7. Elbrus

Standing at 5,642 meters, Mount Elbrus is the highest mountain in the Caucasus and the highest point in Russia. It is a stratovolcano that has lain dormant for the last 2,000 years. Set near the border with Georgia, Mount Elbrus is a popular tourist destination and many attempt to climb it, especially during the summer. A special cable-car system was created during the 70s that takes people up to 3,800m up the mountain. Up to 100 people try to reach Elbrus peak every day. In the winter time, attempts are very scarce and only professionals venture up the mountain. It has harsh winter weather and strong winds are notorious and it claims 15-30 lives every year, mostly poorly equipped dare-devils trying to reach the top.

TEXT 3. Read and translate the text. Name 10 reasons to visit Baikal.

Lake Baikal: the Pearl of Siberia

Lake Baikal is the most ancient lake on earth. Lakes rarely live longer than a million years but the «Pearl of Siberia» or the «Sacred Sea», as it is often called, is more than 25 million years old! For scientists it is a living laboratory of evolution!

Lake Baikal is the deepest lake in the world, measuring 1 637 metres from top to bottom. It sits in the planet’s deepest land depression where at least 3 tectonic plates meet! These plates scrape against each other, making the lake even deeper and wider. There is a theory that Lake Baikal is the beginning of a new ocean. The lake holds one-fifth of the planet’s fresh water – and it’s still remarkably clean! The waters of the lake are amazingly transparent – and they change colours all the time!

Lake Baikal is one of the most beautiful places on earth. Everyone who has been to its shores is impressed and charmed by its grandeur, size, and unusual might. This wonder of the natural world is very difficult to describe. Valentin Rasputin once said, «Man does not have enough feelings to respond to this miracle».

The Buryat had settled the lake’s shores long before the 13^th-century conquests of Genghis Khan. Russian fur traders arrived in the 1640s. The Buryat have a mystical feeling for the lake. They believe that its waters are charmed. This is why they never call it a lake, only – the Sea, or the Old Man, or He!

The snows of Siberia come to Lake Baikal in early October. At the end of October the lake begins to freeze. In winter the ice gets very thick – well over a metre! In 1904, during the Russo-Japanese War, a railway track was laid across the ice to carry guns to the front. By mid-April the ice begins to thaw and the lake becomes so huge that sailors and fishermen here talk of «going to sea».

The water of the lake can hardly be called warm. In summer, its average temperature is + 12C. But many people who go for their first swim in the lake behave as if they had jumped into boiling water!

Lake Baikal is a living museum of water plants and animals. About 1 500 species of animals are endemic – you can see them nowhere else in the world! It’s also rich in life at all depths. Its cold waters move vertically, carrying oxygen even to the 1 637 bottom. The golomyanka, a transparent, glass-like fish, lives only in Lake Baikal. The omul, an arctic fish endemic to Lake Baikal, is delicious. One great mystery about the lake is how nerpa, the Baikal seal, originally came there, as it is hundreds of kilometers from any ocean.

The lake is surrounded by beautiful mountains. The Baikal Mountains on the north shore and the taiga are protected as a national park.

Olkhon is the largest of the lake’s 27 islands. It’s 72 km long and its shape resembles the shape of Lake Baikal. Olkhon is a remarkable conglomeration of all possible landscapes that exist around Baikal – rolling grass steppes, deep forests, sand dunes and rocky cliffs. Olkhon is also an important centre of shamanism. Shamanka, or the Shaman’s Rock, is the most famous landmark of the island. According to legend, it has some magic power and blocks the entrance to the underground spirit world.

TEXT 4. Read and translate the text. Make reports on the topic.