Elbrus Expedition Dispatch

July 26, 2011 – A Strong Summit Attempt on Elbrus

Four of us began climbing for the Mount Elbrus summit today in the early morning darkness. We awoke at 2:30am and by 4:30am, Chet, Karina, Vladimir and I were all climbing above Pashtukov Rocks towards the summit.

When we went to sleep last night, we listened to hail pounding on the roof of our tin hut as a violent thunderstorm surged through last night. However, the weather report indicated that we would have good weather throughout the morning hours today with light snow in the afternoon. For us, that was a very good weather report. I began to question that forecast when I saw lenticular clouds sitting on the top of Mount Elbrus as we began climbing.

We had a beautiful Caucasus sunrise with clear skies and we set off to a great start, but we could see the clouds and the wind descending on the saddle between the two summits of Elbrus above us. Sure enough, by the time we reached 17,390ft/5,300m we were in a complete whiteout. Now visibility on Elbrus has always been a big issue. If you are on the route you are fine, but it becomes very difficult to navigate when you lose visibility and have the blowing snow and blizzard conditions we get frequently on Mount Elbrus. We had Vladimir’s GPS with all the waypoints and of course my orange flagging – florescent orange tape on green garden stakes—that the Russian’s call “Wally’s GPS” to mark our way. In the really difficult conditions, we made the decision around 10am to come down to allow ourselves another attempt tomorrow. Chet was feeling a bit tired from 5 hours of straight climbing and the increasingly bad weather was beginning to wear on us all. The descent was straight forward and we are back at the huts now. Since we’ve moved back down, we’ve seen that we made a wise decision.

When we reached the hut, I had a nice talk with Chet and he told me that one attempt on the mountain was enough for him this year. He is satisfied and he will be back to Elbrus someday. He knows that any time he goes to the mountain, the mountain gets the last word. We are happy with our attempt on Elbrus and I have a feeling that the weather will be the same tomorrow anyway.

We will be moving down the mountain, but our adventures in Russia are not yet over. Chet and I were just talking about how intense, satisfying and rewarding it has been. The last ten days since he arrived in St. Petersburg and saw his good friends including Dick Morse, along with all the adventures we’ve had and places we’ve seen since have made for a fantastic trip.