In Listvyanka, the festival Crystal Nerpa completed its contest works. Masters from different Russian cities spent a week carving sculptures from Baikal ice on the theme Music of Baikal. This year was especially hard, they created the images themselves, and spectators and the jury chose the best works. The Irkutsk composition In the Name of Love won, and the ice kingdom will delight visitors until March 15.

In Listvyanka, the masters have completed the konkurs works for the “Crystal Nerpa” festival. Over the course of a week, masters from different parts of Russia created sculptures from Lake Baikal ice on the ice of Lake Baikal. This competition has been held for the fourth year already.
For seven days, ordinary blocks of ice were subjected to the flight of the sculptors’ imagination. The theme this time was chosen for a reason — “Music of Baikal.” At this time of year, the lake is especially musical. Today, the result of painstaking work has been presented to the public.
Works by authors from Irkutsk, Khabarovsk, Usolye-Sibirskoye, Penza and, of course, Listvyanka itself are on display here. The theme is much more difficult than it was a year ago, the organizers believe. Last winter, the sculptors depicted the legends of the great lake; this time — the music of Baikal. There were no exact characters or plots — everything had to be invented by themselves. The authors — Usolye residents Ivan Zuev and Evgeny Belykh — depicted an entire world. There is a castle, flowers, and even a nerpa in a sphere. It looks down from a five-meter height. By the way, according to the sculptors, they had to work on the Baikal seal figure to accurately convey the smoothness of its movements.
The severe frosts that struck had a positive effect on the sculptures themselves — the ice did not melt and therefore remained crystal clear. But not many spectators gathered for the final of the competition — most were frightened by the cold. The most resilient came — for whom even a temperature of minus thirty and a piercing cold wind are no obstacle.
The audience could vote on equal terms with the professional jury. The choice was large, but still preference was given to the sculpture titled “In the Name of Love.” Its creators are masters from Irkutsk. Regular participants in the festival, they displaced last year’s winners — the team from Khabarovsk — from the podium.
The ice kingdom on Baikal will stand until March 15, and then everything will begin to return to its places — the ice sculptures will once again become part of the great lake.