Baikalsky mountain ridge is located near the North-Western coast of the Baikal lake, in Siberia. It is not very high (the highest mountain is 2588 m), but as we all think, is is full of contrasts and very beatiful.

There is a lot of small lakes with water of different colors up in the valleys. There are water-falls on the streams near passes. There are several small glaciers and a lot of small snow-fields up in the valleys and close to the highest mountains and passes even in summer. Down in the valleys it is warm in summer (up to 25 C). Mountains are rocky.

Eastern side of the ridge is becoming popular to tourists, and there are pathes in the most popular routes. However, western side is still visited rarely, so there are no human pathes. Bottoms of valleys are covered with forest (taiga). Elfin wood grows their sides and up in the valleys. It is VERY hard to beat one's way through the elfin wood jungle. Sometimes, you can walk several hundred meters by interweaved branches of this cedar-wood bush without stepping down to the ground. Fortunately, we had such terrible track only for one day. On other days we went through the wild forest or by stone-fields. We went by human pathes for first 4 and last 1.5 days.

Baikalsky mountain ridge is rather easily accessible: BAM railroad is not very far away. It takes 4 days to get there by train from Moscow, plus a 5-hour trip by boat. It is not convenient to get there by airplane. However, you can get there by speed-boat from Irkutsk (on the south-west coast of Baikal), which has an airport. Local villagers said that they met two Czech and three Poland tourists about two days before we finished our trip. We also read notes written by Polish tourists at the top of the Ptitsa (Bird) mountain.

You are welcome! But it is better for you to be able to speak Russian, at least a little.