Walking across a frozen lake can be nerve-wracking, but doing so on a lake whose surface is totally transparent is plain terrifying. One-mile deep at its lowest point, Lake Baikal in Siberia is the oldest and deepest lake in the world, and this Russian man decided to walk across it. Siberia gets pretty cold in the winter, so it’s safe to say the ice will hold, but given the glasslike surface of the water, he had to stare down into the watery depths at every step.
Photo: Newsflare/YouTube
Russian Man Walks Across the Incredibly Clear Frozen Surface of World’s Deepest Lake
Armed with a selfie stick, the man filmed his slow journey across Lake Baikal. As he ventures away from the shore, you can see the rocks underneath growing smaller and smaller, really giving you a sense of exactly how deep this lake is, and how far the man would sink if he fell through (if he didn’t freeze to death first). “All of this made me feel like I was looking into a fairyland,” he wrote in the description of his video that he uploaded to Newsflare, “which never existed anywhere apart from dreams. Such a miracle.”
The walk is made even more dramatic by the several cracks and fissures in the ice. They might not indicate that the ice is about to cave, but they do plant some doubt in your mind and make the journey feel more precarious.
“It felt like I was standing on the water or walking on a very fragile glass,” the man wrote. “Despite this, I knew it’s safe to be there as the thickness of the ice is about 15 centimeters [six inches].” 
H/T: Thrillist