Elbrus Expedition Dispatch

July 10, 2013 – Congratulations on a Successful Summit

It’s 10:55 am now and I am calling you from the summit of Mt Elbrus at 16,586 feet. We had a great start this morning at 4:20 and a very successful day on the mountain.

Wow, what an amazing morning it was as we stepped out high on the traverse and began climbing. It was determined a couple days ago that Tim would be supporting the team from the Barrels with Olga and both of them have done so brilliantly. Still he was able to take the snow cat with us. We actually had two snow cat rides; our driver Arthur had a powerful machine and the conditions were right so he agreed to take us higher than normal.

I’m looking across at two beautiful women, Terri and Margaret with big smiles on their faces on the summit of Mount Elbrus. This is a special day for Terri because she was here four years ago with the Berg Adventures team and it was a very different kind of day, very hard weather, and she was not part of the summit team. So congratulations to Terri on a well-deserved summit! Rafael has got a big grin on his face and the three amigos are looking good; proud to be here!

All four of our guides also made it to the top. Both Vladimir’s, myself and Alex, who is a member of the rescue team here and he agreed to climb with us today for some extra support. So we’ve got ten people on top of Mt. Elbrus and it’s a beautiful day! It is a long ways down and we will call you again when we get down to the barrels with Tim and Olga.

Congratulations to the entire team!!

We are back at the Barrels after a very successful summit day. Olga’s soup, fresh salad, and cheese bread that was waiting for us when we got back really hit the spot! Now we are resting a bit before dinner.

The snow cat driver was there to meet us when we got down, and although there was some pretty thick clouds, we will not forget the sight of Tim standing at the back of the snow cat waving his arms at us, and it really made us feel great! He was very excited to have us back and his congratulations were heart felt and it was great to have the whole team back together.

We will be sleeping one more night at the Barrels and then we will be spending one more night in the Caucasus Mountains. We are looking forward to getting into the valley and meeting our friends and enjoying some Shashlik, some traditional Russian lamb barbeque.

We will keep you posted on our adventures here with our friends in Russia as our trip winds down. Congratulations to our entire team, they did a great job reaching the summit of Mt. Elbrus!