Ice talks to me. It pulls, it beckons.

I grew up in the Netherlands. Here, as the temperature drops below zero in winter, the atmosphere gets slightly feverish. Will the canals freeze over, when will the lakes close, could the ice be thick enough to skate on? It’s not a given in any winter: the coastal climate and the warm Gulf Stream limit the amount of crisp winter days. 

Moscow’s winters are more severe, and the ponds and lakes, and parts of the river, are guaranteed to freeze over. Often covered by a good pack of snow, so not really fit to skate on. People here love skating – but on the multitude of ice rinks dotted over the city.

Imagine my thrill as I heard murmurs in Moscow about skating on Lake Baikal. Thick, black, natural ice – covering the world’s largest fresh-water lake. 

It doesn’t come easy, this ice. The mass of water is so large, it takes a long time to cool off. While sub-zero air temperatures are the norm from November onwards, the lake does not freeze over. Wind stirs the surface, and the warm deep layer of water prevents the ice from forming. Come January, waves crash on the shores and foam freezes instantly at -25°C, creating magnificent ice sculptures on the rocks. By end January, or early February, the lake has cooled to just above zero; and on a clear windless day at -35°C the whole of Baikal suddenly snap freezes in place. Within a week, over half a meter of ice has grown, enough to support regular car traffic!

That is when the skating season starts.

Lake Baikal can have up to 300 days of sun in a year, with very little precipitation. Hence, there is a good chance for thick black ice, frozen hard without snow – the kind that irresistibly talks and pulls on me. And I went. I was there in early February, a five-and-a-half-hour flight due east from Moscow to Irkutsk, then a good hour by road to Listvyanka on the southwestern shore of Lake Baikal, where the Angara River flows out.

My first view of Lake Baikal was a steamy expanse of water, stirred by the light wind with fog rising. The lake here is 300m deep, the river only 3m; and relatively warmer water rises from the depths to the surface. It prevents this area to freeze, but the “warm” water hits the -20°C air and water vapour instantly turns to fog. Beyond the fog – a white, flat expanse. The snow-covered mountains on the other side looming in the far distance. 

And the ice? The ice is out of this world. It is dark, black, and deep. It is criss-crossed by cracks, some tiny, some big. It is at times flat and shiny, at times with small ripples of tiny waves as if frozen in place. But most of all it is clear. Crystal-clear like ice cubes in a drink – but then on the scale of meters. It catches the sun in all shades of transparent blue. It is cold. It is hard. And it actually talks. 

The ice murmurs. It sings. Like a whale song morphed into a techno beat.

As it freezes, the ice expands. And since it freezes so quickly over hundreds of square kilometres, the expansion causes stress. And cracks. These cracks turn into weak points where the ice grows into ridges of ice plates shoved onto and passed and under each other. Ice tectonics, in fact. Regularly the stress releases, and a crack forms with a “tzing” or a “twang”. Sometimes barely audible, sometimes much louder, and right under you. And sometimes a true “icequake” rumbles past as one of Baikal’s daily tiny earthquakes sends waves through the underlying water.

I am sitting quietly on the expanse of ice; the sun slowly sinking, the temperature edging from “cold” to “uncannily cold” – listening as the ice of Baikal sings its song and hums the beat. It’s with reluctance and a deep admiration for this part of the world that I get back up onto my skates, turn my back into the light wind, and let it gently push me back to the safety of the shore.

Photo credit: courtesy of Jean-Paul Koninx

Author’s comment: As I was writing this blog, the safety of the shore changed horribly and suddenly. So many people pushed, by choice or force, to uncertain shores and uncertain futures. Families and friendships torn by argument, by violence. Should I have – could I have – listened to the murmurs in Moscow before they turned into cries of anguish, grief and despair? Before the night turned so cold and harsh? At the moment I can only grief, and hope for a morning where that reflection is possible.