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AbkhaziaDescription and is it worth visiting
Little Ritsa mountain lake or Ritsa Rydzh – the younger sibling of the big Lake Ritsa, is located five kilometers from it at an altitude of 1235 meters above sea level, which is about 360 meters higher. Its size is much more modest compared to the big lake, only 243 by 125 meters, while its depth reaches 80 meters. No river flows into the lake; its water comes from melting glaciers of the surrounding mountains and precipitation.
Swimming in the lake is prohibited. There is almost no infrastructure around, only natural beauty with mesmerizing mountain views. On the shore, there's a picnic area and a small cafe (apatskha) where you can have tea or coffee outdoors, and boat rides on the lake are offered.
But it's not just the lake that's interesting, but also the hiking trail leading to it. We love hiking through forests and mountains ourselves, so we definitely recommend this route to all lovers of easy hiking walks. Along the way, you'll pass by a tiny drying lake with very clear water, and if you're lucky, you might spot some interesting local wildlife – after all, this is a nature reserve. There are information boards in several places along the trail, telling about the flora and fauna of the forest, and you'll learn about fir-spruce and beech-fir forest varieties.
How to visit Little Ritsa
Little Ritsa Lake and its surroundings are very beautiful, and many tourists even consider them more beautiful than the big lake. Despite this, it is rarely visited by tourists, since you can only get there on foot, which makes it even more interesting, and of course cleaner and more pristine. The trail passes through a beautiful relict forest and is accessible to every tourist without special training – you just need decent physical fitness, comfortable hiking or sports shoes, and you should bring drinking water. Trekking poles won't hurt either – they make walking much easier.
From the starting point of the hiking route, which you can reach by car (how to get there is described below in "How to get there"), you'll need to walk 2.5 kilometers one way with an elevation gain of almost 360 meters. This will take one and a half to two hours, while prepared "speed-walking" tourists can do it in one hour. The way back takes slightly less time since you'll mostly be descending, but overall, for the entire walk with rest at the lake, you should plan for at least 4 hours. This time doesn't fit into the standard tour stops at the lake, so you should go to Little Ritsa only if you came here in your own car or with a private guide.
Unfortunately, the trail markers are poorly placed: at some turns they're simply missing or hard to see; there are almost no colored marks on trees and stones. Therefore, inexperienced tourists often take the wrong path and wander for a long time. To avoid this, it's better to bring a GPS or download offline maps like Organic Maps, Maps.me, or similar ones that have the trail to the lake marked. If you download maps of this area in advance, your smartphone will successfully guide you along the trail even without mobile internet, which barely works here.
🕐 Opening hours
24/7, visit during the day.
💵 Entry fee / ticket prices
Access to Little Ritsa is free, but entry to the Ritsa National Nature Reserve requires a general environmental fee at the checkpoint on the way to the big lake: adults – 1000 rubles; children 8-12 years old – 500 rubles; children under 8 years old – free. So you pay for entry and drive into the reserve, and you don't need to pay anything extra.
🚶 How to get there
Little Ritsa Lake is located five kilometers from the big Lake Ritsa (Little Ritsa Lake on the map). However, standard inexpensive group tours to Lake Ritsa don't allow visiting Little Ritsa due to time constraints, so you'll either have to take a more expensive individual tour specifically including Little Ritsa (starting from 3000 USD), or go there on your own in your own transport.
To get to the starting point of the hiking trail to Little Ritsa (we described the hiking trail above), you first need to get to big Lake Ritsa. There's an excellent paved road leading to it, passable by any car. From there, you have two options:
Leave your car at the paid parking lot and walk an additional 4 kilometers to the start of the trail. This would increase your total round trip to 13 kilometers.
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You can drive directly to the end of the paved road, where the hiking trail immediately begins – this is much more convenient (end of the asphalt and start of the trail on the map). To get to this point, you need to turn off the main road despite the no-entry sign, cross the bridge, and then continue past the embankment and rows of cafes for a little less than a kilometer on asphalt until you hit the end of the road. There are spots where you can leave your car and continue on foot.
Regarding driving past the aforementioned no-entry sign – you'll have to do this right in front of the traffic police who are constantly on duty here. We drove through after stopping and asking if we could drive to Little Ritsa Lake to avoid problems, and we advise you to do the same. As for the road itself, it has decent asphalt, passable by any car, for less than a kilometer. In the embankment area during peak hours, there are many excursion jeeps and minivans, and tourists walking around, so take your time and drive very carefully here.
💥 Remember that it's much more interesting to explore attractions through tours, so we recommend checking out options with online booking on these trusted search and price comparison sites: