Barguzinsky Nature Reserve - Russia's Oldest Park

"Up from Baikal's shore, mountains rise sharply for a vertical mile, towering as high as the canyon rim above the Colorado River. Down from the shoreline descends another mile-deep rift, almost 400 miles long, that holds one-fifth the freshwater of all the world's lakes." - Fred Strebeigh, Yale University In 1916, Barguzinsky, the oldest of the Russian national parks (or "zapovedniks"), was founded. The park includes part of Lake Baikal, "the world's oldest, deepest, most voluminous freshwater lake." In 1958, conservationists successfully opposed Soviet governmental plans to deepen Baikal's outlet by "detonating 30 kilotons of explosives, unleashing more power than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima."