Gold!

Are you in the mood for a treasure hunt Threedonians? How about for the Czar’s gold — lost in the confusion of the Russian Revolution and civil war aftermath? Lake Baikal in Siberia is the world’s largest and deepest body of freshwater. It holds about 20% of all the surface freshwater in the world. A couple of years ago the Russians began using the submersibles that were used to explore the Titanic to explore Lake Baikal. It’s been two years of scientific stuff which is interesting in its own right I’m sure. But last month things got reallyinteresting:

Legend has it that almost a century ago a series of railway wagons stuffed with gold sank into the depths of a lake in Siberia. This week, researchers, exploring the depths by submarine, may have found the Russian royals’ lost gold.

As Bair Tsyrenov slowly guided his Mir submersible up an underwater slope, a shimmer of gold was caught in the vehicle’s headlights, 400 meters (1,300 feet) below the surface of Lake Baikal. First the ship’s three-man crew discovered “steel girders that looked like railway bridges.” Then they struck upon the “bars with a particular golden radiance,” Tsyrenov, a researcher from the Lake Baikal Protection Fund, reports.

The find, made by researchers at the beginning of this week, was a spectacular one. For the last two years, the two Mir submersible research vehicles, usually at work in the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean, have been operating in Siberia’s Lake Baikal, the world’s largest freshwater body. These are the same two mini-submarines that brought the world the first underwater images of the Titanic.

The Mir expedition to Lake Baikal was actually supposed to be finishing up around now. But the vessels are currently hot on the trail of a legend: the last czars’ hoard of gold, which has been missing for 90 years and which, according to legend, lies in the depths of the Siberian lake.

There’s more at the link… Czech Brigades, Japanese banks, railroad tracks across frozen lakes, etc., etc.

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