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BaikalTek News. March - April 2014

The 2014 Jeep Ice Safaris season started on March 1. The total of 6 safaris took place, each of which was unique in its own way. The season was finished successfully on March 31. When leaving the island of Olkhon we had to travel not on the “ice track” (a safe way on the ice monitored by local representatives of the Ministry of Emergency Situations) - it was officially closed on March 27, due to the unusually warm spring this year, which lead to the ice getting thin too fast. We started for the mainland early in the morning, as it feezes at night and the ice gets tougher, when crossing the lake we were choosing our way so as to go over thicker ice.

The last group arrived to Olkhon by a hovercraft boat (they started their journey across the Baikal ice from Listvyanka on March 27). This way of travelling was planned in advance and it luckily coincided with the unexpected climatic changes which resulted in ice getting thin earlier than usual. It was an interesting journey along the beautiful Baikal shore with photo/video/lunch stops in the most picturesque places. The fact that we travelled by a hovercarft boat made this ice safari unique - no one has ever done it before.

One of the other safaris was special due to free-divers. It was an interesting experience for us, because these were the first free-divers in Lake Baikal who took part in Jeep Ice Safari. This is exactly what made the safari unique - the first Jeep Ice Free-Diving Safari in the Baikal! Andrey Sidorov - a free-diver and a photographer was with us on a summer safari by ship “Valeria” and that was the time when the idea of arranging a free-diver ice safari occured to the Baikal free-divers. This plan was successfully fulfilled within the time frame of March 23-26. 4 free-divers made a series of dives in the area close to a sight called Shamanka; in proximity of a crack in the ice near cape Khoboi; and in the middle of Maloye Morye (the Small Sea Strait). They enjoyed diving under the transparent ice and seeing the unusual underwater ice formations. They also treated themselves to an on-ice sauna, visited the most popular places in Olkhon - Tri Brata (The Three Brothes rocks), cape Khoboi, Usoury. Had fun climbing over huge ice formations and taking photos of the views in the area of cape Khoboi.

Another safari worth mentioning alongside with the free-divers’ group journey is the programme we arranged for Alexander Martynenko’s team. This safari was also unique in its way, namely, we managed to successfully unite two programmes in it - Jeep Ice Diving Safari in the Strait of Small Sea and a safari in the area of the Ushkan Islands. It turned out to be a perfect combination, as if we had travelled in time - saw the spring in the Small Sea Strait and winter in the Ushkan Islands (with its characteristic features - transparent black ice, firm ice formations), to think that these places are only 100 km apart! We got accommodation right on the protected territory of a nature reserve, so the living conditions were really basic - no shower, toilets outside, 8 people in one room. Still, we enjoyed the luxury of each other’s company and a hot sauna after diving. An interesting journey and great ice-diving (different from what you get in the Small Sea Strait).

In the same time frame with Martynenko’s team we welcomed a Ronson dive group. Ronson is a company where the employees are united not only at work and by work, but also by diving and friendship, that grows bigger thanks to diving. When people dive together, go on dive tours together, thier friendship that starts as business cooperation turns into something more important. Dive-instructor Sergey Arkhangelsky - the head of the company and the team of divers - played the first fiddle in arranging the matter. So the happy colleagues had great fun enjoying all the advantages of a Jeep Ice Safari - the best in the world ice diving, travelling on the Baikal ice, going to a sauna (right there, on ice, after diving), lunches in the open air, authentic lake Baikal cuisine at Nikita Bencharov’s guest house. What made this safari unique? - The friendly people - a united team of colleagues.

Alexey Vinsky and Pavel Osada’s group also opted for combining two programmes - The Baikal Jeep Ice Safari and daily diving in Listvyanka. Such an idea is unique, so when our guests choose to see more of Lake Baikal, we indulge into making the most of it. The group instructors dived a lot with their students, as well as alone. Alexey Vinsky took great photos (both underwater and landscape).

The uniqueness of the first safari is in the mere fact of it being the FIRST safari of the season and we were lucky to see the Baikal seal. Meeting Lake Baikal seals has become a good tradition for us, which is inspiring. We hope for more frequent occasions of seeing seals, as they seem to be not afraid of people, which is possible if locals don’t hunt them. Last year Tomash Stashura (Santi) took underwater pictures of the Baikal seal in the area of cape Khoboi, this year Sergey Arkhangelsky (Ronson) made a video of the animals.

The participants of the first dive safari in this season were divers from the city of Vladimir (dive-club Russian Extreme), lead by Sergey Baikov. The group spent 4 days diving in the Baikal and enjoying the beauty of underwater ice formations - they were the first to dive in the first ice holes made for this season and the first to admire unique Lake Baikal ice. Inspired by thier instructor, the group members tried side-mount diving, which allowed them to make the most of their underwater adventures by getting deeper into ice formations. Sergey Baikov was the first to take underwater photos of Lake Baikal ice this year. We even celebrated the holiday of Maslenitsa on the ice. To sum it up, it was a creative safari. Should you want to find out more about it - visit the club web-site: www.rus-extrim.ru.

So the adventures were over, the season was closed and we hope to start the next one on February 15, 2015. The time-table for the future programmes is already published (check our web-site for it). Discuss, analyse, apply.

A detailed photo-report about this season is published on our web-page in Facebook.

The Khubsugul is the largest lake in Mongolia, located in the same rift as the Baikal, and therefore considered to be the latter’s “younger brother” - has attracted our attention since a long time ago. Besides, it is just 350 km away from Irkutsk - 325 km of which is a nice asphalt road and the rest 25 km belong to the Mongolian territory - quite good quality road by the country standards. To put it in a nutshell, it remains a mystery to us why we had travelled 4,000 km to dive in the Ordinskaya Cave and had not made 350 km to see the Khubsugul. Having finished the Jeep Ice Diving Safari in the Baikal on March 31, we got to the Khubsugul on April 1. We had heard that Khubsugul ice was also transparent and one could find good cracks in the ice, like in the Baikal, so we were not disappointed by what we saw. April 2 we spent looking for a suitable crack, that would fit the following requirements: 1. big enough ice formations on top (which are suggestive of an even more beautiful picture from the underwater view); 2. close proximity to the lake bottom (up to 8 meters), to see the underwater landscape, local flora and fauna; 3. transparent ice. We found all these by midday and made a hole in 1,5-meters-thick ice. On April 3 we made a dive. The great visibility and the water colour impressed us the most - up to 30 meters and light-blue tint. In these sunny-blue waters lit through the transparent ice we saw white sandy lake bottom with unusual coral-like formations. To crown it all - terrific ice formations! The view of them in the distance, lit by the strong Mongolian sun, their unusual shapes literally fascinated us. The first pair - Tatiana Oparina & Dritriy Melamed - spent an hour underwater. A great video of this dive was made. The second group - Olga Kamenskaya & Gennady Misan - also took an hour to make great underwater photos. As Olga later commented, “There is nothing difficult to make great pictures here - just press the button.” Indeed, modesty is the best quality. On the next day, April 4, we made one more dive, having completed our impressions of the Khubsugul as well as our photo/video bank of its underwater views.

To sum it up, the Khubsugul is a great place for ice-diving and April is the best time to do it. This is due to a number of reasons - it is quite warm on the surface, which is important for ice-diving: accommodation in Mongulian gers is more comfortable thanks to higher air temperatures. Plus to this Lake Baikal ice-diving season is over. It goes without saying that the Baikal ice diving is the best in the world! April ice-diving in the Khubsugul can be a great way to keep the ball rolling in terms of ice-diving. Some might wonder why the season is longer in Mongolia, it being to the south from Siberia? Well, it has to do not so much with its southern location as with its altitude - 1, 650 meters above sea level. That’s why the ice cover melts in June only, compared to the Baikal getting rid of it in April-May. Ice crust forms over Lake Khubsugul in November-December as opposed to the Baikal January-style.

To add some more to the above-said, probably our group - Tanya, Olga, Dima, Gena - are the first divers in the Khubsugul, who did ice-dives and discovered the underwater beauty of the lake by winter.

April 5 & 6 we spent exploring the lake neighbourhood, thanks to the frozen ground and our powerful jeeps, which made it possible. The lake views are picturesque indeed, especially the panorama of the Sayan Mountains. We ran across tiny Mongolian villages on the way and were astonished by the simple, literally primitive living conditions of local cattle-breeders.

In the evenings we came back to the tourist base “Serebriany Bereg” (Silver Shore) to find a feast dinner of Mongolian traditional meat dishes, a hot banya and a nicely warm ger. To sum it up, accommodation was quite up to our expectations. The tourist base Mongolian staff and its Russian managers tried to make the most of our stay at their place.

So here comes our conclusion - the Khubsugul and Mongolia are the places worth seeing, especially with the aim of ice-diving. In our opinion, this lake is not interesting enough when it comes to open water diving: impossible to get to a spectacular place in terms of diving (the boats are difficul to get). Besides, they say there are many mosquitoes in summer. Well, April only!

As we have already announced, in the framework of the Baikal Jeep Ice Diving Safari there was opened a demo-center for dry suits Waterproof. Divers, taking part in the safaris, were enthusiastic to test these great suits absolutely free of charge. The promoaction worked well. We would like to thank Impeks company for the opportunity provided. From now on the demo center is located on the premises of dive center BaikalTek. Come, have a look, have a try, choose, test.

By the way, one of Waterproof dry suits model D9 was part of our gear when we did ice diving in the Khubsugul! Has anyone ever dived there in a Waterproof dry suit? We doubt it.

Below goes Andrey Narchuk’s (a well-known underwater photographer) account of his testing experience.

What makes the difference

It’s the third year at a stretch that I have been doing ice diving in the Baikal. I bought my own dry suit not so long ago, but this year I decided to make use of a rented one (from dive center BaikalTek). Firstly, I did not want to pay for extra luggage at the airport (as Aeroflot luggage weight limit is 23 kilos, which I easily reached by packing warm clothes and my photo kit). Secondly, I thought there was not much difference between my budget Tri-light Aqua Lung and the dry suit I had rented from BaikalTek the year before.

When I got to Olkhon I was quite unexpectedly offered to test a new dry suit Waterproof D1. This was a chance for me any many others to feel the difference in the most severe climatic conditions. Even though the air temperature was unusually high for this time of the year (stably above zero), the water temperature was similar to the previous years - 0 +1 degrees Centigrade.

So one had to put on a whole load of thinsulate underwear to feel oneself more or less comfortable (in terms of warmth) when underwater for over 30 minutes.

This, of course, led to clumsiness underwater, which is quite unwanted for a photographer.

However, I was told that in the new suit I could try diving even without a thinsulate overall... Despite the fact that this information baffled me at first, I decided to have a go anyway, trusting the word of the professionals. So, I put aside my thinsulate undersuit and the additional vest I used to put on. I was wearing just my thermal underwear and a fleece jacket.

Due to this I made my weight belt a couple of kilos lighter.

The first impression was: very soft and elastic to the touch cuffs. It should be mentioned that I have a problem with many dry suits - wrist cuffs let a bit of water in. I have quite thin wrists and plus to that I have to be very active underwater when making photos, so as a result even very tight wrist cuffs let some water in, so I have to make my undersuit sleeves dry after every dive.

In case with a Waterproof dry suit I did not have such a problem. The second advantage was my agility. Because I was wearing less clothes under my dry suit, I felt more comfortable both when getting ready for the dive and underwater - it was easier to move, to reach for interesting places and to use my camera.

As for the warmth - I felt quite well on the condition of inflating the suit on time when descending. I can’t comment on the warmth of a Waterproof suit for deep diving, as I tested it at the max depth of 10 meters, because my primary concern were the ice formations, which are close to the ice surface. The only thing I regret is that I did not have a chance to try the other suit - D9 - as there was none that would fit me. I am quite tall (190 cm) and I take size 45 in shoes, so usually sizes XXL or XL are for me, but they were too wide (literally, 2 or 3 people of thin build can fit into these suits). Which is baffling.

So it is always very pleasant when a dry suit producer can offer extra long versions of customary sizes for slender divers.

Anyway, the experience with a Waterproof dry suit made me reconsider my approach to diving gear.

Best regards,

Andrey Narchuk

Dikiy Zhurnal (Wild Magazine)