Black Ice

Photographed near the Uzury weather station, on the northern tip of Olkhon Island. The lake here froze only at the end of January, in thirty-degree frosts, so the ice had not yet lost its transparency or been covered with snow. Baikal is famous not only for its vast reserves of the purest fresh water, but also for its perfectly clear ice, more than a metre thick in places. The first time you step onto it, it feels like walking on thin, cracked glass with a black abyss beneath your feet, although near the shore the bottom is visible even at a depth of twenty metres. Changes in temperature keep producing new cracks, and the sound they make could easily have served as a sound effect for Star Wars. It is as if the lake has a life of its own.