What is 'Baikal Zen'?

Poetically known as Baikal Zen, this rare effect happens when a flat rock that has fallen onto the ice catches the spring sun and melts the ice underneath it. Only a thin pedestal supporting the rock remains. The pedestal is far enough from the sides of the rock that it escapes melting. At night, the water beneath the rock refreezes.

Although the photos all come from Lake Baikal, this can occur on other frozen lakes as well, although the clear ice of Baikal seems important to its formation. No photos of Baikal Zen on white ice, which has mixed with air, seem to exist.

Lake Baikal, in the Russian region of Siberia, is a massive body of water—the world’s deepest and most voluminous freshwater lake.

Its location and the surrounding geography can lead to fascinating phenomena in the winter, as ferocious winds and cycles of melting and refreezing build and sculpt works of structural beauty—stones supported on wind-worn pedestals, undulating surface ice, encrusted beaches, crazy icicles, frozen methane bubbles, and more.