The Barguzin River flows out of the Barguzin Mountains, through the town of Barguzin and then the coastal community of Ust-Barguzin before it finally loses itself in a broad cove of Baikal known as Barguzin Bay. The only way across the river for miles upstream from the lake is a ramshackle little wooden ferry with a tiny, corrugated steel shed with a wood stove in it and room on its deck for about half a dozen cars. The ferry slips noiselessly away from the end of the road on the south bank, and looking west toward the lake, two ghostly, rusting timber loading cranes loom on the horizon while the river spills over into a grassy marsh on its north bank. Turning back to the east, there’s a small motorboat laboring to get upstream—laboring because it’s attached to a tow rope, which is attached to the ferry. The ferry, it turns out, is just a hapless little barge, at the mercy of the river without the guidance of the motorboat pilot on the other end of the towline. Our crossing takes less than five minutes, and connected to it by nothing but that single strand, the pilot directs the barge into place perfectly on the far side. But the deckhand fails to secure it, the ferry swings wide in the current, spins ninety degrees, and slams butt-end into the dock. The pilot scowls as he turns the motorboat around and uses its blunt bow, covered in a tractor tire, to push the barge back into place, where the deckhand finally lashes it to the dock. The Barguzin is Baikal’s third largest tributary, after the Selenga to the south of here and the Upper Angara to the north. It carries about six percent of the water flowing into the lake, along with migratory fish like omul and sturgeon, born in the shallow gravel beds upriver before wandering downstream to spend most of their lives in the lake. And even though it flows through only two towns between its headwaters and the lake, the Barguzin carries a significant pollution load into Baikal, as well, especially organic chemicals from timber operations.
Coping measures not enough to avoid loss and damage from drought in the North Bank Region of The Gambia
