(VNF) - A group of friends documented their trip to Siberia where they have crossed the lake on ice skates and brought beautiful and breathtaking photos of frozen lake Baikal back with them.

Lake Baikal is the world’s oldest and deepest lake. (Photo: ipai.ru | Instagram)

Experts say that it is approximately 25 million years old (possibly older) and has an average depth of 744.4 meters (2,442 ft). Apart from Baikal, there are only two lakes that are deeper than 1000 meters: lake Tanganyika (1470 m) and Caspian Sea (1025 m).

Baikal is also the largest fresh water source in the world, containing approximately 20 per cent of the world's fresh water supply.

Lake Baikal is about 600km in length.

The thickness of it reaches 1,5-2 meters. This ice can tolerate the vehicle of about 15 tonnes, but sometimes we saw cars that had been fallen down.

Ice has different patterns in different parts of the lake. It happens because water is freezing layer by layer. Especially it is very interesting to find a fish or a branch in the ice.

The ice in Baikal is the most transparent in the world. You can see everything till the bottom: fish, green stones, plants and bluish gulf. The water in the lake is so clear, that you can see various objects on the depth of 40 meters.

In some parts ice is slippery like the mirror. You can shoot ideal reflections. A lot of travelers are moving about on skates, bicycles or sledge.

Some of them are walking for several hundreds of kilometers and are sleeping in the tents on ice.

Ice is cracking all the time. When the frost is very heavy, cracks pide ice on different areas. The length of these cracks is 10-30 km, and the width is 2-3 m.

Ice on Baikal is there till May. But in April no one drives on it.

The bubbles in the ice are developed from the gas methane that is produced by algae.

The only river in the world that flows from the lake is Angara that flows from Baikal. All other rivers flow into the lakes.

There is a legend that the Father of Baikal had 336 rivers - sons - and one daughter - Angara. All sons were flowing into Baikal to restock the water, but the daughter fell in love with Yenisei (one more river in Russia) and started to take everything from father's water to her lover. In respond, the father Baikal threw a huge rock into his daughter and cursed her. This rock is called Shaman-Stone, and it is situated in the springhead of Angara and is considered to be its beginning./.

( Photo: ipai.ru | Instagram )