Elbrus Expedition Dispatch
July 1, 2014 – A Warm Welcome into the Caucasus Mountains
A message from Wally:
Well we had a long but a great day! We arrived at the Seven Summits hotel at 9 pm. They had a wonderful dinner prepared for us. The rooms are awesome and it was nice to relax after a long travel day.
Everyone is tired, really exhausted, in a good sense because we had such a long, full day. Larissa went over well before 9 am to hold us a place in line for Lenin’s Mausoleum to see Lenin’s body as it is preserved in the Red Square. The group saw him and Lenin sent us off for our Elbrus climb!
After we saw Lenin we went back to the Hyatt to catch our bus to the Sheremetyevo airport. We got to the airport and after we got through security we sat and had lunch near our gate. . We were very happy to arrive in the departure area and see that one of our mountain guides; Vladimir Kopylov, who lives in Moscow, was on the same flight as we were!
Of course Karina was waiting for us at the Mineralnye Vody airport with warm greetings!
The reunion with old friends was complete when we got to the Hotel. Mariana is still running the hotel, and Vladimir Bakhmutov, from Ukraine, was waiting to greet us. Vladimir B will also be guiding with us again this season; he has only missed two or three BAI Elbrus climbs since 2002.
It has been great to see everyone and we are all happy to be together in the Caucasus Mountains!
Waiting in line for Lenin’s Tomb can take a long time. Thankfully Larissa was holding a spot for us!
Outside the Historical Museum at Red Square is the statue of Marshal Zhukov mounted on a horse trampling a Nazi symbol. Just adjacent to this statue was where we met Larissa who stood in line on Tuesday morning to hold a place for us to go see Lenin in his Mausoleum.
As we walked over to the Red Square from our hotel each time we walked right by the Bolshoi Theatre. It’s beautiful entrance is something that we walk by when we leave our hotel
Lazslo has been very successful in Moscow visiting many of the sites he was interested in. Along with the places we visited on our first day in Moscow he has also been to Christ the Savior and also Lenin’s tomb this morning.
The team at the airport
At a market that Karina took us to in the Caucasus