Employees of the Baikal Search and Rescue Squad (BPSO) work not only on the great lake. They are called to wherever sports training is needed, the skills of a climber, diver, rafting officer. Every rescuer must be able to climb rocks and descend to the depths, be ready for an exhausting mountain trek.
More than once, BPSO employees during rescue operations encountered the reckless behavior of not only beginners, but also instructors with a high category, and in fact, in many extreme situations, making a mistake means endangering the lives of their comrades. In addition to inadequate human behavior, rescuers have to deal with amazing, inexplicable phenomena that Baikal presents to people.
Viktor Gulevich, head of the search and rescue service of the BPSO EMERCOM of Russia, began his story about the terrible events that from time to time occur in the mountains of our region from the Munku-Sardyk peak. “A place where something is sure to happen” - this is how the specialist described this mountain.
- The season opens in May, hundreds of people climb, - says Viktor Gulevich. - Someone is prepared for the hike, and someone has no idea how to behave in the mountains.
The saddest thing is that many people do not understand how serious and dangerous it is. Tourists lead children by the hand, most of them are absolutely not equipped, believing that the way up the mountain is nonsense.
- Peak Munku-Sardyk is the highest point of the Eastern Sayan Mountains, its height is 3491 meters, - the specialist continues. - Those who are not crazy stay at an altitude of 2700 meters, there is a lake and a post with lifeguards. 2700 meters is already a good result for an unprepared person, but many do not stop there. A person will serve a whole year in an office, and then decides to run up the hill with friends. He is not trained, his muscles are weak, so when approaching the top, people often feel bad.
By climbers' standards, Munku-Sardyk has a level of 1b. This is a categorized mountain, and before you can climb it, you need to undergo training in order to be able to handle an ice ax, walk in bundles, and carry crampons. Few mountain climbers can do this. The pre-summit section of Munku-Sardyk is very badly destroyed. Rescuers hung ropes there, which you can hold on to when climbing. But this area is pretty loose. If someone is walking in front of you, stones fall from above. A couple of years ago, a stone hit a girl in the chest at the site of the summit. The rescuer tried to resuscitate the unfortunate woman, but could not do an indirect heart massage - the chest was broken. The girl died.
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The instructor's fatal mistakes
As mentioned above, in a mountain hike, the life of its participants largely depends on the decisions of the group leaders, who, despite the experience, can destroy their charges. The story that took place in the 90s on the Khamar-Daban ridge is indicative in this respect. The newly formed BPSO detachment had to remove six dead from the ridge.
- It was at the end of August, in the mountains during this period snow may already fall, - says Viktor Gulevich. - The group walked above the border of the forest. At this time, heavy rain began, people froze. Regardless, they kept walking to meet the schedule and meet the second group at the appointed time. After a while, people who were soaked through began to pitch tents to keep warm, but it was rather difficult to do this outside the forest, in the piercing wind. Of the five people, only a girl was saved. She went down to the border of the forest, lit a fire there, warmed herself up. Then she went to the Snezhnaya River, where they picked her up.
All of the girl's comrades were killed. The schoolgirl later said that before her death, the group was seized by real madness - one of the guys banged his head on stones, and the leader behaved inappropriately. “Signs of severe hypothermia sometimes look like insanity,” said rescuers. “The bodies were scattered at a distance from each other. Someone, in order to keep warm, tried to hide with cellophane film, the leader was holding one of the guys in her arms - apparently, she was trying to warm him up.
“In the mountains, where a critical situation arises instantly, rich experience can play a cruel joke,” continues Viktor Gulevich. - If you are the most experienced professor of tourist cabbage soup, as soon as you start doing something wrong, the mountains do not forgive mistakes. For example, the honored master of sports in mountain tourism, who visited the Eastern Sayan mountains seven times, died in an avalanche while descending from the pass. He stepped on a snowy field, which should never be stepped on. With his experience, he could not help but know this. The avalanche was not too big - about 100 cubic meters. The guy who was with the master was stoned, and the master himself hit a stone with his temple and died.
Last fall, rescuers had to evacuate the body of a man who came there in sneakers from the Eastern Sayan Mountains. - There are two weather conditions in the mountains - either it blows or it blows very strongly. It's either cold or very cold at night, ” explains first-class lifeguard Vyacheslav Lavrentiev. - It started to snow, and the mountain hikers froze. They had bad equipment, the tourists did not know how to knot. The instructor had to take these points into account, but for some reason he was not interested in the level of training of the people for whom he was responsible. During the ascent, it was necessary to make a difficult transition around the rock. One person from the group tied himself with a rope and got stuck, hanging on a rock. And he made the wrong knot, like the Lynch knot, on which the longer you hang, the more it crushes you. People froze, fell into a stupor and could do nothing to help their comrade. When the rescuers arrived at the place,the person has already died from hypothermia.
Underwater wonders
- Baikal is a rather specific place. It is called the Baikal grabben. The last word in translation from German means "grave", - continues Victor Gulevich. - The banks diverge, and the bottom sinks. We know that the maximum depth of the great lake is 1642 meters, while the real distance to the bottom is 12 km, this entire stratum is filled with sediments. Of course, geomagnetic disturbances arise there, which somehow affect sensitive people.
Viktor Gulevich himself walked all over Baikal and even visited one of the most mystical territories of the great lake - Cape Rytom. And for all the years of his service, he did not encounter unexplained events. The rescuer happened to observe an abnormal phenomenon during the rest. Late in the evening, together with his wife, he witnessed the following event: a luminous ball, similar to a huge star, flew out from behind the mountains. The object moved absolutely silently, then a beam came out of it towards the ground. The UFO soon disappeared. It didn’t look like a helicopter, and it couldn’t have been in this place at night. One of the most interesting events that surprised the rescuers of the search and rescue squad was during the cleaning of Baikal from sunken vehicles.
- In the Maloe More Strait, where the most fishing places are, there are especially many of them, - says Viktor Gulevich. - We raised a lot of old cars entangled in networks. And then they found a GAZ-66, there was a woman inside, the body was well preserved. Local residents warned us that a shaman had drowned here, which it is better not to get. But the rescuers decided to see it through to the end.
- Either the cabin was tightly closed, that the epishura did not get there (the orderlies of Lake Baikal. - Author's note), or for some other reason, inexplicable from a rational point of view, the body of the shaman remained safe and sound. But when we took it out of the water, it began to fall apart before our eyes. In addition, after a short period of time, a strong hurricane wind flew. So now we know: if they say “don't touch”, it's better to listen to these words.
Rescuers have long learned that it is necessary not only to listen to the words of people, but also to look closely at the signs that the great lake sends from time to time
“Once on Lake Baikal, two UAZs drowned,” says Anton Reshetnikov, engineer of the information and analytical service of the BPSO. - The operation to lift them was supervised by Valery Chernykh, a diving instructor. Rescuers sawed out the lane, began to search, and suddenly an earthquake occurred, as a result of which the cracking crack passed very close to the place where the equipment was laid out. They decided not to make more descents that day. When the divers came out on the ice the next day, another earthquake struck. The guys thought that Baikal did not want to give back what they had taken, they decided not to lift the cars. The rescuers call the following story a miracle. In 2006, the Kalmar boat capsized on Baikal, five people died, only one passenger survived. In wet clothes on an overturned boat, he spent the whole nightwhile a storm was raging on Baikal and temperatures were below zero in November.
- The man was of southern blood and, frankly, could not boast of a fat layer, - recalls Anton Reshetnikov. - When he was torn from the bottom of the boat, to which he was frozen, he moved on his feet. He froze, but he was alive and conscious. I can only call it a miracle. The man himself explained his salvation as follows: "I prayed all the time."
The lifeguard Vyacheslav Lavrentiev, who is engaged in sailing, became a witness of another completely amazing incident that happened just a few days ago. - The race was over, and three yachts without sails went home along Baikal. We had dinner and at dusk we saw how the lake began to glow. The impression was that a huge headlight was lit under the water. According to the rules, so that nothing interferes in the race, we put all cell phones in one box, so we did not have time to remove anything. Unfortunately, we only have verbal testimony from three crew members. The headlight didn't just glow, it moved, and then disappeared behind the mountain.
Ksenia Ryutina, CM Number One. Photo by Ilya Zakablukovsky: Anton Reshetnikov: “We conducted an experiment: in a special warm suit a person can stay in the water of Lake Baikal for a maximum of 40 minutes. So the case with the Kalmar boat defies any logical explanation."