Caucasus 12-23 August 2021
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Day 10. Climbing Mount Elbrus.
The climb was an interesting adventure. We reached the Garabashi station by 3 am and climbed onto a piste basher. To our amazement, more and more people arrived until some 25 climbers got into the space designed for 10. We felt like sardines in a can. We took off, and when the slope steepend, the standing climbers starting falling on the ones sitting behind. This night journey on a powerful piste basher, up Elbrus slopes lit by huge full moon, left a lasting impression. It was pretty cold outside but the fast moving piste basher was warm. We were unloaded on the glacier, and started walking towards Kosaya Polka (oblique ledge) which leads to the so-called Saddle between the two summits. We walked sandwhiched between commercial groups which were well-organised but the progress was painfully slow. The clouds caught up with us, the visibility became poor, the wind picked up, and it started snowing. We were following a path marked by poles and lit by a line of headtorches, just like you see in films about Everest. We had a rest break at the Saddle, put on an extra layer and started going up again. We reached fixed ropes. The guides patiently re-clipped their clients at the stations. It took us 4.5 hours to climb 600 m. The visibility never improved.
The blue, black and red lines show our approach, journey on the piste basher and the climb. Shift-click on the track link will open it in nakarte.me.
We are on top of Mount Elbrus (5642 m), but you cannot see a thing. A guide appeared from the fog and asked us to leave the summit (!) to allow two following commercial groups to take pictures. The weather forecast for today was very good; unfortunately it proved wrong.
We started going down and suddenly found ourselves on our own. We probably went down faster than the other groups. The path was marked with poles which helped us to follow it in poor visibility (but we also used a recorded GPS track as a back up). A lonely climber was worried about getting lost and joined our group. It felt as though we were winter-walking: it was cold, windy, we could see nothing but pristine snow.
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The portraits of the climbers: Igor. |
Anya. |
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Olya. |
Sonya. |
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Victor. |
Maria. |
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Lyosha. |
Lena. |
When we got down to 5000 m altitude, the clouds dissolved, the sun came out, it turned much warmer. We felt as though we were watching the outside world from an airplane window.
Had we started our climb a couple of hours later, the visiblity at the summit would have been great. But this climb in poor weather would stick in our memories for much longer.
When we got down, we met Masha, Misha and Leonya near Priyut 11. Kosaya polka traverses the summit on the right in the picture. Climbers who miss it have to negotiate a steep crevassed glacier; many end up in the so-called corpse collector at the bottom.
Sonya with the supporting group.
This is Diesel Hut and the site where new Priyut 11 will be built.
Sunset.
The clouds are engulfing the summits. The Baksan valley is very far down; half way up is Terskol peak with the observatory at the top. This was a long day, but it was only in the evening that we finally felt tired.
