Description
Added on the 14/03/2017 18:52:04 - Copyright : RT Ruptly EN
The final stage of Ice Storm, one of the world's longest endurance competitions over ice took place on Russia's frozen Lake Baikal on Sunday, pitting racers on skates, skis, and bikes against each other as they tried to be the first cover the 127 mile distance over three days of racing. 2018 was the first year ever that an ice skater managed to become the absolute winner after Russian Alexander Ptsarev finished with a time of 10 hours and 28 minutes.
Skaters glided gracefully across the frozen surface of Lake Baikal, the world’s deepest freshwater lake, taking in the breathtaking winter scenery while skating across huge sheets of ice dozens of feet thick. The frozen Siberian lake offers a perfectly clear view of the lake bottom as the frozen ice is as clear as glass in many places. Ice skating from one end to the other takes about 2 weeks! How would you like to skate on this lake of glass?
‘The Ice Library of Wonders’, a 200 tonne ice sculpture on the shores of Lake Baikal in the Russia town of Baikalsk, was unveiled on Sunday. A massive labyrinth of ice walls, the ice library features work by some of the world's best ice artists. The walls of the structure are formed of ice blocks, each block symbolising an open book in the library. The blocks, or books, have been inscribed with dreams and wishes submitted by real people from all over the world. So far, over a thousand dreams have been submitted online and carved into the ice. Phrases inscribed on the blocks of the wondrous ice library come in various languages including Russian, Ukrainian, German, English, Chinese and French. The Ice Library will stand until spring when it will melt, along with the inscribed dreams, back into Lake Baikal, where the dreams will intermingle with the waters of the deepest and most voluminous lake in the world. Unveiled for the first time this year, ‘The Ice Library of Wonders’ will be added to the Russian calendar as an annual festival.
76-year-old grandma Lyubov Morekhodova has an unusual daily commute. She runs a tiny farm on Olkhon Island in the middle of Lake Baikal, and the lake is totally frozen for 5 months of the year. To assist herding her cattle during the long winter months, the pensioner has taken to ice-skating over Baikal on her Soviet era skates to reach a nearby town for supplies.
The Irkutsk Walrus’ Club, headed by Andrei Bugai, recreated the viral “Satisfaction Challenge” dance video at their ice swimming hole on Lake Baikal on Monday. A controversial parody of Benny Benassi’s "Satisfaction" by cadets from the Ulyanovsk Institute of Civil Aviation, which featured a group of male students dancing in only their underwear, took the Internet by storm when it appeared online on January 16. Not wanting to be left out or outdone, the Irkutsk ‘Walruses,’ a colloquial Russian term for people who swim in freezing water, created their own "beach" party on frozen Lake Baikal.