Elbrus Expedition Dispatch
July 7, 2014 – Getting Ready for Our Summit Attempt
We’ve been watching the weather reports and more importantly watching our own health and our body’s ability to acclimatize. We think that tomorrow is a go for our team’s summit attempt.
We will check the updated forecast one more time at 2:00 pm today, but if nothing has changed we will be on for an early morning departure.
We spent this morning getting our climbing harnesses adjusted, checking out our ice axes and making sure that our crampons are adjusted well to our boots. The plan is to leave by snow cat at 4:00 AM, tomorrow morning, return to 4,700 meters where we were yesterday, and climb on to the top from there. We will leave fully suited for climbing the upper mountain, wearing our crampons.
As we were wrapping up, Vladimir Kopylov, from Moscow returned from the valley with his private Japanese client Nako San. Nako has climbed Mustga Ata in China and Cho Oyu. Vladimir has climbed with this gentleman on Elbrus before and he is a very special client. He is 77 years old and he is from Nagasaki, Japan. After Nako and Vladimir went for their acclimatization walk they shared tea with us in our Barrel. Nako’s gratitude for each day of life after what he survived in 1945 is an inspiration.
Also our guide Alec arrived today for tomorrow’s climb. He has guided many times with Berg Adventures in the past. He first guided with me in 1994 and he is a senior member of the Rescue Service here and has taken some days off to be on our summit climb. He shared with us the good news that he now has a 10 month old grandson!
Leila will prepare an early dinner, this afternoon and we will turn in for some rest. The team looks prepared and ready for a big challenge tomorrow.