden houses, and even with its own mini-zoo, that has a lazy bear Misha, a hungry lynx Vasya, a Mongolian yak Tosha, and an energetic sable Kuzya. There were lots of toasts at our last supper, and almost all of them were “To Baikal”. This difficult trip was great; there was nobody who felt unsatisfied. And it is good that not everything was ideal, because it means we have a reason to come back here again.
What is notable, there was not a lot of “Oopses” during this trip. Probably to fix that our driver slept through and was late picking us up at the hotel, and we were almost late for our flight. But this why we’re called “O-OOPS!”, because we know how to deal with challenges!
I would like to say a few words in conclusion. In my short lifetime I have seen lots of wonderful places in the world, and most of them were in far away countries. And finally I have found a paradise on earth, and not somewhere behind the border, but in the country, where I was born and grew up. It is good to realize that Russia also hides away places in nature, that haven’t been touched by human, that have seen Chingizkhan, and where the water in the lake is as clear as it was during cavemen times. At places like this one realizes better how wonderful our world is, and how important it is to save it for our children. You feel the power of nature, and how miserable is the man who tries to destroy it day after day. There is another song that was written by a musician and a diver, which says very correctly:
“I have never believed that God created this world for people,
That is why it is so wonderful without them, that it is hard to describe…”
P.S. Team “O-OOPS!” would like to express deep gratitude to dive center “BaikalTek” and its leaders for their help in the organization and participation in this trip, as well as to ship “Valerija” and its hospitable team (personally, I bow down to the chef!). Thank you, people - the trip would not be the same without you!
Siberia’s Lake Baikal is a magical destination, a place of superlatives and amazing statistics. It is the oldest, deepest lake on the planet and contains 20% of the world’s unfrozen fresh water. It occupies an area the size of France, is fed by 330 rivers and drained by only one, the Angara. Often called “Russia’s Galapagos”, Baikal’s age and isolation have combined to produce incredible biodiversity. It is home to over 1700 species of plants and animals, two-thirds of which are found nowhere else.
When?
The changing seasons offer vastly different experiences for visitors but the most challenging and rewarding time to go there is late winter/early spring when the lake delivers beautiful scenery, myriad opportunities for winter sports and the most unique ice-diving experience anywhere. In February and March, when the ice is so thick you can drive across it and when interlocking sheets of ice create a spectacular landscape of ridges and canyons, you can do a “land-based” ice-diving safari by jeep across the lake.
How?
If you live in Asia, your journey starts in Bangkok or Seoul which offer direct flights to the city of Irkutsk at the southwest end of the lake or you can take the more leisurely option and fly to Moscow or Beijing to catch a Trans-Siberian train, four days in each direction. My recommendation: take a buddy and go first class in a private two person compartment. You will need a Russian tourist visa but these are easy to get; consult your Russian Embassy.
From Irkutsk you join a convoy of 4-wheel drive vehicles and head up to Olkhon Island in mid-lake where the village of Khuzir acts as base camp for the safari. The truly adventurous can continue further north where the wild Ushkany archipelago is home to a large colony of unique fresh water seals called “nerpa”, fat, furry little guys with big eyes and funny faces.
What?
The usual programme covers seven days and involves one ice dive a day with frequent stops along the way to explore and photograph the gorgeous, other-worldly natural ice sculptures, walk on completely clear fields of frozen water or explore ice caves formed by freezing surf between rocky outcrops.
In the evening you can enjoy the mobile sauna and be introduced to the delights of “Banya”, an essential life-enhancing Siberian experience featuring super hot steam baths followed by quick dips in the icy waters of the lake and beatings with freshly-cut leafy twigs. Of course, the last two elements are entirely optional but what a story you will have to tell!
Under the ice you look up to a fabulous, intricately decorated white glass ceiling and down to a dramatic, bright green world decorated with huge tree-like sponges. Small fish flit among the undergrowth and incredible alien-looking crustaceans known as amphipods, over 250 species of which are unique to Baikal, are everywhere.
Is it for me?
If you have not ice-dived before, use the first two or three days to take a course. Yes, this is extreme diving but the challenge is mental rather than physical; diving in an overhead environment is not for the claustrophobic and you should have good skills and the ability to remain calm underwater. If this is you, you will have no problem with ice diving.
What to wear?
Take a drysuit if you have one or you can always rent one there. Don’t even think about diving wet! You will use single cylinders equipped with a dual outlet valve, so in addition to your normal dive gear you will need to take a separate regulator first stage for your octopus. Each regulator should have its own contents gauge too and it is good practice to have your BCD inflator attached to one regulator and your drysuit inflator to the other.
At this time of year, the skies are clear and the temperature can rise above zero during the day although it will plummet to as low as minus 20 at night. So pack a quilted jacket with a hood, a strong pair of boots or shoes, thermal underwear, thick woollen socks, a woolly hat, gloves and don’t forget sunglasses, to protect your eyes from the glare.
Conclusion
The combination of mystical Baikal, the frozen lake-scapes and the whole concept of diving under the ice of the deepest lake on earth combine to make this one of the most fulfilling and rewarding diving experiences you could ever hope for. For more information visit www.baikaldiving.ru
Gennady Misan - instructor-trainer IANTD, Advanced Trimix instructor TDI, instructor CMAS3*. A professional diver since 1988. More than 8000 dives, most of them - on Baikal. Personal achievements: record of Russia in cold water diving- 154m (December 2005), 85m night dive (2006, New Year) .
Not all technical dives end up successfully; unforeseen circumstances often make an elaborate dive plan go completely wrong. What will a person do when it's a question of life and death? Give it all up and submit or fight till the end trying to find the way out? On January 9th Gennady Misan had a 155m dive that could have ended tragically, but due to accurate work of the diver and the support team we can learn all the details not from a police record, but in the diver’s words.
About diving on Baikal.
A typical dive site on Baikal is a shallow shelf, 10-200m long, turning into a vertical wall. There are only 6 sheer walls going more than 100-120m into the deep. Usually, to make a guaranteed more than 100m fall you have to stand on the edge of a drop-off and move along the surface until the wall is out of sight, and then, 30-40m more. That is, the fall always takes place in the abyss, with no markers, and from 110m (even 50 f the visibility is bad) - in complete darkness. Coming to the surface starts along the seabed and the slope, then along the wall. I don't like diving along guideline ( life-line) and don't practice that. The fall is just a few minutes and after that - hour and a half long decks in deep blue. That's really something special! Those who dived on Baikal will understand. Free fall and surfacing allows you to enjoy the incredible beauty of nature when you look up and down from 100m and see picturesque canyons, mountain ranges, grottos. This severe beauty captures you.
Water temperature in depths of over 60m is always not more than +4. On the surface it depends on a season. In December-January it's +1+2. The thing is that the temperature is the same in all depths available to Trimix divers at this time.
How it all had been planned...
Why had I planned diving in January? The answer is simple. Such dives need profound self-preparation and well-trained buddys. It's not a "why-don't-I-do-it-today?" thing when you wake up in the morning, decide to go to the dive centre, put the equipment into the van, one hour - and you're there. Whole summer and autumn work kept me busy. I'd done my previous 154m dive solo. There was only safety equipment on the surface, and in the middle of the dive the stander-by came down to me to see if everything was going well. Other 100-140m dives I had only done with the safety equipment on the surface (except those connected with courses and deep-water support). I'm not sure I was right then. The shoulder of a buddy is a great emotional support and a real help. Now I don't dive deep alone. In September, Andrei and I began preparing for deep dives. Andrei has been doing Trimix diving for quite a while, passed IDC for technical instructor. We needed trainings to prepare for diving in complete darkness, especially in two. We'd been doing this for a few months interrupted by routine work in dive club. In December there were four 55-60m ER dives; 70,90m trimix dives; and on January 3d - 100m. Rejections of equipment - only Andrei’s Legend frozen when going into the water (70m dive). The regulator underwent technical service and next dives went successfully. My equipment never failed. 160m dive was planned for January 9th.
Buddy. Andrei Slepnev - ATMX TDI. Great experience in diving on Baikal. Dives "techno".
Gases. TM 8/67 (double tank 12*2), TM 14/50 (deco 12l, alum.), TM 32/20, EAN 60 (I use the same gas for inflate of my dry suit), O2 Aboard is spare oxygen and EAN50 in case we lose deco gas.
Equipment. Suit – HD Pro Dry Trilam Bare + dry gloves, undergarment- warm woolen underwear + Weezle Extreme+, computers – VR 3,the torch – Metal Sub 50 + a spare one, Lola. Oxygen regulators – Apex ATX 50, main regulator – Apex TX 100 (connected to the right inflator), spare one – Apex ATX 50 (on the left inflator), wing Dive Rite Dual Rec with DIR mount, steel back. I always use the wing as a mount only and as a spare system of buoyancy. Inflate only a dry suit.
Dive site. “Baranchiki”. One of vertical walls going down more than 120m. Approximate visibility is 50m (had dived there 10 days before). Water is nearly frozen – sludge ice is all along the Circum-Baikal Railway.
The plan. The ship comes to the edge of the drop-off. There had been many dives here before. The wall is about 30m away from the shore. Andrei and I go into the water, move away from the wall along the surface. Sheer wall is in sight. Fall together to 100m. Here Andrei stays to wait, his exposition-10 minutes. His other task is spare decompression gas. I keep on falling up to 160. One minute on the bottom, and I start surfacing immediately. At 100m I meet Andrei again – go on surfacing together slightly moving to the right. At 16m – where it is transition to EAN60 – meet the first support ; if needed, give him the used travel gas. He supports us until 6m stop. At 6m, we meet with the second support. He is to control how we feel.
Total time of diving is 98 min.
A supports on the surface must control the entire process of diving. In case a buoy appears or any unplanned situation occurs, he must send a boat and help get aboard.
There were two other groups of recreation divers on board who dived on their own.
…and what it turned out to be like.
January 9th. 10 Am. Our live-aboard is heading for the dive site. Cloudy. It’s warm (-8) and Baikal is calm. We come across not very big isolated floes. Water temperature is at the point of freezing. On our way we are packing the equipment in a warm lounge, check everything one more time and talk over the order of actions. We reach “Baranchiki” at around 12. Visibility is zero. We can’t see the edge of the drop-off. Sounding shows 70m. We moored fine. I came into the water; Andrei had problems with his equipment, therefore, delayed. The edge of the drop-off was all a blur, which means visibility was no more than 20m. I decided not to wait for Andrei and having co-ordinated with the stander-by, started the descent.
1st minute. Everything is according to the plan. At 20m I switch over to the bottom mix. Can’t see the wall.
3rd minute. At about 80m there is no daylight. Only torch lights. I’m outstripping Andrei a lot and hope he is falling not far from me. I reach 100m and fall further. No wall is seen. I start revolving to see the wall in the torchlight.
4th minute. 130m. There is the wall. I’m 5m away. I light down – the wall seems to disappear in the abyss. Start braking.
5th minute. 150m. I’m going down slowly. The wall is still 5m away. It’s really close, the bottom isn’t visible. Somewhere from underneath the air starts going out slightly. I stop at once and begin surfacing. The depth is 155m. I can’t understand where it is going from – some stage? An air current becomes very powerful and I realize that through a spare regulator, at a great speed, my bottom trimix is going away! In a couple of seconds I am pulled up. Subconsciously, I realize that it’s probably the left inflator; automatically turn off the tap and do my best to veer. At the same time, out of four stages I find the one with the gas I need.
7th minute. 125m deep. The tap is turned off, though bottom gas is gone. Finally, the right regulator is found. I hectically switch over – what if I mixed up the gases? Regulator on stage is at free-flow. I don’t pay attention, it’s of minor importance. Fail to stop. Can’t see the wall, start surfacing in the abyss. While switching over to travel, I lost the valve of veering on dry suit. I’m trying to veer the suit and the wing simultaneously. The valve is turned on, but it can’t cope with the air volume. Coming up is out of control.
8th -9th minutes. I’m going straight up trying to stop. Around me is complete darkness. At some point I faint. See nothing, everything is hazy.
10th minute. I wonder how I managed to come round and go on fighting for life. 35m. It turned out that apparently automatically I switched over to TM32/20 and it also was at a freezing point. Coming up slows down. At 28m I managed to finally stop. Exhausted, out of breath. Fits of suffocation. There isn’t enough air. Still feel dizzy. I assume I’ve got respiratory form of DCS. There’s a wall of small bubbles in front of me coming from the deep. I assess the situation: bottom gas is off; travel 32/20 is nearly off. There is TM 14/50, half of EAN60 and pure oxygen left. I felt awful. I didn’t wish to go deep down and cover the missed stops. After the assessment of the speed of coming up and its consequences, I decided to switch over to pure oxygen and go for coming up. I tried to figure out where the drop-off was. Started moving in a supposed direction. I should have come up to where I had switched over to EAN60, then move on and switch over to pure oxygen. But I thought that in my situation the sooner I started breathing oxygen, the better. It has no nitrogen, so it was supposed to lessen the degree of DCS which was meant to kill me as soon as I was up there.
After a couple of minutes of breathing oxygen, moving towards the drop-off and coming up there were no changes in the way I felt – it didn’t get worse. I kept on coming up. After four minutes I appeared on the surface and saw the drop-off. Gave a signal for help and tried to go down again-at least, 3-4m; I thought I should have decompressed at that depth. After giving it a try I realized that physically it’s out of the question.
17th minute. On the surface I looked around searching for the boat. It was about 70m away from me. I started waving and calling for help. Fits of suffocation came back, I didn’t feel my legs. Relaxed waiting for help. I was breathing oxygen all the time.
Standers-by. Hose had burst on a boat, it was impossible to use it. It was decided to send for the ship.”Valeria” was moored. 5 minutes before recreational divers had gone in the water; not to get over their heads when leaving it was decided to send one of the standers-by to them. It took no more than 2 minutes as he had already been ready to come into the water. Divers were found by the bubbles and were ushered onto the shore. The ship headed for me. 20 minutes after surfacing arrived help in the person of my buddy who, when realized that everything had gone wrong, had decompression as soon as he could and came up to the surface. And help provided by “Valeria” crew. I wasn’t able to take off the equipment and get aboard myself; besides, it was better not to move at all. My baddy helped with the equipment, the “Valeria” crew in icy water up to their knees were trying to help Andrei. Finally, I was lifted, taken to the cabin, released of the equipment and given pure oxygen. I’m very grateful to the crew and my buddy for their professionalism and cooperation.
Post decompression.
My symptoms were numb legs and a feeling that they’d been whipped by nettle. I realized that I was really saved and safe. People usually die of vast DCS in such situation. I survived. Continuous breathing pure oxygen aboard. An immediate call to the pressure chamber of МЧС (Nicola settlement) and heading for Listvyanka. On my way I drank about 2 litres of water. Suffocation was gone. I could feel my legs. Sensitiveness to cold appeared. Even a slight temperature fluctuation – opening and closing a cabin door – felt like a burn. About an hour after getting aboard I felt extremely tired. Though I didn’t feel like sleeping. I didn’t observe any other symptoms like aching joints, rash, paralysis, shiver, fever, etc. When we arrived in Listvyanka I felt fine, though very tired. We drove to МЧС. It had been 3 hours since coming up. As I felt alright, I refused to undergo any treatment. At the moment, the symptoms were exhaustion and the creeps in my legs. It was agreed upon a preventive 30m immersion into the pressure chamber with one hour exposition and the following two hour decompression.
By pressure of 4at the creeps were gone, but by 18m came again, at a lesser degree. Regime remained unchanged. After the pressure chamber I went home, kept on breathing pure oxygen. Around 11pm the back surface of thighs and calves got numb. Sensitiveness to cold was stronger. Slight local massage gave temporary improvement. As I stayed physically active, no measures were taken.
On January 10th I was sleeping all day, exhaustion got away by evening. Didn’t breathe oxygen that day. Numbness remained. January 11th was a usual work day. The muscles were numb, but it didn’t affect physical activity. These kinds of symptoms – suffocation, numbness, weakness – are referred to the signs of a serious form of DCS affecting central nervous system. The lung form of DCS (that started when I was still underwater) takes place only in 2 percent of cases. Also, it is a rare thing when all mentioned symptoms aren’t accompanied by any others.
On January 12th, at 11am, I had a 40min long session in the oxygen pressure chamber, by pressure of 1,8at. After that numbness became weaker. The same day, a diving expert of МЧС, Valery Chernikh phoned Boris Nikolayevich Pavlov. Based on the symptoms, I was considered to have a serious form of DCS. The 2nd regime of medical recompression was recommended. Personally, I thought that I didn’t have DCS but the remaining signs connected with the trauma of soft tissue.
On January 13th, at 11am, there was one more session of oxygen therapy (2 hours by 2at). At 8pm I stopped arguing with my wife and МЧС experts and went to the МЧС pressure centre. At 11pm they started medical recompression in the pressure chamber. At 70m all symptoms disappeared, but after coming up to 38m came back. After consulting the МЧС experts by phone we moved on to the 3rd regime of recompression. Total time in the pressure chamber – 60 hours and 45 minutes.
After all the measures taken we can say that DCS is completely eliminated. The symptoms connected with the trauma of soft tissues remain. Further treatment – by vitamins.
That’s how we dived.
Analyzing what happened.
This diving should have been cancelled at the beginning when the buddy had задержки. Murphy says: “If a few misfortunes are to happen, they happen in the most unfavorable order”. And, “The greater is the preparation for an exceptional dive, the fewer are the chances to refuse it even if it turns out to be a failure”.
This time I didn’t do what I always mention at all technical courses: stop diving if something goes wrong. I didn’t wait for my buddy; and though there was nothing he could really do to help me in that situation, I started diving. However, this dive happened the way it happened. It was unique in its way. Unique meaning the fact that the diver survived and is quite well. So, why I am safe and sound:
1. The diving was short and there wasn’t great saturation.
2. Breathing pure oxygen from 28m and constant breathing on the surface until the buddy and “Valeria” arrived.
3. Refusing to go deep down and cover the missed stops, although, it was quite possible – gases were enough, and they might as well have been brought by standers-by.
4. Professionalism of the buddy and “Valeria” crew in taking off the equipment and getting aboard and, as a result, an absolute lack of physical work.
5. Constant breathing of pure oxygen being on board.
6. What is important is that despite almost a throw-out, the diver didn’t lose the sense of self-control and didn’t fuss about trying desperately to save himself.
The issues to mention about this dive may be as follows:
1. You shouldn’t make experimental dives when the water is about to freeze. My second regulator just got frozen in very cold water under great pressure, without even starting working.
2. The buddy, a good security team, understanding ship crew, a good ship – it’s more than 50% of success. I made a mistake having started the dive, but my buddy, standers-by and the crews helped me finish it more or less safely.
There is always a chance to survive. Only those who think and prepare have it. You mustn’t give up, you must fight. But you must fight right. Very often concentrated, persistent, unthinking self-rescuing actions lead to death.
Further plans.
Baikal is covered with ice at the moment. Deep dives are closed until May. Before, we made trimix dives in port Baikal where it is deep and the water is open even in severe frost. But aforementioned story shows that deep dives at temperature of freezing are too dangerous. Deep diving has been planned in April, in Palau. In May – deep sunken ships in the Baltic. In the end of May we start Baikal deep water training and will practice diving with buddys. 60-80-100-110-120-130. After that... There is an idea to make a 160m dive in two or in three, and exactly on Circum – Baikal Railway where the bottom can offer you so many interesting things.
Have you ever been on a diving safari? If so, what are your memories of it? Actually, just a second let me guess: a snow-white dive-boat is going through the waves and all you can see in front is the endless sea. Bright and hot sun is burning the sun-deck, but as soon as you go downstairs you find yourself comforted by the coolness of the rocking boat. It is easy to enjoy a great company and the beauty of a dive-site after dive-site as your journey is coming to an end. Most likely the description above could be a pamphlet for an essay called “How I spent my time in a safari”. Now let’s imagine the same but with minor “nuances”. A really green UAZ is crawling across the Baikal ice, its engine and transmission are rumbling. Outside harsh Barguzin wind is blowing. Inside a not so quiet UAZ people, equipment and bags are moving around after every bump, and the cabin is kept warm thanks to everybody’s breathing and the heater. This trip already can hardly be called boring, and together with Baikal under-ice diving it becomes all about fun. These were the pictures that came to our mind when our friends from dive center “BaikalTek” have invited us to an ice safari at Baikal. Obviously enough it was not hard to convince us to join in, our packing was short and we were anxious to get away from the chaos of March holidays.
It takes only about 30 hours to get from Novosibirsk to Irkutsk by train. Those hours we spent sleeping, reading old newspapers and perfecting our team communication at the dinner table. We have to say that we believe that the time machine has already been invented by our railway system. Unfortunately they are still unable to get you into the future, but into the past…Last time I was on the train was about 15 years ago and nothing, absolutely nothing has changed: the same beat of wheels, clinging of the spoon in the glass, and even the neighbor, who is still wearing sweat pants and slippers on bare feet, asks the same question: “Could your bags be any bigger?!”.
Irkutsk greeted us with dry pavements, wide white-teeth smiles of our hosts and a complete lack of “Beeline” (Russian phone carrier). We load our staff into Mercedes provided by “BaikalTek” and we’re on our way. Ice is still about 320 km away, but pleasant surprises await us along the way. We have tried Buryat pozy (ravioli type dish), chased them with vodka and stopped at the rest stops, where huts all covered with ribbons according to Buryat tradition.
We have finally reached the ice crossing. The Olkhon Island seems so close, but the actual distance to it is quite significant, both by ice and by water. It takes half-an-hour on “Sang Yang” to get there. In summer the connection between Olkhon and main land is done with the help of ferry terminal. Locals say that car lines reach kilometers and last for days; and if somebody tries to cut in the line starts to resemble a battle field. Thankfully, that wouldn’t be a problem for us. All we can see is a plain that is smoother and stronger than any pavement. As soon as we drive on to the ice we have to make a stop. It is a tradition to charm Burkhan, the spirit of the lake. What do you use to do that? Take a lucky guess.
During our ride we were able to get a crash course into the geography and history of Olkhon. Once nationally famous fish plant has been closed ever since Soviet Union collapsedand central power was established here only a couple of years ago. There is absolutely no snow on the island, but plenty of sand instead – we’re told that the settlings on the north of the island get completely covered with sand dunes. We double check where we’re staying on the island…
Farmstead of Nikita Bencharov resembles an oasis or; it became our shelter for the entire safari. It reminds of an oasis because it has everything what the rest of the island doesn’t have: starting with European outlets and ending with, pardon me, biotoilets. It also reminds of a fortress. A fortress, where behind a massive fence, friendliness and comfort are the main characteristics. In reality it is an eclectic yard with wooden houses.
For those who still had energy our hosts organized a mini-trip to the small isles around Olkhon. This is how we got a bunch of pictures of a lonely UAZ with never ending white ice in the background, along with a similarly lonely Buddhist sculpture all covered with colorful ribbons and knots. To top of our first day impressions we became witnesses to a golden sunset.
Do you know that Olkhon has over 300 sunny days a year? Even Krym cannot compete with that! We realized it the next morning before heading to the dive-site. Trust me such a bright orange sun can be both a treasure and a danger for a very white-faced Siberian.
Our first dive site is a famous cape Burkhan and mountain Shamanka. Without exaggeration, these are places of worship for… almost wrote – divers. By the way, possibly it’s true, considering that diving here has just started up recently. Anyhow, it is a place of worship for Shamanists and Buddhists – and it took so long for divers to get people used to them, before they were arrogant enough (or maybe stupid) to make the first dive here. I am not positive what sort of spirits live here, but they’re definitely not indifferent to the compass arrow – poor thing keeps on going in going in circles like a merry-go-round, without even pausing for a second. Next we concentrate on making maina (diving-hole in the ice) following the pre-made by the electric-saw contour.
Baikal Ice. Nine of ten of our praises would go to it. In last eight years we had an opportunity to see a wide variety of ice. We have seen ice that was more powerful that Baikal’s, just as clear and also covered with the web of cracks…however we have never seen an ice quite like Baikal ice! And if we were to create a rating for all the ices we’ve seen, Baikal ice would be leading by far. It has something eye-catching – sort of like a flame or a waterfall - you just can’t stop looking at it. It has an enormous energy: just imagine that this meter-thick substance is born within a month. Often there is no ice on Baikal in January, but in mid-March the ice often already starts moving and breaking. The color of the ice varies from deep-blue to emerald green, depending on place, time, light and probably Baikal’s mood.
The cracks in the ice deserve a separate article. Some of them go all the way through entire thickness of the ice – these are the result of considerable movements. Most likely in places like that ice will eventually move apart and leave open water. Or two planes of ice will move onto one another, break each other and create mountains of broken ice (commonly called in Russian “toros”). Another scenario is that one plane of ice will “duck” under the other and sink. We can proudly say that during our trip we have seen all sorts of ice movements and their outcomes. The most lasting impression was left by this one “little” crack, which was about twenty meters wide and the length of it reached the horizon. We’re lucky we weren’t there when this crack was born. The next wonder we’ve seen was a field of toroses. Creation of the elements! The ice was formed, and then it started moving, then froze again and moved again and froze one more time, this time forming a toros field – and so on over and over again! As a result there is an ice battlefield, where numerous pieces of ice are as high as two meters, along with tiny bits of ice scattered all over the place. The strength of ice is also impressive. This is proven to us when we are trying to create maina with an ice pick and it seemed like we’re working with a toothpick.
The web-cracks are also unbelievable! All of them are quite deep – about ten to fifteen centimeters wide. It looks like an artist was trying to create a geometrical drawing, changing each time the direction, the depth and the step of the web. I don’t understand how it was possible to create this without ruining the clarity of the ice… but maybe it’s not necessary to understand this – simply enjoy the beauty!
The water barely reaches half of a degree and it seems much thicker than the usual water. It looks like two elements – water and ice - become one. The only way you can see the borders of ice and water is by looking at the bubbles created by a fellow diver. Underwater is a stone greatness. Nearby almost perfectly shaped stones you feel like a midget. On the bottom bychki (Baikal fish) are sunbathing, small shells are scattered and the sand shines with gold and silver from various minerals. Transparency… we wish we had a half of it in Siberia! Compass shows anything you wish except the north direction, and the closer you get to Shamanka the faster the arrow goes around in any direction. We dive a couple of times, going out of the water only to switch tanks or to eat some grilled Baikal omul (another local fish). After diving we’re ready for the next item of the entertainment program – Russian banya (Russian sauna). Where did banya come from one might ask? Well, it stands on skis and is dragged behind the UAZ as a trailer – ingenious invention! For the time of banya-procedures, our maina becomes a hole for heated bodies to jump in with a hiss. Life is beautiful!
Next morning greets us with even brighter sun and warm wind from the shore; we pack and head towards cape Hoboi. It is at the northern point of the Olkhon Island, in about two kilometers from which is the deepest point of the lake – about 1,637 meters. The pictures on the internet show this place framed with cliffs going all the way from the abyss of the lake up to the sky, the waves crashing and foaming around them. We haven’t found any winter pictures of this place on the internet – so a camera is a must!
The cape is about 40 kilometers away. We’re not sure what is ice like along Maloe More, so we decide to drive as far as possible on land, and then turn on to the ice at the last moment. The further north you go the less signs of human presence you see. We lose our cell phone reception, then the road is purely notional, then there is an abandoned airfield…. All around us is sand and sand dunes. Those are absolutely regular dunes, which move with the wind and cover everything on their way. Ahead, beyond the pines, we see a huge sand cone; it’s time to turn on to ice.
At first we’re able to drive on ice at a regular “pavement” speed, then ice becomes scruffier, and the bumps become more noticeable. Hoboi is already visible. While one of the UAZs is driving ahead to check the road, we get out to stretch and look around at ice caves and toroses. By now we’ve seen plenty of toroses; however caves with stalactites and stalagmites are a novelty. Judging by the ice-floor all of them have a significant underwater part. Some of the stalactites reach about a meter in length and we are tempted to put on a hard hat and other protective gear. Our UAZ is back and the verdict is: there is a road. We naively ask: “Is it possible that there is none?” “Easily” - we get an answer: “Yesterday we’ve reached that crack other there. Stopped, smoked and left. Baikal!”
Hoboi strikes with the magnificence of steep cliffs. They say that there is an energy outlet here – “there it is, marked with blue paint on the cliff…”We create two mainas accompanied by the sounds of thick breaking ice, the cracks barely part, marking their existence by the out flowing water. Guys from “BaikalTek” tell us that a year ago they got a two-meter crack only three meters away from the car. We look around, to assess our chances.
Underwater there is a steep wall covered with sponge. But this is not what’s important. Ice is what was worth a drive! If you imagine that ice “toroses” on the surface are sharp mountains, then the same “toroses” underwater are steep hills with broad valleys. If above you can decipher all the details of this “mountains, then underwater they all appear smooth and polished by invisible hand with gentle and sleek lines. The forms are really amazing. This one looks like a bagel, why and how was this form created is unknown; one can only shrug shoulders – new underwater sign for divers. Also there is a couple of “hills” that remind of the camel humps, they almost connect to each other in the peaks forming half-a-cave and half-a-tunnel. The only inconvenience is to navigate in between the “hills” – safety rope constantly catches on various parts of the ice constructions. The bottom is a habitat of the sponge, it almost reminds of jungles. Some “trees” are higher than a meter. Frankly, nobody was interested in these plants at first, until somebody discovered that they grow 1 centimeter per year. So this one-meter “tree” is 100 years old! It deserves, at minimum, respect…
We’re looking around and we notice a dark shadow above us…. It’s our dear old UAZ! Here are the wheels, the exhaust….Next to the “maina” is a working atmosphere, it is hard to tell who is who though – we can only judge by the show size! J
We get out on the surface. And the sky gets covered with dark-blue clouds; there is not even a ray of sunshine. Cold wind almost hurts and wet equipment gets immediately covered with ice. Some brave ones are fast enough to take of a scuba; the others take off only the mask and gloves. As usual, UAZ with its super-heater comes to our rescue. We apologize to the drivers and melt right in the cars, covering the floor with a layer of water. Unfortunately, we might not be able to do the second dive… We’re warming up. Shouting above the wind hosts invite us to the lunch table, hidden behind the green body of UAZ. We lazily get out of the wet cars and walk to the dining table – hunger is powerful, especially after a dive. Warm food and drinks, together with chit-chat about the impressions from a dive, warm up our bodies and souls, and in the end completely improve our mood that was brought down by the weather. Like in the movie with fast changing scenes, the clouds suddenly go away; sun comes out in the middle of the sky and starts shining all other cape Hoboi with warm spring rays…. “Should we go for a second dive?” – We ask one another. “What’s the question???Of course! Done deal!”
The road back is as usual shorter, accompanied by the fantastic views of Baikal’s sunset. Sunset is truly beautiful here. Even our driver, who drives such…strange people, like us not for the first time, stopped, got out and suggested: “Fellas, let’s stand and look – what a beauty!” Fellas obviously didn’t mind.
The ultimate point of our safari is strait Olkhon Gates where summer ferry and winter ice crossing are organized. This is a very logical place for another dive, by the way. See for yourself, Hoboi is on the north, Khuzir and surroundings are in the center and Olkhon Gates are on the south. This completes the circle, so to say. Besides, if there is a desire to assess the prospects – there is no better place. No, not the prospects of diving at Olkhon (this, in my opinion, is all clear); but the prospects of Lake Baikal, its broad space. It’s not just a line of ice, rolling in the sky line, but a line that is beautifully completed with the other islands and islets - perfect place! There is no other place with such transparent and beautiful ice. Standing on its surface and looking down through it on several dozens of water, you can still count the number of pebbles on the bottom. And if you would want to go ice-fishing here in between dives, you wouldn’t need any floats to mark that the fish is caught – you could see everything like through a glass.
The horizontal transparency is more than 30 meters; the lightning is the same as on the surface. For the first time “Halzion” is not necessary and it is left inside the cabin. Among the sponge plants bychki are resting – this almost reminds of Red sea, except the colors are more modest. In the stones next to the shore a couple of whitefishes are snooping around, or maybe those are omuls, I still haven’t figured out how to tell them apart. Everything is favorable for a relaxing dive that would finish off our safari. As our guides tell us, in summer it’s not as calm here – the current is rather strong and this makes the water not as clear. This is the beauty of under-ice diving: you get practically on hard surface, without rocking in the boat, anywhere and dive – almost in greenhouse conditions. Actually, that’s what we’ve been doing these days.
At the finish line we take a group photo, thank each other, hug each other and as usual promise to be back and dive more. On the night train we’re dreaming about Baikal ice and steep cliffs – the time machine is working perfectly, bringing us back to the recent past.
I was like everyone else,
Drank and worked in fields.
I have read Dao De Jing
And have understood: “I got caught!”
I have burned my penthouse,
I have checked the vines
And I got out to dance
In the fog over Yatszy.
B.G
You probably know that there are places on planet Earth, where you can’t get in simply; you can’t get there just by paying money and getting a plane-ticket. Obviously, you can physically move your body from point A to point B, but you won’t be able to see the most important thing that is hidden in that place. Some people call it energy, others call it soul, and yet others call it esotericism. However, the name here is not important. The importance is in the existence of that something; in ability to feel it, to touch it, to fill self up with it and become at least a little bit cleaner and better.
There are a lot of places like this: Tibet, Mexico, Altai, Kamchatka, Plutorana Plato, Perm’s anomaly zone. People try to get there, and everybody is looking for something special: inspiration, relaxation, calmness, or realization.
Baikal is one of such places. Each year dozens of thousands people dream to come here; thousands actually come, and everybody finds something special. Some leave without finding anything; they just leave, without understanding anything. I am not sure, perhaps, it depends on karma whether you will understand or you won’t…
My long-time dream came true this year: I have visited this mysterious place. Irkutsk seemed low after Moscow, as a patch of grass in woods. It has amazed me with the magnificence of Silver Century and poses. It is located in seismographically dangerous zone; it doesn’t have buildings taller than 4 floors. It is craved from wooden houses, with little yards, where people dry their laundry or park their Japanese cars. Those yards are really clean; they have swings and monkey-bars in them for children. Poz-cafés (these are cafes where one can eat pozes – Buryat’s ravioli) seem like places where one can meditate.
My walk around town turned out long, and when I finally reached Angara’s waterfront it was already evening. It was sunset; sun was mirroring in calm water. All around you there were people celebrating weddings. They walked towards restaurants, and they were followed by birds.
It’s morning now. Listvyanka. Holy Sea. We’re bringing tanks with helium aboard. In this safari Gennady Misan will be teaching a class on ATD TDI for his two students.
We’re leaving...
There is a ritual that is followed by all at Baikal - giving to Burhan idol, towards all four sides of the world. On the right there is Baikal Mountain chain, on the left – Hamar Daban, which is so loved by Yuri Vizbor. Through the fog we can see the opposite shore; it is 80 kilometers away. The clouds fly along the shore, very-very low.
Baikal is indeed a sea, but it is different – it is simple and clear, without meanness. On the other hand, maybe we just got lucky with weather. We’re heading towards Bolshie Koty, towards Round Baikal Railway. We’re assured by Gena Misan, that’s there crashed a train with Kolchak’s gold. Our goal is to find it. I don’t know about the chests with gold, but you can easily see the train-cars from that time on the mountain slopes.
Majority of dive sites at Baikal follow this pattern: wall, step, wall, step – going down all the way to the very bottom.
However, there are also under-water Mountains with peaks, cracks, and valleys. Some of the walls are huge – going down to 100 meters.So, Gena have already dived to 150 meters at that place with train-cars. He saw more train cars, but he haven’t found the gold yet; it lays deeper.
Most of all I want to see arhats, who according to Buryat’s, seat in the caves on the bottom of Baikal, and wait for the come back of Buddha-Maytrayi.
The water looks emerald. Everything is amazingly relaxed and light. Nobody runs anywhere and there is now feeling that you are trapped preparing for war and you have to catch every moment of rest. There is no set time to get up. Diving is not hurried and it is thoughtful. There is always time to look around and enjoy the landscape. Red cliffs carry pines, as though the surrounding landscape was created by the master of feng shui. Clouds still hover over the opposite shore, and you can imagine train in them, train that carries Kolchak’s gold.
Clouds fly by...
How carefully
They carry mountains on them!
At most I am amazed by people who live in such unbelievable places. It was the same in Mexico and at Altai. Probably, the closeness to the soul-center helps their character. These people surrounded me entire trip: kind, nice, and simple. These people are far from Moscow’s rumors and intrigues; they dive in one-degree water down to 100 meters, and they do it calmly and easily, as though there is nothing heroic in it. Here they plan recreational and technical safaris or shore-diving.
“BaikalTek” has three ships, and there is an opportunity to find a program of any level. You can learn technical diving; thankfully, depths are appropriate. All the specific equipment adjustments, in order to dive in cold water, are thought through. One-degree is incomparable to Hurgada. Here in dry suit everything would be frozen.
I am not going to go over all the dive-sites, their description can be found on www.baikaldiving.ru. I am just going to remind that Baikal – is indeed a Sea. There is space and might under water. Baikal divers say: “What’s above water - is under water as well”. It is enough to look at the shores and realize a bit of what the under-water is like. Landscapes are alike. The typical view is cliffs, walls, amphitheatres, cracks, giant “fingers”. Living things include fish and sponge – green coral on yellow sand that raises its branches to the unfriendly northern sun.
Gamarus. This inhabitant deserves separate story. It’s not the same one that you would see in the aquarium in school. It’s an alien from another planet – 10 centimeters long and armed up to the teeth. When I first saw this marvelous creature I started to signal to all the participants of the dive how excited I was. I couldn’t understand why local divers don’t get as excited as I did. I got it after we ran into a whole bunch of them – probably several thousands.
Diver moves his flippers...
But it seems, that he is still
In Baikal’s fogginess.
Everyone can come to Baikal and dive. It’s not that difficult. You buy a ticket, get on the plane, hour-long car ride, and you’re at Baikal. It’s difficult to let Baikal in you, accept it; fall in love with its cold and selfish nature. To fall in love with it and see, what Baikal is for real – gentle and lovely sea. Gena Misan has fallen in love with it like that and a lot of divers did too, they come back again and again, They were able to see the soul, the energy, the esotericism (call it whatever you want) of this place and find here what most of the people are looking for. However, some leave without finding anything; they just leave, without understanding anything. I am not sure, perhaps, it depends on karma whether you will understand or you won’t…
I know now for sure: there is a magical sea in Siberia. It is for karma diagnostics- the best in the world.
My great thanks go to Gennady Misan, Vasiliy Lomyga and Anton Ermakov for their conversations and help in organization of filming.
...It has a smooth surface of 31471km, spreading out between 106 and 109 longitude and 52 and 56 latitude. 2100m of shore line, which are moving apart from each other 2cm a year. It is 25 million years old chalice containing 23 000 cubic kilometers of fresh water and having the maximum depth of 1637m...All this is the greatest lake on the planet - Lake Baikal.
Yet despite its access and openness, Baikal remains "terra incognita" for most of the diving society. Diving in Lake Baikal...There are only a few divers these days who can proudly demonstrate their log-book with such a note. And only several people (may be ten of them) who did some research diving beyond the recreational dives. The subject of our story is deep diving in lake Baikal.
...Sunny summer morning. It is a bit chilly. The sky is absolutely clear and the day is going to be hot. A boat named after a legendary explorer "Jacque Ives Cousteau" clears the pier in the Listvyanka village which is 70km from Irkutsk and makes way for a dive site with a mysterious name Baranchiki. It is mysterious because nobody remembers where the name came from and the place itself is not marked on any map. Only real Baikal "wolves" who know the waters as well as their own five fingers can find it. Our crew is one of them. It takes us about an hour to go in the Southern direction and we are there. The boat docks at a small pier. The view on the shore is picturesque - rocks with a ten meter precipice are overgrown with pine trees. A refreshing sound of a mountain river is heard in the distance. Also there is a famous Baikal Circum Railroad built more than a century ago in the times of Zarist Russia. Going up to the shore and walking a bit more than a kilometer to the left or right you can find majestic tunnels cut out of a rock with their arches up to six meters. When you enter the tunnel it seems like nothing is easier than to walk through it. But it is a deceptive impression. 100m inside the rock, the sun light on the edges of the arches disappears with every step. After several meters and you find yourself in absolute darkness. Both the unexplained feeling of fear and a wish to find life-saving light overcomes a diver. Several more meters and you see a glimpse of the sun light in the distance.
Walking through the tunnel is like a forerunner of diving into the dark yet surprisingly clear water of the lake. We come back to the boat where a substantial breakfast is waiting for us, it is necessary before diving in cold water. After this we need about two hours to get ready and check the equipment. By the way, the boat is equiped with all the necessary gear for deep water diving. There is a decompression chamber there and also a considerable supply of high nitrox and clear oxygen. All the members of the crew have special knowledge and can efficiently help in emergency cases. Experienced Baikal divers are getting ready with deliberate and planned actions. Their levels are from Advanced Nitrox to Advanced Trimix Diver. Everyone has an assigned task. No bustle and no crush on the deck. Everyone knows that quiet and detailed preparation is a guarantee of successful diving.
The equipment: there are 15 liter steel tanks with dual valves and 24 liter double tanks, stages for 8, 10 and 12 liters. Nitrox is prepared right on the boat. So it is possible to select the equipment and prepare a mix depending on the specific tasks of a dive. The pressure in the tanks and the contents of the mix are thoroughly checked and signed by everybody. The presence of a technical instructor does not reduce the individuals responsibility for his own dive. The next step is fastening compensators. Everyone has double chamber wings. Despite the fact that everybody has his own equipment, a local dive-center has all the necessary stuff both for recreational and technical diving. Having two regulators is an obligatory condition for technical as well as standard dives. It is one of Baikal necessities. In summer months (June, July), the air temperature rises to +35°C in the day time and it drops to +18°C at night. The water temperature in the bays and coves warms up to +18°C ... +23°C and it warms up to +8°C and sometimes +10°C in surface lays of open spaces. But it is just an illusion. At a depth of 10 meters you will find a sudden thermoclin - the water temperature drops down to +1°C ... +2°C. Even if you are going to dive no deeper than 10-12 meters, you can find yourself in icy-cold water. Now it is worth mentioning one phenomenon connected with internal Baikal winds. There are several winds which differ in their strength, direction, periods and places of flowing. One of them is the North-West. The strength of this wind is enough to start the movement of deep water layers (down to 1000 meters) and to lift them to the surface. It is quite possible that after having the first dive in the comfort of warm water and 2-3 hours rest on the boat, the second dive will have to be done in a completely different place. Temperature fluctuation caused by mixing of deep and surface waters can be up to +12°C during only several hours. Really stable warm water comes only from September to December when the whole mass of water from the depth to the surface of the lake warms up to +3°C ... +4°C. The North-West wind brings arctic icy water which is met with gladness by the local divers because diving in warm water is not considered " good". In summer plankton starts to bloom and the visibility can drop down to zero. The water becomes deep yellow-greenish. Sometimes it is impossible to see your own hand (especially in sandy shallow water). And we cannot even talk about group diving unless you swim shoulder to shoulder. Cold water conceals the danger of freezing to the diver and the gear as well. Despite all the equipment being marked as "stable to freezing", it happens that the first stage freezes on free-flow. The second stage, an inflator or a valve on your suit can also freeze. We do not use the classical combination - regulator plus octopus on Lake Baikal. We use two independent regulators instead, and one of them is on a two meter hose which is a lot safer, especially when using dry suits. The main breathing is through the "long hose" and it guarantees meticulous work of the breezing gear for a partner in emergency cases. So, all the equipment is prepared and checked. It is time to dress. In dry suits, of course. Though there are some bold spirits who risk to dive in "sevens" or even "fives" (!) yet I do not know anybody who managed to stay in the water for more than half an hour. And it is good to have dry gloves or three fingers gloves with double obturation at least. Hands are the first parts which starts to freeze, approximately in 20-25 minutes after the start of a dive. Your gloves must be correctly selected if you are able to make long decompression dives. Light is also a necessary condition for deep diving on Baikal. Despite crystal transparency of the water and visibility up to 50-60 meters on gloomy days, weak sunlight cannot breach the dark mass of water and diving deeply becomes like a "night" dive. The optimal situation is to use light systems with a powerful battery light that is enough for diving at 60-70 meters.
... Now everybody is dressed and ready. Copies of dive plans are left on the boat. Insure that divers are prepared and ready to be in the water at any time. This is the last check of you and your partners equipment such as computers, compasses, lights, buoys, reels and That the stages are fastened conveniently and solidly. The side is opened. Just a long step and we are in the water. We put our faces in the water to check the visibility. That is right! The computer displays +8°C. There are not more than 2,5-3 meters under the boat but the bottom is invisible. We are moving on the surface towards a drop-off. The western part of Baikal (where we are now) differs from the eastern one by the relief of the bottom and suitability for diving. The eastern shore is sandy and gently slopping but the western one is like a flat shelf with the depth of 3-6 meters in 50-100 meters from the shore line ending with a steep walls and ledges going to nowhere. Just a few minutes free relaxed moving of the fins and we are at the edge of a drop-off. Having put our faces without masks in the water we start "water breathing". The mask is on and the second stage is in our mouth. We exchange OK once again and go down.
At 6 meters the visibility is getting better. The temperature is going down: it reads +6°C on the display. It is still possible to observe the friends hanging near by. Now the last mutual check before falling into abyss. The balance is normal, the gear is working perfect and everything is hermetic so we can continue. 20 meters, the visibility is great. The temperature is +2°C. An absolute vertical wall is seen down. Realizing the fact that hundreds or probably thousands meters of water are under you fascinates and attracts you. The feeling of diving to unexplored world appears. It is like flying into the space. At 40 meters it is getting a bit darker and sounds are becoming muffeld. At 55 meters it is an absolute darkness. Like in a tunnel and there is not any sun light. Almost no sounds are heard. We stop for a few seconds to enjoy the darkness and the silence. We wont have this opportunity afterwards. Nothing is seen. No wall which was just in half a meter and now dissolved in the space, no computer reading. It is impossible to know where up or down or left or right is. Only if the brain is working perfectly you avoid getting lost in this void, but if you loose control just for a second you can finish your dive. You loose an orientation instantly. Your breathing is rapid and the whole body is seized with panic. And an age-old fear death occurs. A few seconds seems like an eternity. We need to turn the light on and do down. Mistakes at great depth are inadmissible. Only a few people can afford the luxury of deep diving in such absolute darkness. The strong light cuts through the water mass. The wall finds its outline. A large number of snails going about their own lives do not pay any attention to us creatures swimming around. You feel better and more pleasant because you are not alone. The computer is counting meters. The regulator starts to pass tiny pieces of ice. Just a few seconds separate you from free flow. Control your breathing is so important. You have to do everything to avoid rapid breathing. Meter by meter down. The wall now has a negative slope, creatures per unit of area decreases and the darkness becomes even thicker. At 100 meters it is as though you pass an invisible line. And you keep going further. You are left by yourself for a few minutes. An absolute darkness and silence is around you. No movement. It is very warm though the water temperature is still the same +2°C. Just your heart thump is felt. All the problems are left somewhere up above your mind is working clearly but all your thoughts direct inside you. Complete relaxation. You join a piece of another world during these moments and you understand you place in it better. You discover yourself new and you check your self-possession and personality. Then all good must end and your computer gives you a signal of necessity to start going up. Decompression stops differ from those going down because they give you an opportunity to see the surrounding nature in details and to observe the macrolife which is quite rich in lake Baikal. At 50 meters you soar above the abyss like a space ship in the weightlessness. There is a tremendous mountain scenery under you and in front of you with breaks, small caves and tiny shelves where you can hardly catch hold with a hand. There is a absolutely fantastic underwater canyon somewhere in the front. The aesthetics enjoyment is interrupted by free flow of the regulator of my decotank. Low water temperature makes itself felt. The next meters of decompression have to be spent in "open-close" valve regime. 12 meters. The wall has finished. Underwater amphitheatre appears to the eyes. Huge boulders overgrown with sponges are situated in half circles. Sandy bottom is seen. Probably fish meet here on weekends? Now the divers are gathering here who have started the dive together after deviding according to their plans. Now everybody is "hanging" on decompression. At 6 meters is the longest period. The frozen hands start to warm up in the surface lay of water. A red buoy is thrown out. Support divers on the surface should be sure that everything is good. It takes 70 minutes to wait for the diver who dived to more 100 meters to come out. Now it is possible to relax finally and observe crustacea, bullheads and other small things rooting around in the sand. A huge pike is hiding behind the nearest stone and scrutinizing the people with curiosity. It is not scared at all. Hanging above it for ten minutes in half a meter distance did not cause it move even for a centimeter. You can just stretch out you hand and you lunch is quaranteed. But let us leave Baikal inhabitants alone because disturbance of any harmony working ecosystem always turns against us. 3 meters. The decompression is over. We are coming back to the boat. The visibility is still almost zero. The orientation is only according to gear and you own feelings. The ladder appears at last. All the equipment is taken off and left in the water. Fatigue and imperceptible delight is seen on everybodys face. We all look at each other and smile. Everything is understandable without any words. Discussion will start later when all digress from their own impressions and will be able to express their feelings more or less. Now the support team helps to lift the equipment and to take the suits off. A smell of lunch is in the air. Later there is a sunny day while walking along the shore (or sunbathing on the deck) and admiring Baikal nature.
...The record dive in Lake Baikal to the depth of 130m was done on the 17th of December 2003 by adv. Trx diver TDI Misan Gennadey. Beside the particularities described above winter conditions on the surface were added. The air temperature was about -20°C. Windy. The water temperature was +2°C. The total time of the dive was 103 minutes. Coming out of the water was laborious because of ice covered stairs and gloves freezing to the handrail. Despite all the extreme of the dive another boundary of Baikal depth was passed successfully.
It goes without saying that diving in Lake Baikal is nothing like a picnic somewhere in tropical seas. But it is not necessary at all. If you dived once you will come back here again and again in order to experience the unusual feeling of unity with nature and to discover a new part of yourself. Baikal is for those who want to discover all the facets of our wonderful world.
Immersions were carried out near Cape Khoboy during the first days (the northern point of Ol’hon). It is still deep winter in March on Lake Baikal. It’s 0 degrees in water and minus 20 above it and the ice separates these two layers. When I use the word ice, I mean, first of all, one of aggregate states of water. Do you remember from school physics course that it can be solid, liquid or gaseous? But I’d never seen so much of this physical state at a time: the weather was clear and the solid surface stretched for tens of kilometers, as far as one’s eye could see. Some spots were smooth, some swollen with hummocks, some were black because of depth that could be seen through the ice and some spots were milky white. Every day we had to cover 30 – 40 km to get to dive sites, and the icy horizon moved all the time ahead of us. And if we decided to travel to the north or to the south not 30 but 300 km, we always would see the same picture. Ice, ice and ice was everywhere. 30 thousand square kilometers of ice! But ice was so different in various places! It was even difficult to imagine what frost, wind, currents and the sun could have sculptured from simple H2O. Nowadays we are often delighted with ice sculptures shown during competitions often held in different countries. Masters cut statures of humans, animals, fairy-tale heroes and monuments of ice. You can’t see all this in Mother Nature’s workshops (or you can if applying fantasy). It creates mostly in the abstract style, but it’s no less talented because of this. As an example we should mention the artful design of ice stalactites formed on the bank rocks during the December storms. Icicles bend in imaginable and unimaginable forms, twist, untwist and intertwine. Their diameter is like pencil’s one but sometimes they are even thicker than a human hand. Ice that forms them may look like a glossy milk glass, crystal bars or quartz druzes. Under the icy bank caves and grottoes, ice crystals create something that is uniquely associated with the word “palaces”. And if the fairy tale Snow Queen really exists then she must live here!
During the journey time my standard reading was printouts of V. B. Shostakovich’s “The Ice on Lake Baikal” published in 1908. I managed to draw a lot of interesting facts from the book. That was how I learned that Baikal usually began freezing with the Small Sea on December 21. Freeze-up finished on the 16th of January covering an opened part of the lake near the island of Ol’hon. “...a young, newly formed ice is very thin... it is possible for a man to stand on the ice cover with a thickness of 5 cm, and when it is 16 cm horses are allowed to move there”. Nowadays “horses are allowed to move” is not relevant any more, and people drive there, and preference is given to off-road vehicles. Taking into account that ice thickness comes to 100 – 120 cm by March (the time of my arrival) it could stand even a tank’s weight. The reverse side of the “ice road’s” strength is difficulty in cutting an ice-hole for diving. A petrol-powered saw, of course, helps out, but even this device is unable to defeat the entire thickness of the ice in a single pass. Ice “cubes” from an ice hole must be removed in layers.
The ice-hole is cleared, the way down is free. If the purpose of diving is to admire the ice from under the water, the hole is usually made close to a “push”. Here’s how V. B. Shostakovich describes it in the article. “In their final state pushes are represented by slits, the edges of the slits are pressed against each other. A hummock, covering a slit like a dome, is formed of the gap broken edges.” The underwater view is also quite picturesque: there are disorderly piled ice floes, ice caves and grottos formed by an edge of one of the ice parts going down. Scientists explain the formation of “pushes” by thermal expansion of ice. It turns out that the night and day temperature difference at 20 degrees (and it is common for Lake Baikal) expands one kilometer of ice for nearly half a meter! And can you think about 10 or 20 km? That’s why ice is constantly in motion on Lake Baikal. When you go in the morning it’s a good riddance, and by the evening you have to lay the hook in a dozen kilometers to go round a six-foot swell formed under a fresh crack. Or you have to arm yourself with ice picks and shovels to clear a passage in it that a car could overcome there. Push formation is accompanied by a bang and crash comparable to the noise of a cannonade. And if it may cause some inconveniences on the surface, then it is much more unpleasant under the water. Our group once almost caught hell because of this natural phenomenon. We dived with a French group of divers to see a crack somewhere in the middle of the Small sea. The purpose of the immersion was to take photos and shoot interesting relief details of the lower part of the ice-surface. Operators and their models looked for picturesque cliffs and ice caves. There were no signs of surprises. Suddenly... Hardly the last swimmer had left one of the underwater ice caves as there was a heartbreaking crash and the ice that formed walls of the cave, piled up like a house of cards!
There are many terms that are used to describe ice on Lake Baikal. Several basic types of ice are mentioned in the Shostakovich’s work. They are “sokuy”, “osenets” and “kolobovnik”. Sokuy appears in late autumn at the lake shallows. Water freezes at the bank and waves, rolling on the edge, are touched by frost at night and that’s why the amount of ice gradually increases and moves towards the lake. Ice is white, opaque and porous with corrugated surface and can form swells which “sometimes reach the height of two yards.” Osenets appears when broken floating ice freezes. It’s also rough and opaque, one can noticed some fragments of damaged ice there. The next type of ice looks very picturesque, this is kolobovnik. It is formed by “balls” frozen in clear ice. The balls are chunks of floating ice which got spherical shapes. If the pieces are large enough they remind white plates laid out on the dark ice surface. In this case, the ice is called “tchashechniy” (“tchashka is Russian for a “cup”) or “tarelochniy” (“tarelka” is Russian for a “plate”). Clear smooth ice which has all these frozen installations inside doesn’t have its own local name, but from my point of view, it is the most interesting object for photo and video shooting. Water in the lake reminds distilled according to its chemical composition (or it’s better to say according to its lack). “Glass” of extraordinary optical purity appears when frost binds its smooth surface. If you look at people moving on the ice surface from under it, it is hard to believe that the thickness of the ice “window” is 80 – 100 cm. There is an impression that you can reach out your hand and touch them. Only bubbles of your regulator, hitting the bottom of the ice surface, give an idea about the true state of things in some degree. When you watch a diver through the surface between your shoes (he is floating in the depth of 10 meters), you feel a treacherous chill on your back from time to time, and you are afraid that suddenly the magic spell will be dispelled, and you’ll collapse getting into a deep abyss under your feet.
During the under-ice diving we were able to add information on V. B. Shostakovich’s types of Baikal ice. In principle, it is not surprising since the hydrologist wrote his work in 1908 when the lower surface of the ice was simply not available. And it was under the surface where we saw such a thing as underwater snow. Yes, yes it was snow (or something that looked like snow)! It is difficult to speak about its origin (wind could upset an ice floe with a snowdrift or maybe this was one of the stages of ice crystallization), but we could scoop this white substance and do real snowballs. And if talking about an aesthetic side of the question we all could write a separate treatise about it. Every dive brought new shots of unusual ice formations. Ice caves, grottos and tunnels formed by a push. Thin broken and frozen ice looked like tiles and resembled a fairy-tale dragon's teeth. With their heads down ice floes resembled sometimes the well-known mountain peaks (e.g. two-headed snowy lump definitely looked like Mount Elbrus). It is difficult to describe the full range of icy miracles that we had a chance to peep contemplating “mother nature’s” freaks.
Six days of diving flashed like an instant. Many of Lake Baikal wonders stayed behind the scenes, for example, the unique flora and fauna of the lake. It is asleep in winter. Only two dives gave us a possibility to see similar to corals Baikal sponges and an endemic of the lake gammarus which is a large amphipod crustacean. But there are more: the famous nerpa (Baikal seal), the unique live-bearing fish golomyanka and the Baikal sturgeon (Acipenser baerii). And it would be nice to meet omul of Baikal which is well known occupant of mysterious barrels from a Russian legend. Well, that will be the reason to come to Lake Baikal once again. Probably, this severe but generous place is like some kind of unknown virus that makes a person, who has visited the lake, come back here again and again. A famous French underwater cameraman Didier Noirot accepts this idea. I was fortunate to meet him during my stay with BaikalTek. He admits that there are only three places in the world where he is ready to come again and again. And one of them is Lake Baikal. Glorious and sacred Russian sea.
Some tips for divers. In January Baikal freezes. It often happens in the second half of January (very rarely, but sometimes this can be seen in late December). The ice thickness at this time is 10 – 20 cm. Ice is thick and clear but it is forbidden to go there by car. In February the ice thickness reaches 50 – 100 cm. Ice is thick and very firm. Cracks appear in early February as a result of temperature differences, you can travel on ice in a jeep. The best time is the end of February, early March. The thickness of ice is 80 – 120 cm. Ice is thick and very firm. This is the time when you can observe the formation of hummocks and of other different ice frills as underwater caves and tunnels. The water temperature during this time is 0 and the air temperature is –10, –25 C.
Gennady Misan sits on the driver seat and rouses himself from the sobriety of the landscape. “Ready, guys!?”, he asks with a warming smile. It is the last hill to climb, in front of us lies also our planet’s most ancient lake: Lake Baikal. 
Lake Baikal is located in the south of Siberia between the Irkutsk Oblast to the northwest and the Buryat Republic to the southeast. The city of Irkutsk lies close near its southern shores and forms East-Siberia’s biggest economic centre with an extensive industrial sector. The landscape is rendered somewhat grey by a montage of mostly factories and Soviet apartment blocks. The city does, however, get a certain charm from colourful churches and the beauty of the Angara River. 
night we dine together with the locals. 
Lake Baikal counts a current estimate of 1550 animal and 1085 plant species, of which 80 percent are endemic. So is the L. baikalensis unique to the Baikal biotope, thriving due to its oxygenated waters and high dissolved silica content. Their skeletons are made up of silicates, which is rather unusual as most marine creatures consist of calcite or calcium carbonate, the main constitute of limestone. Tiny symbiotic algae are ensconced in the skin of the sponge and deliver energy by means of photosynthesis. It is because of these algae that the sponge has such a striking green colour. Besides this filtering organism, Baikal is home to a stunning number of 260 amphipods. The Acanthogammaridae is quite the extraordinary crustacean. Looking like an armoured weapon with vicious spikes running across its 
body, this 10 centimetre long creature is not afraid to come up close and check you out. The main fish is the Omul Salmon, Baikal’s trademark delicacy. But best known to Baikal is the nerpa, the solely mammalian representative and one of only two fresh water seals in the world. Though it is too early this time of year, each spring their pups come out on the ice to catch their first glimpse of sunlight. 
Rays of bright sun shatter off the steep cliff that makes up Khoboy Cape, bathing Baikal’s frozen plane with a heavenly silvery white colour. It is our second diving day and it takes a good two-hour drive on the ice to get here. Lines of fractured ice, called hummocks, run across the icy platform reflecting the light, similar to a room full of broken mirrors. Parked near one of the ice pinnacles a white Lada makes this idyllic world somewhat more tangible. The maine has frozen and it takes a good three hours to open it again. Gennady assures us the reward is worth the effort. “Wait until you get down there!” 
With a depth of 1642 meters Baikal is known as the deepest lake. The lake contains roughly 20 percent of the world’s surface fresh water and its geological history counts back to an estimated 25 billion years. A geological heaven one might say! During the Soviet Union, research was only done by Russian Institutes and very little was translated. Nowadays the area is object of study of an international community and the past 15 years have proven some stunning scientific results. Lake Baikal is a sedimentary basin created by the movement of two tectonic plates that form a rift and strike slip margin, literally moving past and away from each other. The shores of the lake still move apart by several centimetres each year! Due to elevated topography around the lake, the Barguzin Mountains, hundreds of rivers flow into Baikal carrying big loads of sediment. There is only one river draining out of the system. That is the Angara river. 
An historic locomotive provides shelter from the cold as we change into our drysuits. The 5100-kilometre railroad that connects the lake to Moscow ends here. The picture of what was once a vibrant destination on the Trans Siberia Express, gives now a desolate and nostalgic impression. It is the fifth day into our ice diving adventure and after a long drive from Olkhon we arrive in Listvyanka, a small settlement not far from Irkutsk. Today we conduct an open water dive as the stream of the Angara River prevents the water from freezing. 
Listvyanka is a popular tourist destination due to its local fish market, colourful houses and stunning hiking routes. After building a dam in Irkutsk the water level has risen slightly, which caused minor flooding. An old pier serves as a beautiful dive site, called Krestovka. It wooden logs drifted off, and fill up narrow canyons in the rugged shelf. The pier itself is enclosed between the ice and shore, it parts are covered in a thick bed of green algae. And underneath lies an old rusty cannon, bright red due to iron oxidation. It forms a sharp contrast with the endless blue ice. It is weird, but it almost seems if the colours get deeper after a while. The air sharpens, and roughens us, into a heightened state of observation. 
one of the best dive destinations so far. We have only begun to grasp why lake Baikal is named as the Pearl of Siberia. 
Day two: Getting to Know Baikal 
Day three: Nerpa 
ad to go down to thirty again to take some good photos. We found lots of great sights, but we could not stay at thirty for long. The ship was awaiting us with a tasty lunch, fishing and relaxing time, and completely erased any regrets about not a 100% perfect diving conditions.
the abyss at a perfect straight angle. However, the water temperature got only to 7.5 degrees. The consequences of such temperatures came shortly, some of our regulators began to freeze and stand at free flow at thirst opportunity, even though they are proudly called “unfreezing”. Such conditions didn’t bring our mood down, and only added the necessary experience. Considering that half of the divers were children, who have a very limited experience of diving in dry suits, such conditions were a great practice.
down from the mountains to the water, so it seemed that from Russian banya we ran straight out into Turkish sauna. The whole scene was unforgettable, just imagine: a ship is barely visible through milk-white fog, somewhere at the end of sight a cold water is splashing, and a crowd of hot people are running towards it. A very curious cook, a huge druggie nicknamed Tyson, smoked grayling, for us. We’re not sure why Tyson, but just in case everybody hid their ears from him. And we say druggie, because while the fish was smoking, he watched the process very attentively and kept smelling the smoke… At the same time the huntsman kept telling us local stories about how the concentration of bears in this region reaches up to 36 animals per square kilometer, and that he regularly feeds one of the bears. Our imagination immediately created a picture how a real Russian man in Russian fur-hat is going into the woods with balalaika, drinks up a bottle of vodka together with the bear, and they start a fight. It’s not a surprise that this year’s Russian Olympic team has whole three gold medals in… wrestling! 
Day six: Pokoiniki (The Deceased) 
Our voyage is slowly coming to an end and we got to the very south of the lake, where the Circum Baikal Railroad follows the shores. It is believed that several train cars crashed here during the Civil War, and that those cars were carrying gold bars of a famous admiral. The train cars are really there, at 110 meters deep, which is far beyond our recreational diving abilities. Nobody has found the gold in them thus far, but every diver still tries and hopes that he is the lucky one.
P.S. Team “O-OOPS!” would like to express deep gratitude to dive center “BaikalTek” and its leaders for their help in the organization and participation in this trip, as well as to ship “Valerija” and its hospitable team (personally, I bow down to the chef!). Thank you, people - the trip would not be the same without you! 
Where? 
If you have not ice-dived before, use the first two or three days to take a course. Yes, this is extreme diving but the challenge is mental rather than physical; diving in an overhead environment is not for the claustrophobic and you should have good skills and the ability to remain calm underwater. If this is you, you will have no problem with ice diving. 
and you're there. Whole summer and autumn work kept me busy. I'd done my previous 154m dive solo. There was only safety equipment on the surface, and in the middle of the dive the stander-by came down to me to see if everything was going well. Other 100-140m dives I had only done with the safety equipment on the surface (except those connected with courses and deep-water support). I'm not sure I was right then. The shoulder of a buddy is a great emotional support and a real help. Now I don't dive deep alone. In September, Andrei and I began preparing for deep dives. Andrei has been doing Trimix diving for quite a while, passed IDC for technical instructor. We needed trainings to prepare for diving in complete darkness, especially in two. We'd been doing this for a few months interrupted by routine work in dive club. In December there were four 55-60m ER dives; 70,90m trimix dives; and on January 3d - 100m. Rejections of equipment - only Andrei’s Legend frozen when going into the water (70m dive). The regulator underwent technical service and next dives went successfully. My equipment never failed. 160m dive was planned for January 9th. 
January 9th. 10 Am. Our live-aboard is heading for the dive site. Cloudy. It’s warm (-8) and Baikal is calm. We come across not very big isolated floes. Water temperature is at the point of freezing. On our way we are packing the equipment in a warm lounge, check everything one more time and talk over the order of actions. We reach “Baranchiki” at around 12. Visibility is zero. We can’t see the edge of the drop-off. Sounding shows 70m. We moored fine. I came into the water; Andrei had problems with his equipment, therefore, delayed. The edge of the drop-off was all a blur, which means visibility was no more than 20m. I decided not to wait for Andrei and having co-ordinated with the stander-by, started the descent. 
7th minute. 125m deep. The tap is turned off, though bottom gas is gone. Finally, the right regulator is found. I hectically switch over – what if I mixed up the gases? Regulator on stage is at free-flow. I don’t pay attention, it’s of minor importance. Fail to stop. Can’t see the wall, start surfacing in the abyss. While switching over to travel, I lost the valve of veering on dry suit. I’m trying to veer the suit and the wing simultaneously. The valve is turned on, but it can’t cope with the air volume. Coming up is out of control. 
On January 12th, at 11am, I had a 40min long session in the oxygen pressure chamber, by pressure of 1,8at. After that numbness became weaker. The same day, a diving expert of МЧС, Valery Chernikh phoned Boris Nikolayevich Pavlov. Based on the symptoms, I was considered to have a serious form of DCS. The 2nd regime of medical recompression was recommended. Personally, I thought that I didn’t have DCS but the remaining signs connected with the trauma of soft tissue.
This diving should have been cancelled at the beginning when the buddy had задержки. Murphy says: “If a few misfortunes are to happen, they happen in the most unfavorable order”. And, “The greater is the preparation for an exceptional dive, the fewer are the chances to refuse it even if it turns out to be a failure”.
5. Constant breathing of pure oxygen being on board.
Buryat pozy (ravioli type dish), chased them with vodka and stopped at the rest stops, where huts all covered with ribbons according to Buryat tradition.
Do you know that Olkhon has over 300 sunny days a year? Even Krym cannot compete with that! We realized it the next morning before heading to the dive-site. Trust me such a bright orange sun can be both a treasure and a danger for a very white-faced Siberian.
Baikal’s mood.
direction, the depth and the step of the web. I don’t understand how it was possible to create this without ruining the clarity of the ice… but maybe it’s not necessary to understand this – simply enjoy the beauty!
“BaikalTek” tell us that a year ago they got a two-meter crack only three meters away from the car. We look around, to assess our chances.
orth, Khuzir and surroundings are in the center and Olkhon Gates are on the south. This completes the circle, so to say. Besides, if there is a desire to assess the prospects – there is no better place. No, not the prospects of diving at Olkhon (this, in my opinion, is all clear); but the prospects of Lake Baikal, its broad space. It’s not just a line of ice, rolling in the sky line, but a line that is beautifully completed with the other islands and islets - perfect place! There is no other place with such transparent and beautiful ice. Standing on its surface and looking down through it on several dozens of water, you can still count the number of pebbles on the bottom. And if you would want to go ice-fishing here in between dives, you wouldn’t need any floats to mark that the fish is caught – you could see everything like through a glass.
As our guides tell us, in summer it’s not as calm here – the current is rather strong and this makes the water not as clear. This is the beauty of under-ice diving: you get practically on hard surface, without rocking in the boat, anywhere and dive – almost in greenhouse conditions. Actually, that’s what we’ve been doing these days.
My long-time dream came true this year: I have visited this mysterious place. Irkutsk seemed low after Moscow, as a patch of grass in woods. It has amazed me with the magnificence of Silver Century and poses. It is located in seismographically dangerous zone; it doesn’t have buildings taller than 4 floors. It is craved from wooden houses, with little yards, where people dry their laundry or park their Japanese cars. Those yards are really clean; they have swings and monkey-bars in them for children. Poz-cafés (these are cafes where one can eat pozes – Buryat’s ravioli) seem like places where one can meditate.
At most I am amazed by people who live in such unbelievable places. It was the same in Mexico and at Altai. Probably, the closeness to the soul-center helps their character. These people surrounded me entire trip: kind, nice, and simple. These people are far from Moscow’s rumors and intrigues; they dive in one-degree water down to 100 meters, and they do it calmly and easily, as though there is nothing heroic in it. Here they plan recreational and technical safaris or shore-diving.
Everyone can come to Baikal and dive. It’s not that difficult. You buy a ticket, get on the plane, hour-long car ride, and you’re at Baikal. It’s difficult to let Baikal in you, accept it; fall in love with its cold and selfish nature. To fall in love with it and see, what Baikal is for real – gentle and lovely sea. Gena Misan has fallen in love with it like that and a lot of divers did too, they come back again and again, They were able to see the soul, the energy, the esotericism (call it whatever you want) of this place and find here what most of the people are looking for. However, some leave without finding anything; they just leave, without understanding anything. I am not sure, perhaps, it depends on karma whether you will understand or you won’t…
The equipment: there are 15 liter steel tanks with dual valves and 24 liter double tanks, stages for 8, 10 and 12 liters. Nitrox is prepared right on the boat. So it is possible to select the equipment and prepare a mix depending on the specific tasks of a dive. The pressure in the tanks and the contents of the mix are thoroughly checked and signed by everybody. The presence of a technical instructor does not reduce the individuals responsibility for his own dive. The next step is fastening compensators. Everyone has double chamber wings. Despite the fact that everybody has his own equipment, a local dive-center has all the necessary stuff both for recreational and technical diving. Having two regulators is an obligatory condition for technical as well as standard dives. It is one of Baikal necessities. In summer months (June, July), the air temperature rises to +35°C in the day time and it drops to +18°C at night. The water temperature in the bays and coves warms up to +18°C ... +23°C and it warms up to +8°C and sometimes +10°C in surface lays of open spaces. But it is just an illusion. At a depth of 10 meters you will find a sudden thermoclin - the water temperature drops down to +1°C ... +2°C. Even if you are going to dive no deeper than 10-12 meters, you can find yourself in icy-cold water. Now it is worth mentioning one phenomenon connected with internal Baikal winds. There are several winds which differ in their strength, direction, periods and places of flowing. One of them is the North-West. The strength of this wind is enough to start the movement of deep water layers (down to 1000 meters) and to lift them to the surface. It is quite possible that after having the first dive in the comfort of warm water and 2-3 hours rest on the boat, the second dive will have to be done in a completely different place. Temperature fluctuation caused by mixing of deep and surface waters can be up to +12°C during only several hours. Really stable warm water comes only from September to December when the whole mass of water from the depth to the surface of the lake warms up to +3°C ... +4°C. The North-West wind brings arctic icy water which is met with gladness by the local divers because diving in warm water is not considered " good". In summer plankton starts to bloom and the visibility can drop down to zero. The water becomes deep yellow-greenish. Sometimes it is impossible to see your own hand (especially in sandy shallow water). And we cannot even talk about group diving unless you swim shoulder to shoulder. Cold water conceals the danger of freezing to the diver and the gear as well. Despite all the equipment being marked as "stable to freezing", it happens that the first stage freezes on free-flow. The second stage, an inflator or a valve on your suit can also freeze. We do not use the classical combination - regulator plus octopus on Lake Baikal. We use two independent regulators instead, and one of them is on a two meter hose which is a lot safer, especially when using dry suits. The main breathing is through the "long hose" and it guarantees meticulous work of the breezing gear for a partner in emergency cases. So, all the equipment is prepared and checked. It is time to dress. In dry suits, of course. Though there are some bold spirits who risk to dive in "sevens" or even "fives" (!) yet I do not know anybody who managed to stay in the water for more than half an hour. And it is good to have dry gloves or three fingers gloves with double obturation at least. Hands are the first parts which starts to freeze, approximately in 20-25 minutes after the start of a dive. Your gloves must be correctly selected if you are able to make long decompression dives. Light is also a necessary condition for deep diving on Baikal. Despite crystal transparency of the water and visibility up to 50-60 meters on gloomy days, weak sunlight cannot breach the dark mass of water and diving deeply becomes like a "night" dive. The optimal situation is to use light systems with a powerful battery light that is enough for diving at 60-70 meters. 
At 6 meters the visibility is getting better. The temperature is going down: it reads +6°C on the display. It is still possible to observe the friends hanging near by. Now the last mutual check before falling into abyss. The balance is normal, the gear is working perfect and everything is hermetic so we can continue. 20 meters, the visibility is great. The temperature is +2°C. An absolute vertical wall is seen down. Realizing the fact that hundreds or probably thousands meters of water are under you fascinates and attracts you. The feeling of diving to unexplored world appears. It is like flying into the space. At 40 meters it is getting a bit darker and sounds are becoming muffeld. At 55 meters it is an absolute darkness. Like in a tunnel and there is not any sun light. Almost no sounds are heard. We stop for a few seconds to enjoy the darkness and the silence. We wont have this opportunity afterwards. Nothing is seen. No wall which was just in half a meter and now dissolved in the space, no computer reading. It is impossible to know where up or down or left or right is. Only if the brain is working perfectly you avoid getting lost in this void, but if you loose control just for a second you can finish your dive. You loose an orientation instantly. Your breathing is rapid and the whole body is seized with panic. And an age-old fear death occurs. A few seconds seems like an eternity. We need to turn the light on and do down. Mistakes at great depth are inadmissible. Only a few people can afford the luxury of deep diving in such absolute darkness. The strong light cuts through the water mass. The wall finds its outline. A large number of snails going about their own lives do not pay any attention to us creatures swimming around. You feel better and more pleasant because you are not alone. The computer is counting meters. The regulator starts to pass tiny pieces of ice. Just a few seconds separate you from free flow. Control your breathing is so important. You have to do everything to avoid rapid breathing. Meter by meter down. The wall now has a negative slope, creatures per unit of area decreases and the darkness becomes even thicker. At 100 meters it is as though you pass an invisible line. And you keep going further. You are left by yourself for a few minutes. An absolute darkness and silence is around you. No movement. It is very warm though the water temperature is still the same +2°C. Just your heart thump is felt. All the problems are left somewhere up above your mind is working clearly but all your thoughts direct inside you. Complete relaxation. You join a piece of another world during these moments and you understand you place in it better. You discover yourself new and you check your self-possession and personality. Then all good must end and your computer gives you a signal of necessity to start going up. Decompression stops differ from those going down because they give you an opportunity to see the surrounding nature in details and to observe the macrolife which is quite rich in lake Baikal. At 50 meters you soar above the abyss like a space ship in the weightlessness. There is a tremendous mountain scenery under you and in front of you with breaks, small caves and tiny shelves where you can hardly catch hold with a hand. There is a absolutely fantastic underwater canyon somewhere in the front. The aesthetics enjoyment is interrupted by free flow of the regulator of my decotank. Low water temperature makes itself felt. The next meters of decompression have to be spent in "open-close" valve regime. 12 meters. The wall has finished. Underwater amphitheatre appears to the eyes. Huge boulders overgrown with sponges are situated in half circles. Sandy bottom is seen. Probably fish meet here on weekends? Now the divers are gathering here who have started the dive together after deviding according to their plans. Now everybody is "hanging" on decompression. At 6 meters is the longest period. The frozen hands start to warm up in the surface lay of water. A red buoy is thrown out. Support divers on the surface should be sure that everything is good. It takes 70 minutes to wait for the diver who dived to more 100 meters to come out. Now it is possible to relax finally and observe crustacea, bullheads and other small things rooting around in the sand. A huge pike is hiding behind the nearest stone and scrutinizing the people with curiosity. It is not scared at all. Hanging above it for ten minutes in half a meter distance did not cause it move even for a centimeter. You can just stretch out you hand and you lunch is quaranteed. But let us leave Baikal inhabitants alone because disturbance of any harmony working ecosystem always turns against us. 3 meters. The decompression is over. We are coming back to the boat. The visibility is still almost zero. The orientation is only according to gear and you own feelings. The ladder appears at last. All the equipment is taken off and left in the water. Fatigue and imperceptible delight is seen on everybodys face. We all look at each other and smile. Everything is understandable without any words. Discussion will start later when all digress from their own impressions and will be able to express their feelings more or less. Now the support team helps to lift the equipment and to take the suits off. A smell of lunch is in the air. Later there is a sunny day while walking along the shore (or sunbathing on the deck) and admiring Baikal nature.