Landscape · Peak summer for the lake; the crater is often cloud-locked

Changbaishan — Heaven Lake长白山 · 天池

A dormant volcano on the North Korean border with a caldera lake at the top, which is the deepest alpine lake in the world and sits exactly on the frontier — half of it is in China and half in North Korea. It last erupted catastrophically around 946 AD in one of the largest eruptions of the last two thousand years, and the ash reached Japan. In winter the whole massif becomes a serious ski region; in summer the draw is the climb to the crater rim, which is a genuine gamble because the lake is frequently invisible in cloud.