Baikal is one of the most attractive tourist destinations in Russia. However, a traveler setting off to this largest freshwater lake on the planet should remember that both in summer and in winter it is fraught with dangers.
Water
Today, ecologists paint a bleak picture of the not so distant future of Baikal, namely, they believe that the lake may soon turn into a swamp. And there really is a reason for such a forecast. Every year, an increasingly significant area of the lake is covered with spirogyra - an algae characteristic of stagnant warm water bodies. The situation on the coast near Severobaikalsk is of particular concern - about 1400 tons of these algae deposits have accumulated there. The growth of Spirogyra is facilitated by household wastewater, which treatment facilities can no longer cope with.
The overgrowth of Baikal with algae threatens with many negative consequences. One of them is the danger of drinking unboiled Baikal water. Alas, as environmentalists state, once crystal clear water is no longer worth drinking without some purification, if you took it from the coast. Doctor of Chemistry Vadim Annenkov notes that some bacteria that have settled in the lake produce toxins, although you can poison yourself not only with some kind of neuroparalytic poison, but you can simply pick up dysentery.
In addition, the shipping traffic, which increases every year, causes irreparable harm to the Baikal water. The press service of the Prosecutor's Office of Buryatia emphasizes that none of the 30 Baikal berthing facilities, including ports, are equipped with collection points. As a result, more than 400 tons of oily dirty water is discharged directly into the lake. This threatens with inevitable ecological consequences, in particular, for the Baikal endemics.
The pollution of the lake affects, first of all, its inhabitants, in whose organisms harmful substances are deposited. Thus, in the tissues of the two main representatives of the Baikal fauna - omul and seal - in 2000, dioxin poison was found. This poison, which accumulates in fish organisms, enters the food chain in animals and humans.
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Ice
Every year in March, thousands of fans of ice walks come to Baikal - on foot, on skates, skiing, bicycles and various types of vehicles. And some of them are frivolous about this type of outdoor activity. Numerous car tracks, streaking through the transparent Baikal ice, create an illusion of safety. However, you should not flatter yourself, warn the employees of the Ministry of Emergencies. Insidious March ice can present an unpleasant surprise at any moment.
According to the official data of the Baikal search and rescue detachment of the EMERCOM of Russia, over the past ten years, 63 people died on the frozen lake (half of them remained at the bottom), and 203 people were on the verge of death, and only timely help rescued them from the tragic fate. The figures indicate that people die on the ice of Lake Baikal more often than when climbing the highest peak of the planet Everest.
The March ice on Lake Baikal is, of course, much more dangerous than the December ice. Old ice, under the influence of solar heat, begins to crystallize and crack, and the water on top of it, which could give away its melting, usually goes into cracks. Moving on such ice, albeit rather thick, is an extremely risky undertaking, even for pedestrians.
Flame
Recently, forest fires have become noticeably more frequent in the area around Lake Baikal. In 2015, they had to close several of the most popular places to visit during the peak tourist season. More than 1,200 fires were reported that year, according to media reports. The fire came so close to Sandy Bay that several dozen tourists were evacuated from this area.
The smoke from this fire was so strong that it crossed Lake Baikal at its widest point and covered Olkhon Island. Chairman of the Baikal Center for Ecology and Ethnography "Real Siberia" Dmitry Govorukhin even addressed the President of the Russian Federation, saying that 10 thousand local residents and more than 30 thousand tourists are suffocating from the smoke.
In the summer of 2015, the area of forest fires was also a record high. If from the side of the Irkutsk region forests were burning on an area of more than 40 thousand hectares, then from the side of the Republic of Buryatia the situation was even worse - 75 thousand hectares of taiga were burning. It was a real ecological disaster, accompanied by the migration of wild animals, which, fleeing the fires, went out to people.
Experts name dry thunderstorms, high air temperature and the human factor as the main reason for the increased frequency of forest fires around Lake Baikal. It turns out that people not only carelessly light and put out fires poorly, but also launch Chinese lanterns in the forest.
Another factor favoring the spread of fires was the gradual decrease in the water level in the lake. This was caused, first of all, by the damming of the Irkutsk hydroelectric power station of the Angara River, which feeds Baikal.
Scientists predict that the day is not far off when the water level in Lake Baikal can drop 13-16 cm below the limit. As a result, wells in villages will become shallower, and in case of fire, this will limit the possibility of refueling fire engines with water and, accordingly, extinguishing fires.
Wind
Lake Baikal, huge in area, has a significant impact on the climate of the windward slopes of the eastern ridges of the Baikal region, thanks to it, a huge amount of precipitation falls there. First of all, this applies to the Khamar-Daban ridge, in the central part of which the amount of precipitation reaches a record for the entire country - 1,443 mm per year, and the thickness of the snow cover is 2-3 times higher than the average values in other regions and sometimes exceeds the mark in three meters.
A slow increase in air temperature in spring leads to long-term “conservation” of snow and creates an increased threat of avalanches for a long time. For example, on May 3, 1985, a great tragedy happened at Lake Baikal - 17 students of the Irkutsk Pedagogical Institute died in an avalanche on the slope of Babkha Peak. However, desperate tourists still continue to conquer the Baikal peaks.
Rescuers also focus travelers' attention on such a climatic feature of the region as the cyclical nature of the winds, as a result of which there is a sharp change in the situation even in summer, especially after hot days. At the end of June 1971, on the Chertovy Vorota pass (1700 m), tourists were overtaken by a real blizzard - the height of the snow cover reached the level of the knees of an adult. In July of the same year, as a result of a sharp cold snap and a snowstorm that replaced the fine days, a part of the Angara group of climbers who climbed the peak named after the Siberian Branch of the Academy of Sciences died.
Experts strongly do not recommend high-altitude trekking at the end of August, when snow begins to fall in the alpine zone. During this period, storms of significant wind strength sometimes last for several days. You need to be extremely vigilant during skiing trips in winter: the health and life of a tourist can be threatened not only by widespread wet ice, but also by long open holes and treacherous gullies covered from above by snow bridges.
Forest
The Baikal taiga is fraught with the same dangers as other Siberian forests. Potentially aggressive animals include bear, wolf, wild boar. However, subject to certain rules of conduct, the risk of encountering them is small. Ticks and especially gnats are much more problematic for vacationers. Clouds of bloodsucking live in the swampy eastern and northeastern Baikal territories. You can't survive there without a mosquito net.
Another "surprise" of the Baikal forests is prepared for lovers of hiking routes. We are talking about dwarf cedar - a half-tree-half-shrub, climbing up to heights of 1700 meters and descending to the lake itself. Its thickets cover extended territories like a fur coat, making it difficult for a person to move. Dwarf branches can reach 6 meters in height and 25 centimeters in thickness. Intertwining with neighboring plants, they create almost impenetrable thickets.
“In the valley of Kunerma, not yet leaving the forest zone, we came across thickets of dwarf trees two to three meters high,” wrote the geographer S. G. Sarkisyan in his book “Baikal”. - The branches of this tree were so closely intertwined that it was simply impossible to walk on the ground - we had to move by climbing on branches-trunks on all four limbs. Such climbing with a backpack turned out to be so slow and tiring that we overcame a significant part of the Kunerma valley directly along the river bed, often knee-deep in cold water - it turned out faster and easier."
We add that the dwarf cedar is highly flammable and quickly burns out. This applies not only to dry, but also to young plants. Thus, a tourist stuck in a hard-to-pass thicket of elfin trees, during a fire, finds himself in a deadly trap.