Elbrus Expedition Dispatch
August 11, 2008 – Summit Success on Elbrus!
It's 11:20 am on August 11, the team is on the top of Europe 18,586 feet above sea level. Michael, Kate, John, Vladimir, Karina and I walked up arm and arm and stepped onto the summit virtually together. We have had a great day, a few clouds around us now, but the group is very strong and we got up here very quickly. We climbed to the top of Elbrus in only 6.5 hours from when we got off of the snow cat.
The view is awesome and we are taking time for some photographs. We will let everyone know about the descent when we get back down to the bottom. For right now we are enjoying our time on the top of Europe!
Safely back down at the Barrels
It is 2pm and I am watching the team unload off of the snow cat back at the barrels. We have come full circle on this successful Elbrus summit day. We started with the snow cat ride and now the team is back at the Barrels and I want to compliment them on what really was a remarkable round trip time, 11 hours all the way to the summit of Elbrus and back including the snow cat rides.
Now we are going to see what Tamara has in the kitchen for us. No doubt it is going to be started with some of that wonderful soup which we need for rehydration. The team is really proud, feel great, a wonderful accomplishment. They deserve the good feelings they have right now. They pushed their limits and found out they could go further than they thought. Mt. Elbrus was good to them today. They pushed hard, the mountain smiled all around us and let us stand on top of it.
Stay tuned for the rest of our adventures as we go back down into the valley and get ready to depart Russia. We are really going to sleep well tonight with the successful Elbrus ascent behind us now.