Elbrus Expedition Dispatch

July 7, 2015 – Complete Success on Summit Day

Complete success on our Elbrus summit day.

The wind did pretty much what it was supposed to do according to yesterday’s forecast - 35km/h at least. Only that was the whole way up the mountain for us. But it was cloudy. It was supposed to be clear but actually we were climbing in the clouds. Visibility was not good today.

We had a real mountaineering day and we reached the summit. This team climbed exceptionally well. There were seven of us all together. There was Todd, Heather, Nic and Kristen and then Vladimir, Karina and I. I would say we had a great day.

We got up at 1 am. Leila fixed a really nice breakfast. She made omelettes with all those fresh eggs we had sent up yesterday.

We got ourselves ready and the snowcat arrived around 3 and at 3:45 we began climbing from the Pastukhov rocks. Believe it or not we were on the summit a little bit before 9 am. So the team made it in less than 6 hours which is a really good time especially given the conditions in the high winds.

So I am really proud of the team. We actually got back down to the Barrels at about 12:20 in the afternoon. We are exhausted of course, but it is a good exhaustion.

Leila had a great soup and smoked salmon for us when we arrived. I can feel some naps coming on this afternoon here at Garabashi.

Congratulations to the team.

We have still got a few days in Russia so stay tuned for our adventures as we go back down to the valley and enjoy being in the Caucasus mountains.

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