Go to the mountains even once and the impressions stay with you for life. You will want to come back again and again, to walk every kilometre once more and feel all of it afresh. Having been to the mountains I did achieve something — or rather, I reached the bar I had set for myself — and I very much wanted to share my own experience with other people.
So, let me start at the beginning. We left Pyatigorsk late that day, when it was already quite dark. We saw the ranges of the Caucasus in the rays of the rising sun. It really was a sight to gladden the eye: not a single cloud. We were in excellent spirits when an unscheduled stop in a small settlement was announced. We had an unplanned breakfast there. What stayed with me most was meeting some comical animals that kept trying to jump up and play with us.
Then came a long drive. Mountains flickered past the windows, and narrow gorges somewhere down in the river valleys. To be honest, it is faintly baffling how the local people manage to grow anything at all on such unhelpful ground. On the Baksan–Elbrus road the thing I remember best is a town with the remarkable name of Tyrnyauz. It sits in the floor of that same Baksan gorge. The height here is one thousand three hundred metres. The town is considered one of the highest in Russia. According to one toponymic version the name translates as “crane gorge”. Another version points to the word “tyrnauch”, a harrow. The ground beneath this small town is rich in minerals of various kinds. Tungsten and molybdenum in particular. They were discovered, it turns out, back in 1934.
In the summer of 2000 a powerful mudflow came down on the town. And although life there has been restored by now, people are still afraid to live on the ground floors. Some left the town because of unemployment.
As for what I felt going up the mountain and coming back down, there are no words for it. The feelings really are hard to put into words. It is the sort of thing that stays in your memory for ever. All the more so when you are sitting in a single-seat chairlift, floating, as it were, somewhere above the void. There is nothing left for you to do but listen to the spellbinding silence of the snow-covered mountains. Time seems to run in some other dimension. That dimension feels special, out of a story, where everything happens of its own accord.
And from the large viewing platform at the top you can look down on the mighty Baksan gorge. On one side an astonishingly beautiful panorama of the mountain chain opens up, and on the other an unmatched view of Mount Elbrus.
This twin-summited mountain has been known for a very long time. Many peoples knew of it from time immemorial, as the saying goes. Curiously, even the Scythians depicted the mountain on their drinking cups. It has a good many names. Hardly any other mountain can claim as much. There are in fact plenty of versions. One of the most interesting is the Balkar Mingi Tau. That is what these people began to call the mountain from eighteen twenty-nine onwards. And it is no ordinary name. They named the mountain in honour of their countryman Killar Khashirov. That was the name of the first person to reach the summit of Elbrus. Interestingly, his ascent was greeted at the time with gun salutes. Today comfortable eight-seat cabins run up from the lower Azau station, which stands at two thousand three hundred and fifty metres. They go as far as the Krugozor and Mir stations. And somewhere far below stretch the ski runs, with the tiny figures of the skiers themselves. Some of them are taking a real risk, it has to be said, when they leave the piste so casually and head off towards the beds of the glaciers. If a climber falls into one of the many crevasses, they may well die. The cause of death can be the injuries or a lack of oxygen. The only hope here is the rescue service.
Here you can see spurs of volcanic rock. They are somewhat reminiscent of Karadag in Crimea. From the Mir station itself there is a chairlift. It can take you up to the Garabashi station. The height here is a respectable three thousand seven hundred and eighty metres. We decided not to risk it, though, because we could see that it had stopped for some reason. Even without that ride we had quite enough to take in. As for comparing Ai-Petri with Elbrus, there is no comparison to be made. The scales are different and simply not comparable. And in these places an extraordinary spectacle opens up from almost every point. Breathtaking, as they say.
On the way back we visited the extraordinary land of the narzan springs. Here the life-giving drink of heroes came straight out of the frozen ground. We had long been told that the weather on Elbrus can turn. And that it can happen in an instant. According to our friends we were not just lucky with the weather that time but astonishingly lucky. The sun shone so brightly and there was not a single cloud in the sky. The very next day the weather turned decisively bad. Snow and rain came down at Azau. As for the Mir station, it was pitch dark up there.
All in all I have to say I enjoyed the trip enormously. It turned out genuinely interesting and it has stayed with me. I would tell anyone to do the same at least once in their life. You will not regret it, that much is certain.