View of Lake Baikal from Chersky Stone, the Angara River is on the right. Colored ribbons were placed by Buryat people to symbolize their prayers as part of their shamanic tradition. (699k)
From the Lake Baikal entry in Wikipedia:
Lake Baikal is a rift lake in Russia, located in southern Siberia, between Irkutsk Oblast to the northwest and the Buryat Republic to the southeast.
Lake Baikal is the largest freshwater lake by volume in the world, containing 22–23% of the world's fresh surface water. With 23,615.39 km³ (5,665.64 cubic miles) of fresh water, it contains more water than the North American Great Lakes combined. With a maximum depth of 1,642 m (5,387 ft), Baikal is the world's deepest lake. It is considered among the world's clearest lakes and is considered the world's oldest lake — at 25 million years. It is the seventh-largest lake in the world by surface area.
Like Lake Tanganyika, Lake Baikal was formed as an ancient rift valley, having the typical long crescent shape with a surface area of 31,722 km² (12,248 square miles), a maximum length of 636 km (395 miles), and a maximum width of 79 km (49 miles). The bottom of the lake is 1,186.5 m (3,892.7 ft) below sea level, but below this lies some 7 km (4.3 miles) of sediment, placing the rift floor some 8-11 km (5.0-7 miles) below the surface: the deepest continental rift on Earth.
Baikal is home to thousands of species of plants and animals, many of which exist nowhere else in the world. Lake Baikal was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996. It is also home to Buryat tribes who reside on the eastern side of Lake Baikal, rearing goats, camels, cattle, and sheep, where the mean temperature varies from a winter minimum of -19°C (-1°F) to a summer maximum of 14°C (57°F).
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