Mountain Guide is a guide-led tour operator that runs guided ascents, high-altitude treks and expedition logistics. It is owned and run by a working mountain guide, and Elbrus is the destination with the most programmes in its catalogue: the company keeps its own base in the Terskol valley and takes its own cooks and food to the refuges its groups use on the southern side.
Safety on the mountain is the priority the company states ahead of reaching the summit. The judgements that follow from that — turnaround times, how much acclimatisation an itinerary contains, which refuge a group sleeps in — are made by the people who lead the programmes rather than by an office.
The people
The most checkable thing this company can show is not a claim about itself but a list. Our mountain guides and their records sets out, guide by guide and year by year, what each of them has climbed. The team includes a member of the first Soviet Everest expedition and a guide with more than two hundred recorded ascents of Elbrus. Read that page before this one.
What the company has organised
Our records lists dated expeditions the company has organised on Elbrus, among them ascents with climbers with disabilities and a climb with a child. Those are specific, dated events rather than general claims.
How the programmes are built
The same mountain often appears in the catalogue as several separate programmes — different routes, different lengths, different levels of support — because those are genuinely different trips, and the acclimatisation time an itinerary contains is the variable that decides most of them. How we run our expeditions covers the operating side in more detail.
To see the range, start from the full catalogue or from the Elbrus programmes.