1200 MILES THROUGH SIBERIA
BY
JOSHUA K. HARTSHORNE ©A thousand miles from the closest ocean, Baikal boasts such marine creatures as seals, sea sponges, and a species of salmon.
Russians like everything big. Russia is after all a very large country. So when they decided to build their first national trail system, they picked a route 1200 miles long, circling the world’s largest lake and extending all the way to Mongolia. The name of the trail in English is The Great Baikal Trail, but the Russian name translates directly as “The Big Baikal Trail.”
The Soviet Union did not exactly encourage tourism, and so Russia’s great attractions like Baikal are largely forgotten in the West.
At a mile in depth, holding 1/5 of the world’s fresh water, so clear that on a good day, boaters and swimmers can see 100 feet down, Baikal should be hard to forget.
A thousand miles from the closest ocean, Baikal boasts such marine creatures as seals, sea sponges, and a species of salmon.
Set in a rugged mountain landscape, it is also a hiker’s dream. In the summer, the surrounding forests are covered in berries, and in the winter, Baikal freezes solid, allowing skiers to trek across and even camp in the middle of the lake (in fact, desperately trying to finish the Trans-Siberian railway during the 1905 war with Japan, Russian engineers laid tracks across the frozen lake; the first train, however, fell through the ice).Thus it should be no surprise that the first cracks in the Soviet system appeared when protests followed the government’s decision to build two heavily-polluting paper mills on the shore of the lake. Now, again, this World Heritage Site is in danger.
95% of Baikal’s shoreline is completely undeveloped, and with the exception of the two paper mills, industry has largely left the lake untouched.
With resource-exploitation driving Russia’s economic recovery, this is unlikely to last. Besides the usual threats of poaching and illegal logging, there are new construction pressures.
Russian oil companies are pushing to build an oil pipeline through the region.
The regular seismic activity essentially guarantees massive oil spills.
Local and international organizations, including all six of Baikal’s nature parks, are working to make ecotourism a viable economic alternative to pipelines, industry and logging.
Studies have shown that if properly managed, the region could support 100 times the current level of tourism, dwarfing the revenues any alternative could bring. Moreover, unlike the monopolized pipeline revenues, proceeds from ecotourism would be spread among tour operators, guides, nature parks, restaurants, hotels, beds-and-breakfasts, and so forth.The first step to all this is building trails. Although there are a few trails wandering through Baikal’s forests, they are often poorly-marked and even dangerous. In many places, there are no trails at all. Such trails as exist may trample through ecologically-sensitive areas and contribute to erosion.
This is where the Great Baikal Trail comes in.
In the summer of 2003, volunteers local and foreign gathered to build ecotrails under the direction of ecotrail experts at locations all around the lake.
In all, around 40 miles of sturdy, well-marked trails were laid, along with campsites, bridges, and information stands.Around a dozen new projects are planned for this summer, and for each summer in the foreseeable future.
The project is based on the model of the Tahoe Rim Trail project, which recently after 30 years completed trails encircling Lake Tahoe in the American West. Lake Tahoe is only the size of one of Baikal’s bays.
As massive of an undertaking as it is, the Great Baikal Trail may be only the beginning for Russia. Although the project is only preparing for its second field season, organizers have already been contacted from representatives from regions as far off about Kamchatka about the possibility of starting other trail systems.
Report by JOSHUA K.HARTSHORNE
Pictures by Andrei Sudknyov and Mikhail Ivanov.
INFORMATION:
Volunteers on the trail are fed and housed for the duration of the project. Projects usually run 10-12 days. Project organizers also provide visa support.
Both Irkutsk and Ulan-Ude (the project meeting points) have active airports. However, flights are not cheap (approx. $2700 roundtrip from London to Irkutsk on Aeroflot). For the price-conscious, a cheaper and more interesting route is to fly to Moscow ($420 roundtrip from London) and take the Trans-Siberian railroad (approx $200 roundtrip) to the final destination.
More information about Baikal and the Great Baikal Trail – including volunteering on the projects -- can be found at www.baikal.eastsib.ru/fgbt. or www.baikal.eastsib.ru/gbt (which is in Russian!)
Numerous travel organizations run package tours to Baikal.
