Elbrus Expedition Dispatch
July 1, 2009 – Team Awakes at 2 am for Their Smmit Attempt!
At 4:00 AM we were ready to board the snow cat for the ride to Pashtukov Rocks, where our climb would begin. The snow was an indication of things to come.
It is about 4:00am on Canada Day and today is going to be our day to attempt to reach the summit of Mt. Elbrus. We can hear the motor of the snow cat and can see the lights; it is here ready to take us.
We have been up since 2:00 am and there is a lot of snow falling, it’s warm and the snow is wet. We are not excited about the snow as wet snow tends to make our gear wet too early in the day and we know we have much higher to go.
Our team lives in three cabins and we are on three different levels. We’ve got a quiet cabin above where I live along with and Steve Withington, Winston, John and Vladimir Bakhmutov. Down below is where all of the girls and the other team members are: Karina, Vladimir Kopylov , David, Steve Rossi, Steve Boles, Jackie, Carol and Terri. We call their area the ‘party cabin’ because it seems they always have something going on down there.
At 2:00 AM our pre summit breakfast on
Canada Day, Steve Rossi honoured the
Canadians in our group with his t-shirt.
In the middle is where Anastasia’s kitchen is. We met in the kitchen at 2:00 am this morning. Steve Rossi came in wearing a Canadian T-shirt to commemorate “Canada Day”! Our breakfast consisted of; drinking coffee, tea, eating porridge, French toast and a lot of good food to get us ready for our long day.
Since the snow cat is going to drive us all the way up to Pashtukov Rocks, we decided to wait for about 30 more minutes. Because of the longer days in July, when we get out of the snow cat it should be starting to get light before we begin to climb.
Managing our gear is going to be important as we move higher. We will get into the snow cat with our crampons on our double boots and our ice axes ready to go because it gets steep right off of the snow cat.
We will report to you as we climb higher towards the very summit of Europe. One thing I do have to report is that Steve Boles told me yesterday he was feeling like today just was not going to be his day, mentally and physically he felt like he didn’t have 100% to give for the summit attempt. I asked him to wait on it for a few hours and see if he would change his mind. At dinner last night he told us all confidently that this was not going to be his summit day for Mt. Elbrus. So Steve is going to wait down here with Anastasia. He is still part of the team, of course, and since his smile has been a welcomed sight throughout this trip, we will look forward to it when we arrive back down.