Lake Ritsa

Abkhazia is home to the stunning Lake Ritsa, which was formed as a result of a very strong earthquake that collapsed the mountain.

Lake Ritsa is almost 2.5 kilometers long, varies in width from 250 to 870 meters, and has an average depth of about 60 meters. The water in the mountain lake is quite cool and even on the hottest day of August it rarely exceeds 20 °C. The lake is fed by 6 rivers, and only one flows out - Yupshara. The water surface of the lake is covered with ice only in the harshest winters, and even then the thickness of the ice is only 1-5 centimeters. In winter, the water is also the most transparent here and visibility is 10, in spring and summer, due to algae blooms and meltwater, visibility is only 1 meter.

The beauty of the lake was favored by the leaders of the USSR, on the shores of the Ritsa there are the dachas of Stalin and Brezhnev, which you can easily get to and learn a lot of interesting things from the guide. Antique furniture from the time when the country's leaders rested here has been preserved here. The territory of the lake with surrounding mountains and forests is the property of the Ricinsky Nature Reserve. The lake is surrounded on all sides by mountains up to 3,200 meters high, which are covered with snow all year round.

There are many legends around Lake Ritsa, because 300 years ago there was not even a hint of the lake. But they all talk about a powerful earthquake that caused a part of the Pshegishkhva Mountain (2,222 m) to collapse and block the Lashipse River. Research by scientists confirms this version. The lake was first mapped in 1865, but this location was very approximate, and the contours of the lake are incorrect. It was not until 1914 that the Crimean-Caucasian Mountain Club organized an expedition to make an accurate map of the area and map the lake according to its geographical location.