{"id":37338,"date":"2014-08-27T08:01:56","date_gmt":"2014-08-27T05:01:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mountainguides.pro\/?p=37338"},"modified":"2026-09-10T16:10:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T13:10:11","slug":"six-days-to-the-summit-of-elbrus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mountainguides.pro\/de\/2014\/08\/27\/six-days-to-the-summit-of-elbrus\/","title":{"rendered":"Impressions of a Climb on Elbrus"},"content":{"rendered":"

My Elbrus climb<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n

In 2013 I went to Elbrus with a group of friends. It was the height of summer, and we decided to climb to the summit of Elbrus. And we managed it – six days after we arrived, we stood on the height we had been longing for.<\/p>\n\n

The party of climbers set out on the tenth of July. It arrived in the Elbrus region in order to climb the highest mountain in the Caucasus. It was a Monday.<\/p>\n\n

I have plenty of acquaintances and friends who have not only holidayed in the Elbrus region but climbed the mountain itself. I had heard a great many stories from them about how treacherous this beautiful place can be, and it was very hard to believe that at 4500 metres and above it is not only breathing that is difficult – falling asleep is hard too, because there is so little oxygen. Running and any other physical effort are simply out of the question. Even now, having been there myself, I can hardly believe what I lived through. Only the photographs, with faces burned by the sun and worn out by hypoxia, remind me of it. So a climb is not just a holiday with beautiful scenery around you, and there is no believing that until you try it yourself.<\/p>\n\n

The route usually begins in the village of Terskol. You can get there from Mineralnye Vody, and the journey takes about four hours. It is not very crowded, even though July is the best month for climbing Elbrus. Come here in the middle of the ski season, though, and you will have to book a hotel room well in advance.<\/p>\n\n

We allowed five days for the climb, plus one spare in case of bad weather. If we did not reach the summit on the sixth day, there would be no further attempts. In other words, we had only one chance. The first days of a climb are training in character – ascents to 3100 and 3800 metres. Each of those days takes seven hours, four for the way up and three for the way down. On the third day the group moves to the shelter camp at 3800 metres. At 4200 metres stands the camp known as Priyut Odinnadtsati, the Shelter of Eleven, and we went there as soon as we arrived. On the fourth day we were to climb to 4800metres, to what are called the Pastukhov Rocks, and on the fifth to reach the summit of Elbrus.<\/p>\n\n

The first day – the first difficulties. On the very first day of the climb we got to experience all the delights of a mountain downpour. The weather was foul and we walked for two hours in heavy rain.<\/p>\n\n

After the rain the sun came out, but the cold wind did nothing for our spirits. On no account must you fall ill, because with a cold you will never reach the summit. Hypoxia does its work – even a slight ailment turns into a dreadful illness that drains all your strength..<\/p>\n\n

When we reached two thousand metres, we had covered a little over a kilometre in a bit more than two hours. Everyone felt fine, so we decided to go a little further, towards Cheget.<\/p>\n\n

At that height walking is easy, you are not short of breath, and our clothes began to dry out. What surprised me was that there was snow lying here and there despite the burning sun. To go any higher you have to put on sunglasses. Proper equipment and good physical condition are what your climb depends on, and neither should be neglected. Ours were in order.<\/p>\n\n

The only thing that troubled me slightly was not knowing how my body would behave at real altitude, given the short acclimatisation period. But there was no changing the programme now, so we did our best to keep our spirits up.<\/p>\n\n

The next day the weather spoiled us a little. Early in the morning the river valley was already bathed in warm sunlight. We passed the Devichyi Kosy waterfall, whose water is astonishingly clear. It gave us a lift that lasted the rest of the day.<\/p>\n\n

Gradually it dawned on us that the body was slowly getting used to the clean mountain air, finding its harmony with nature and forgetting the noise and dust of the city.<\/p>\n\n

That is very important – to find harmony with the mountains you are about to climb, to tune yourself to their wavelength. You have to find a common language with the summit, as it were, so that it opens up out of the cloud and mist and lets you in. For the first two days Elbrus stayed hidden from us behind a veil of cloud.<\/p>\n\n

We only managed to see the summit of Elbrus we had been longing for on the third day, when we took the cable car up to the shelter camp, our new home.<\/p>\n\n

Snow in summer is no fairy tale. Here the snow lies all year round. And although the temperature hovers around zero degrees Celsius, you can burn in the sun in no time at all. Even walking „with the sun“ behind you will not help – ultraviolet light reflects off the snow and causes no end of trouble. That is exactly why equipment matters so much: you simply cannot step outside without sunglasses and sun cream.<\/p>\n\n

And even though we knew these simple truths, every one of us suffered to some degree. I burned my ears, because it never occurred to me to put cream on them too, and two of my friends burned their noses.<\/p>\n\n

Climbing over rock is far easier than climbing through snow. Not the least reason for that is the weight of double mountaineering boots, which are twice as heavy as ordinary Vibram-soled ones. You also have to put on warm clothing, because it will be colder still higher up. And you have to carry a thermos, an ice axe and a spare set of clothes. Yes, the views from the slopes of Elbrus are enchanting, but seeing them costs a good deal of effort.<\/p>\n\n

My body also began to rebel a little. We were increasing the pace to „train“ it for the new load and to gain height faster. But even on the way up the mountain road everyone started to suffer from headaches. The guides explained that this was „gornyashka“, mountain sickness, and that it would pass by itself lower down. Only we would not get down for another four days – not until after we had climbed to the summit of Elbrus. The ascent to the Pastukhov Rocks. We had thought the first day would turn out to be the hardest, but we were wrong. The fourth was no easier. We were climbing to 4800 metres, and the weather was far from the best. Conditions were expected to worsen in the afternoon; the guides said so too – it is always like that here after lunch.<\/p>\n\n

When we had climbed a little higher , we found ourselves inside a cloud. A few minutes later thick snow began to fall out of it, and the wind picked up noticeably. We still had a good hour and a half of climbing ahead of us. When we reached our goal, the wind made it simply impossible to stay on your feet. I cannot say how strong it was, but a pole stuck into the snow was carried off at once in an unknown direction.<\/p>\n\n

We rested for ten minutes and started back down.<\/p>\n\n

How was it for us? Saying it was unpleasant would be putting it mildly. The air temperature was -10 degrees, but it felt like -20, and higher up it was probably a good -300. High humidity and a strong wind froze you instantly. My head was spinning and aching from hypoxia, and you could see no more than 10 metres ahead.<\/p>\n\n

Now it became clear why so many people have died on Elbrus. In weather like that it takes nothing at all to lose the trail, get lost and freeze. That is if you do not slip or fall into some crevasse. You can also fall asleep and freeze, or simply pass out lying in the snow because of hypoxia.<\/p>\n\n

But thanks to our mountain guide nothing happened to us. We got safely back down in two hours.<\/p>\n\n

The ascent to the summit of Elbrus. The fifth day arrived, and with it the time to climb to the summit of Elbrus. We set out at three in the morning so as to be on top before midday. The weather generally worsens after midday, so you have to try to reach the mountain before the snow starts or the wind gets up. Otherwise you have to sit the bad weather out, and that is very dangerous – even if you manage to find a cave, you can freeze in it at -20 degrees.<\/p>\n\n

At half past one in the morning the weather outside was appalling – wet snow, wind, visibility no more than a hundred metres. There had been a thunderstorm in the night, and that is the most frightening thing there is in the mountains. Because of the unique dielectric rock on the summit of Elbrus, lightning will wander about the slope until it loses its charge. It does not go to earth, which makes it very easy to be killed by a lightning strike here.<\/p>\n\n

In the end, at three in the morning, we decided to break off the climb and postpone it to the following day. Nobody wants to die, and everyone thought the decision a sensible one.<\/p>\n\n

One of the guides told us that the forecast for the next day was equally miserable. There was little to cheer us, all the more so because the forecast came true exactly – the weather did not improve, if anything it got worse.<\/p>\n\n

The second attempt on Elbrus. Again, as the day before, at half past one in the morning we looked out of the window. Once again strong wind and snow, visibility 100 metres. But this time there had been no thunderstorm in the night, and we decided to go up. We checked all our equipment and put on everything we had. We also took a thermos and crampons, as we had to, and got onto a snowmobile – almost everyone uses these machines to reach Priyut Odinnadtsati, saving precious time and energy.<\/p>\n\n

Practically every peak has a kind of „point of no return“, and you can get to it any way you like. You could easily walk it, but that takes a lot of time. All the real difficulties begin above it. On Elbrus, the Pastukhov Rocks are exactly that point.<\/p>\n\n

For half an hour we made our way through solid fog and gained half a kilometre. The weather did not improve.<\/p>\n\n

We walked in single file, because you could see nothing beyond the end of your nose. The wind only grew stronger. The only thought in my head was that if the weather on the summit of Elbrus was like this, things would be very bad indeed.<\/p>\n\n

The higher we climbed on Elbrus, the slower we moved. Your feet slid back with every careless step. Your breathing goes at once, and there is no calming it while you walk, so you have to stop. And of course everyone behind you has to stop as well.<\/p>\n\n

And the wind got stronger still, my head was splitting and spinning, and that made it hard to concentrate on walking. It is better not to close your eyes – you feel at once as though you are falling into a black pit with no way out. So you get absolutely no pleasure from the climb at all; it is a fight for survival and genuinely hard labour.<\/p>\n\n

So the most important thing on any mountain, whether Elbrus or any other summit over five kilometres high, is that you absolutely must acclimatise, spending long enough at altitude for the body to get used to the mountain air and the pressure.<\/p>\n\n

At five in the morning the wind grew stronger still. But at that moment we saw sunlight through the fog for the first time. The clouds fell back and sank below us, leaving a light haze at our feet, and a few minutes later we could see the horizon and the western and eastern summits of Elbrus. To the west lay the majestic shadow of Elbrus, a sight that simply takes your breath away. It was the first time in my life I had seen a shadow in the sky.<\/p>\n\n

We walked on, and because of the wind our speed did not exceed a kilometre an hour. But it was only thanks to the wind that we could see all that beauty.<\/p>\n\n

A few hours later we were already at 5200 metres, according to the GPS. Only 150 metres remained to the saddle of Elbrus, but at that rate it would still take us a good two hours.<\/p>\n\n

My friends shared their impressions afterwards as well. One of them said he remembered nothing but snow. It felt as though the snow would never end, and you had to count your steps and your breaths. And the snow up there is nothing like the snow below; it seems ready to swallow anyone who makes a mistake.<\/p>\n\n

Snowfields everywhere you look, a very long way still to the summit of Elbrus even though we had been walking towards it for seven hours. It already seems a mirage you will never reach. Meanwhile the thick cloud below gives you the feeling of flying in an aeroplane.<\/p>\n\n

For me the hardest part was crossing the saddle. I was walking right at the back of the group and could see nothing but the boots of the person in front and the same blinding snow.<\/p>\n\n

At the same time my head was spinning horribly, my thoughts were wrapped in fog, everything around me swam and my eyes closed of their own accord. I fell every few steps, and getting up again was almost impossible – the instinct for self-preservation only switched on when my hands and feet began to freeze. My brain gave only one command: crawl forward, get to the summit of Elbrus, and then all this torment will be over sooner.<\/p>\n\n

Here you cannot say you have lost and go home, as you can in a competition. In the mountains the price of losing is your life, and the loser has to die. But afterwards only the good moments stay in your memory – falling down on the summit itself, for instance, realising that you had reached the top and feeling a happiness and a pride in yourself beyond description. But on the saddle it was indescribably hard.<\/p>\n\n

If at the very start of the journey doubts crept in about whether we could do what we had set out to do, then after standing on the summit of Elbrus we all understood that nothing in life is impossible. Nobody believed we would succeed, not even ourselves, especially once the weather turned and even experienced mountaineers refused to set off. But we and our guides decided to take the risk anyway, and we did not regret it.<\/p>\n\n

Elbrus approved of our courage.<\/p>\n\n

As our guide said afterwards, a real miracle had happened – the bad weather left us. Cloud very rarely sinks below you, and here only hypoxia and the strong wind stood in our way. We reached the saddle without incident, and even the dizziness and the nausea were bearable.<\/p>\n\n

What caused a great deal of trouble was the loss of strength. When your legs barely obey you, every step is an effort, your heart is pounding, breathing is hard and all you can hear is the crunch of snow – the sensation is not a pleasant one.<\/p>\n\n

At the top the tears come without your meaning them to – from exhaustion or from joy, at first you cannot tell.<\/p>\n\n

And then comes the understanding that we had done it, reached our goal and climbed the western summit of Elbrus – the highest summit in Europe!<\/p>\n\n

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What to read next<\/h2>\n

See the programme:<\/strong> Climbing Elbrus from the south, 9 days<\/a><\/p>\n