Elbrus Expedition Dispatch

July 7, 2012 – The Team at the Barrels – Looking Strong and Well Acclimatized

It is 5:45 in the afternoon, Saturday July 7th. I am standing at 4300 meters (14,110 ft.) above sea level, looking at the twin summits of Elbrus against an absolutely clear sky above me. What an amazing day we’ve had!

We started out at our hotel in the valley as you know, we started in our van towards the bottom of the ski lifts at about 8:55, we wanted an early start. Karina was waiting for us and Tamara, our cook, one of Berg Adventures cooks and a very dear person to many of our previous Elbrus climbs. Tamara and Karina had spent yesterday in Nalchik, shopping for the expedition. They had boxes of food and expedition barrels full of supplies for us. We loaded them to the lift; today we took the new 4 person covered high-speed quad to the top instead of the old lift; it was a great ride, really beautiful because of the clear twin summits above us.

We moved into our Barrels, it took Tamara a while to unpack and get the kitchen going but she made an excellent lunch and now we are standing in our high point for the day, we are going to descend, we climbed 500 meters (1640 ft.) and Vladimir and I feel that the team did great , they looked really strong and we are well in our way to be acclimatized for a successful ascent of mount Elbrus. We will keep you posted day to day as we continue with our conditioning and acclimatization and training.

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