Elbrus Expedition Dispatch

June 29, 2009 – Entire Team Reaches Pashtukov Rocks

I am calling you from the top of Pashtukov Rocks at 15,100 feet. The entire team made it here today. The weather has improved greatly compared to yesterday. We are sitting in a bit of wind right now, but there are clear skies around and the twin summits of Elbrus are far above luring us on. This is a big acclimatization day for this team. We had to push up higher and we had to continue to condition our muscles and also review and learn techniques and continue to work on our climbing gear to make sure we are ready for our Elbrus summit.

Even yesterday we sat around our cabins at Garabashi refuge, and adjusted crampons and harnesses. Today we carried all of our equipment to the base of Pruit. Now in June there is a lot of soft snow, so crampons are not necessary until you climb a lot higher above the refuge. When we got high enough we put our crampons on, took our ice axes out and we climbed higher using our gear. This was the only time we saw teams coming down who had gotten up at 2 to 3 in the morning today for their summit attempts, their faces did not hide how exhausted they were. We did manage to talk with and congratulate a lot of climbers who made it all of the way to the top!

We just talked to Karina and Anastasia by radio, they are down at the cabins and I told them to expect us in about and hour and a half. We will descend, and they will have some soup and salad prepared for us to replenish ourselves when we arrive. We will be spending our second night in the cabins. It is cozy there and we are having a good time. We are feeling good about our acclimatization, our health and our team. We will keep you posted daily as we continue to acclimatize and get ourselves ready to climb to the top of Europe, Mt Elbrus.