The beauty of cold Baikal: 30 incredible photos by Kristina Makeeva

Muscovite Kristina Makeeva has repeatedly pleased our readers with her enchanting landscape photos. Today we have prepared for you another portion of visual joy — new photos of Kristina, which she took while walking on the frozen Lake Baikal.

Kristina is a talented photographer, looking at her stunning pictures, you can't help but feel the frosty freshness of those amazing places she has visited.

Sacred Lake Baikal is the pride of Russia, the deepest and cleanest in the world. The ice here is crystal clear, like crystal: you can see everything forty meters down to the very bottom - green stones, fish. 

Baikal is even more beautiful in winter than in summer, but the air temperature rarely rises above minus 20 degrees. 

The thickness of the Baikal ice reaches one and a half to two meters, but it is so transparent that it is not felt at all — only in places covered with cracks, you can understand the depth to which the lake has frozen. 

The lake is located in a zone of seismic activity, up to several hundred earthquakes occur here per year. Although they are so insignificant that they can only be fixed with the help of highly sensitive equipment.

The ice on Lake Baikal in winter is so strong that where its thickness reaches 50 centimeters, it is able to withstand cars weighing up to 15 tons.

Horizontal cracks pierce the ice to its entire thickness. Thanks to them, animals and plants living in the lake receive oxygen.