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Review by June

The best under-ice diving in the word, as everything ‘best’, has expiration period and limited locale. The time is limited to one month (March) +/- a week and the best place is Maloe Sea of Lake Baikal. The timing when this diving can happen is determined by a combination of such factors as air temperature, length of day, ice thickness and some others. The place is determined by the fact that there are a lot of ice cracks, the ice see-through and a few more.

Our unique program “Ice Jeep Diving Safari” is widely well-known by now. This was once again proven in March 2012. All planned safaris took place and everybody who planned on coming was here, and even more. Most importantly though is that all participants got to experience best ice-diving and there was nobody who was left unsatisfied. A great deal of experience of holding such events gave us an ability to find the best spots and get to places where others wouldn’t even be able to. All safari teams kept busy all day long with various activities: jeeps, diving, and also excursions, meals and banyas on ice.

Groups were of various sizes: from 4 to 20 people. People came from Irkutsk, Moscow, Omsk, Bryansk, Hong-Kong, Poland, and Ukraine. Freelance instructor IANTD Konstantin Melnikov from Bryansk was a great help to us this year, a big separate thanks to him for that. Also big respect goes out to Aleksandr Martynenko. His energy and ability to energize other people with great ideas helped him to get together the biggest group of this season. Also our appreciation goes to underwater photographers Olga Kamenskaya, Andrey Narchuk and Oleg Doroshenko. Their photographs are displayed on this website. Thank you to all the participants of ice safaris of this season for their wonderful company.

The sign-up for 2013 is already open. The program is really great, the season is limited and there are plenty of people interested.

On May 18^th a week of deep-diving training started. Vasily Yaroshenko (Irkutsk) dove on trimix to 80 and 90 meters, Aleksandr Rogozin (Volgograd) completed Advanced Nitrox and Decompression Procedure courses with Tatyana Oparina, and Sergey Gorenkov and Kiril lDrozdov (instructors from Moscow club “Rightdive”) completed Advanced Trimix courses with Gennady Misan. Decompression Procedure courses were completed with a successful decompression dive to 45 meteres. Advanced Trimix class was finished with a dive to 100 meters. Within AT course there were intermediary dives to 80, 55, 45 and 10 meters. Congratulations to Aleksandr, Sergey and Kirill for completing the courses and we’re looking forward to welcoming them for deep diving not as students, but just for fun.

The first of the season diving safari aboard ship “Valery” started on May 26^th. We followed the route from Listvyanka to the north through Eastern Olkhon to “the Shore of Brown Bears”, and then via Ushkanii Isles back to Eastern Olkhon and Listvyanka. The safari was called “Chasing Ices” because it is a seasonal safari, which can take place only in May, when ices are supposed to float around the lake. Due to unsually warm weather this year ices have already melted. However, there was a lot of nerpa at Ushkanii Isles, at Elokhin cape we had amazing banya right on the lake, and Ledyanoe (Ice) canyon true to its name was covered in ice. Besides, the diving was wonderful at sites “the Shore of Brown Bears”, Eastern Olkhon, Ushkanii Isles and Bolshie Koty. At dive-site Ledyanaya we finished studying deepwater wall with a series of dives to 100 and 120 meters, which were done by Vasily Yaroshenko, Gennady Misan and Tatyana Oparina. Now we know the full picture of this tremendous wall. Olga Kamenskaya (Moscow) took plenty of photographs both above and under water which have been added to our gallery. During safari Oleg Bondarenko from Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk completed courses TDI and Decompression Procedure. As usual, meals at Valery were top-notch, and dinners were spent in amazing company.

In beginning of June we hosted guys from Moscow club “Deep Ocean”. Club’s instructor Aleksandr Zykov taught courses ER and DP TDI for 5 of his students. Our task was to supply courses with gases, sparks and double-tanks with manifolds. This task was successfully completed by our dive-master and gas-blender Aleksey Bormotov. He also supplied gases for the next course, which Aleksand Zykov completed himself after his students have left. Courses Trimix Diver, Trimix Instructor, Nitrox Gas Blender, and Trimix Gas Blender led by Gennady Misan were completed with honor and now club “Deep Ocean” has expanded list of training programs IANTD. And probably in the nearest time it will be possible to get nitrox at club “Deep Ocean”. Sasha Zykov soon will be teaching Trimix to his students, and in fact it will happen here at Baikal.

Our next safari aboard “Valery” started on June 9^th with Moscow’s club Moby Dick. It lasted seven days and followed the safari route “Olkhon”. Club’s team had not only divers but also free-divers, one of whom was underwater photographer Andrey Sokolov. He made first free-dive photos of Baikal, and not just photos but masterpieces! Look at them on Facebook. Great company, great rest and diving. Baikal has caught on to all safari participants and they want to come back for under-ice diving in March 2013.

The next club “Triton” from St. Pete started with daily diving in Listvyanka on June 18^{th a}nd then continued with safari aboard “Myth” on the route Listvyanka – Circular Baikal Railway – Bolshie Koty – Olkhon. The group got off at Olkhon and studied the island for two days, staying at famous Nikita Bencharov’s hotel.

This is how June is coming along. In the end of June there will be a mixed club safari during which our Baikaltek students will take part in course Site Mount and Deep Diver, and some will just deep dive including on trimix. Trimix dives will be supervised by our friend from Kazakhstan who completed trimix course with us last year. By the way he is the first person to make a trimix dive to 90 meters at Issyk-Kul Lake in Kyrgyzstan. Also a famous under-water photographer from Ukraine Andrey Nekrasov is planning to join us. So we are looking for more masterpieces. Follow us on Facebook and look out for new beautiful photos.