Lake Kaindy
Interesting facts
- Even in summer the lake stays at about 6°C, which is cold enough to keep the drowned spruce trunks from decaying.
- The lake is only about 400 metres long but reaches nearly 30 metres at its deepest point.
- Its Kazakh name is usually translated as "birch tree lake", although the trees standing in its water are spruces.
- Mudflows in 1980 and 2010 carried stone and clay down into the basin, making the lake a couple of metres shallower.
- In winter the lake draws ice divers, who swim among the submerged trunks beneath the frozen surface.
- The lake lies within Kolsay Lakes National Park, roughly 130 km east-southeast of Almaty.
Why it is worth it
Lake Kaindy was born from violence, not slow erosion. The 1911 Kebin earthquake — one of the largest ever recorded in the Tian Shan range, estimated around magnitude 8.2 — triggered a massive limestone landslide that sealed off a narrow gorge. Meltwater and rain then backed up behind that natural dam over the following years, gradually drowning a mountainside spruce forest exactly where it stood, rather than trees drifting in afterward.
What keeps the submerged trunks standing over a century later is the cold: at roughly 2,000 meters elevation, the lake's year-round low temperatures dramatically slow decay, so the drowned Picea schrenkiana (Schrenk's spruce) trunks remain upright, stripped of bark, breaking the surface like a leafless, half-sunken forest instead of rotting away.
The turquoise color comes from the same rock responsible for the disaster in the first place: limestone dissolved from the landslide material leaches into the water as suspended calcium carbonate, tinting it blue-green.
Best time to visit
Summer (roughly June–September) gives the classic turquoise-water views and the most reliable road access, since the final stretch is an unpaved mountain track that can become difficult after rain or snow. In winter the surface freezes solid enough to walk out onto the ice among the tree trunks — a completely different, only-seasonal way to see the same landscape.
Getting there
About 280 km east of Almaty by road, via the village of Saty. Almaty International Airport (ALA) is the nearest major airport.
Plan your visit
We have no confirmed visit data yet. Once it is confirmed, this block also carries the date it was checked.
Nearby places
- Kolsay Lakes 13.2 km · lake
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Lake Kaindy is a 400-meter-long (1,300 ft) lake located in Kazakhstan. The lake reaches depths of nearly 30 meters (98 ft). It is located 129 kilometers (80 mi) east-southeast of the city of Almaty and is 2,000 meters (6,600 ft) above sea level.
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