Lake Ritsa

Lake Ritsa (Georgian: რიწა, romanized: rits'a; Abkhaz: Риҵа) is a lake in the north-western part of Abkhazia, in the Caucasus Mountains. It is surrounded by mixed mountain forests and subalpine meadows. The road from the Black Sea coast was built in 1936. The resort of Avadhara lies to the north of the lake. The lake was an important tourist attraction during the Soviet period. While the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Russia-Georgian war destroyed much of the tourism industry in the country, the lake is still frequently visited by Russian tourists.

Lake Ritsa is the deepest lake in Abkhazia (116 m), and is rich in trout. It is fed by six rivers and drained by one, the Iupshara River.

Lake Ritsa's water is cold and clear. Mountains with heights of 2,200 to 3,500 m surround the lake. The region around Lake Ritsa is a part of the Euxine-Colchic deciduous forests ecoregion with a fairly high concentration of evergreen boxwood groves. Many specimens of the Nordmann Fir, which reach heights of over 70 metres (230 ft), are found around the lake.

In 1930 the Ritsa Nature Reserve (162.89 km²) was established to protect the natural state of the lake and the surrounding land.

The Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had one of his summer-houses (dacha) by the lake. Later Leonid Brezhnev had his summer house nearby as well. Today the dacha belongs to the Government of Abkhazia.

The average annual temperature in the area is 7.8 degrees Celsius (January −1.1 °C, August 17.8 °C). The mean annual precipitation is approx. 2,000–2,200 mm. Winters are sometimes snowy, summers warm.

There are many legends and fairy tales about the lake.

In ancient times there was a valley and a river at the site of the modern lake. A girl named Ritsa lived there with three brothers Agepsta, Atsetuka and Pshegishkha. Ritsa used to pasture her animals in the valley and her brothers hunted in the high mountains by day and returned to the valley in the evening, where they ate, sang songs, and admired their sister.