Elbrus Expedition Dispatch

July 10, 2011 – Practicing on the Glacier

It is Sunday afternoon, July 10, and we are about to settle down for our second night at 12,467ft/3800m. We had a very successful acclimatization day today and we are living very well here.

We’ve been eating fantastic food. Today for lunch we have borscht, of course, a typical Russian meal. It was delicious. Karina just came down with a big pail of vegetables and she said she is going to work on vegetable ragout.

Now, we aren’t only eating. We are busy acclimatizing too. In fact, today we had a very good day. Paul, Bill, Dick and Steve, along with Vladimir as a guide, left at about 9 am and their goal was to climb to 15,350ft/4,700m. Dick appealed to Vladimir to go just a bit further. Paul and Dick and Bill climbed about an hour higher before they turned back.

The rest of us, that includes Karina and I, Chris, Jeff, Donna, Bruno, Mario, Ljerka, Jeremy and Armando, spent the morning reviewing skills and getting our equipment ready for the climb. We practiced with crampons, ice axes, and attaching our ice axes to our leashes. We went out and reviewed some basic ice axe ascending techniques. Then we went out and climbed about 1000ft/330m and watched the beautiful sky. The weather has gotten somewhat better. We saw some clouds, but we were under the sun most of the day. In fact, it almost got too warm as we were climbing, both for the elite guys who climbed higher and for the rest of us lower on the glacier.

So as I said earlier, we are settling in; life is good. We are still adapting to the altitude, and no one is showing negative symptoms to the altitude so far. We feel like we’ve got a good plan going here. We will keep reporting to you as we continue acclimatizing and get ourselves ready to try for the summit of Elbrus.