Elbrus Expedition Dispatch

July 15, 2016 – Our Move to the Barrels!

What a beautiful evening in the Caucasus Mountains. It is about 6:30; clouds are finally moved in after those complete clear days that we’ve had while we were acclimatizing down in the valley and during our first trip up here to the barrels before we descended and spent our last night down in the valley, before the summit attempt.

Now, we moved to the Barrels, what an amazing day we’ve had. We left the hotel only about 10am but we were a machine, we were very efficient as we moved all our duffel bags with our equipment through the series of 3 covered gondola rides and then the snow cat to come up to our barrels shelters which you have seen the photographs of, the blue rectangular barrel shelters.

Leila was riding with us and we had all those boxes of food, equipment and fuel that she is going to use to cook. So, it was quite a production but this team was really efficient moved the equipment through all the lifts; got on the snow cat, got into our barrels just about noon. Leila had a wonderful lunch prepared by one and after lunch we took a 3 hour round trip walk to 14,200 ft. Everybody did great.

They came down smiling; especially they were pleased to see the beautiful light in the sky around Elbrus in the Caucasus this evening. Very encouraging first day at the barrels and above and we are going to continue with more climbing up from here, acclimatization, taking care of ourselves and enjoying life up here at the barrels. I can tell, the team kind of likes up here.

So, we will keep you posted as we continue to get ready to climb and hopefully to the summit of Mount Elbrus.

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