Let me tell you my impressions of our trip to Elbrus from the south. It was May, and spring was already in full command back home. The snow had long gone, young grass was greening and the buds were swelling. But in the Caucasus there was not the faintest hint of spring – when I arrived, snow lay everywhere. During the day the thermometer here climbed above zero and the sun was already noticeably warm, but the nights were as cold as winter.
We got to know the other members of the expedition. It was a mixed company: there were a lot of foreigners among us, some people with a little climbing experience and some seasoned mountaineers, and there were even a few who had been on Everest. But we all had a single aim, and its name was Elbrus, the highest summit of the European continent..
We met our guide and began preparing for the climb with him – acclimatising, doing training ascents, getting used to the new, thin air. We were not especially lucky with the weather: a strong wind blew off Elbrus, snow fell and you could see practically nothing. We had to navigate by compass, because in a blizzard it can be very hard to tell up from down. With every day our training routes grew longer and higher, and still the weather did not change. In the end, a day was chosen for the climb.
The day before the climb, the guide and I took the cable car up to 3800 metres, where there are what look like small round huts, and that was where we were to spend the night. The snow still had not stopped falling, which left the group’s mood gloomy, to put it mildly. Then the rescue service added to our anxiety by trying to talk us out of the climb. The one thing that offered any comfort was that after more than a week of continuous snowfall the slopes would be covered in a thick layer of snow that would hide the ice on the flanks of Elbrus. That would let us move on skis or snowshoes.
We slept little the night before the climb – lack of oxygen, nerves and an early start all saw to that. We got ready and set off. Elbrus looked down on us proudly from behind the clouds.
We started the climb in zero visibility, with one thought turning over in my head: «Where are we going?» Wind and snow scratched at our faces, and the darkness of night gave us no chance of seeing anything at all. Talk went round the group that the climb would have to be abandoned and that we should go back to camp – in weather like that, going on was sheer madness.
Elbrus, however, apparently decided that we had passed enough of its tests. At dawn the weather began to change. The snow and the wind stopped, and the reddish rays of the rising sun lit our way.
We climbed another 1000 metres, and from there the hardest section of the ascent began. The going was heavy, strength drained away quickly, many people in the party developed headaches, and whether from fatigue or from lack of oxygen my vision would sometimes go dark. But we kept moving. Even when every step took an unbelievable effort. Even when there was no strength left to walk and we had to crawl. The summit of Elbrus was almost within reach and I had nothing left at all; I lay on the springy snow, closed my eyes and tried to steady my breathing and recover at least a little. Just a bit further. The last of my strength, the last of my will. To climb Elbrus – now that was more than possible, there was the summit, quite close. And then came the moment that all the suffering had been for. I am here.
I stood on the summit of Elbrus, and my happiness could not be spoiled by exhaustion, or by dizziness, or by the weather turning again. I was standing on the summit.
And then came something utterly magical. I took the snowboard off my back. And I slid, I flew, I raced downwards, leaving a clean line behind me, blasting the snow apart, touching the silvery hills with my hand, gasping for breath at speed, losing my head with delight. That alone was worth crawling on all fours like a cripple, chasing the sparks out of my eyes, freezing and enduring the pain in my muscles. Worth it for the sake of climbing to the summit of Elbrus and then hurling myself dizzily down, revelling in my own madness, and in a sense of limitless power and freedom.