July 26, 2006 - Reaching the Sweet Summit of Elbrus

Climbing Elbrus in the early morning light

It’s exactly 4:00am on the 26th of July and I’m calling you from 15,000 feet (4570m) near Prostokov Rocks.  The entire Berg Adventures team, 9 climbers and 5 guides just got off the snowcat.  We got on this contraption at about 3:20am after a good night sleep in the barrels.  We retired at about 6:30 in the evening and I thought it was very quiet in both barrels so I think we got some good rest.           

It’s a bit windy but I’ll report to you that we have clearer skies than we’ve seen on Elbrus in some days so we are encouraged that we have good weather to go.  We have many, many hours to come on this climb and we’ll report to you as we climb up towards the summit.

[Later on summit day]

Its 12:30 in the afternoon on the 26th of July and I’ve got some really fantastic news for you.  Eight and a half hours after we began climbing from the snowcat at Prostokov Rocks, the entire Berg Adventures team is standing on the summit of Elbrus.  We did very much pick the right day folks.  We had some winds but overall on the scale of Elbrus summit days it’s one of the better ones I’ve seen.  I’ve seen somewhat better, calmer perhaps but this was an amazing day and what an amazing team, all 9 Berg Adventures climbing members along with all 5 guides.  I’d like to mention everyone by name but up here in the wind I’m just going to let you know that all 13 team members walked on to the summit together, lined up at the same time.  What a fantastic experience it’s been.

The summit of Elbrus

We are on the summit now, we are going to start down we’ll report to you as we continue to descend and of course we will get back with Olga tonight.  A complete 100% for Berg Adventures and a really strong, motivated and I’ll have to say a very lucky and blessed team of climbers here at the top of Europe.

[Evening]

Well we are back down here at the barrels and obviously we have a very satisfied feeling.  The descent went great.  On the way down we called Alex our snowcat driver and told him that we wouldn’t mind if he picked us up at the same place…[lost transmission]

Above: Comet Hale-Bopp over Mt. Elbrus from Pik Terskol, Caucasus, April '97. ©"Observers", AlltheSky.com