U.S.S.R - Climb Elbrus

An Honorable Defeat

August 31 - September 12, 1989

My vacation this year was an attempt to reach the highest point in Europe, Mount Elbrus. Elbrus is in the Caucasus range of Russia, roughly north of Turkey. This was a two week trip. The bottom line is that it was a great trip even though we didn't reach the summit.

Itinerary

Taking two days to get to Moscow, we had a full day to tour it. The high point was the afternoon trip to Gorky park to see the Moscow circus. We flew and bused to a lodge in the the Caucasus at about 6,000 feet altitude. The next day we had an acclimatizing day hike where we took two chair lifts up to 9,000 feet and then hiked to almost 11,000 feet. The next day we were to ascend to the Priutt Hut on Elbrus but didn't due to delays in getting the food and fuel that we needed on the mountain was well as due to the fact that one of the trams that we were to ride up was broken. We made it to the hut at 13,800 feet the next day just fine. This included two hours of backpacking. The next day we took about a two hour acclimatizing, shakedown hike up Elbrus. No one was having any trouble with the altitude. The next day we attempted to go to the summit but turned back due to bad weather. The weather was still bad the next day and we didn't even make an attempt. After returning to the lodge, we went on a day hike which ended with wonderful picnic sponsored by the Russia climbers we worked with. Then we returned to Moscow and back home.

Summit Attempts

We knew that the weather had not been too good when we got up on the mountain. The day we attempted to go to the summit, we got up at 2:30am and hit the trail about 3:30. The early start is to leave plenty of time that day for the attempt. Also, the ice and snow is easier to hike on when it is still frozen before the sun starts melting it. We all had headlamps for going up. We could tell that it was very cold and there were very strong winds. We went for two hours, to the rocks, a landmark about one third of the way up. We stopped and evaluated the weather. The Russia guides were saying to turn back. Some people voted to continue on and some to turn back. Our leader decided to turn back. After going down about 200 feet we came out of the clouds. However the weather got worse and worse throughout the day. We got back to the hut about 7:30. At this time, some people decided to return to the lodge instead of staying on the mountain for another attempt the next day. By 11:00 we were watching the snow blowing horizontally past the hut as the clouds moved in and out all day. Of course the weather higher up on the mountain would be even worse. The plan for the next day was to be the same, up at 2:30 and on the way by 3:30. At 2:00 our leader got up to check the weather and to start boiling water for breakfast. Two people got up too to check things out. One of them came back and used two words to describe the weather, "grim" and "fierce." We didn't even bother getting up. We had breakfast about 7:30 and returned to the lodge later that morning.

While it was disappointing not to get any better chances at the summit, the decisions both days were correct. I feel that I got very good experience for this type of trip and had a good time. It's just too bad that we had bad timing as far as the weather was concerned.

Group Size

The only drawback to the trip was the number of people. I had originally signed up for the July version of this trip. I changed to the September version because the July one was filled up with 15 people. I was hoping that I would end up with a smaller group by going later. It almost worked. I ended up with a group of 10 people. However, there was another Mountain Travel group with 12 people who were doing exactly the same trip with exactly the same itinerary on exactly the same schedule. This basically made it one large group with 22 people. There was some attempts to keep the groups separate but they seemed pretty artificial. Also, the July group made the summit on their second attempt. Everyone on the two groups, the leaders and the climbers, were a great bunch. It's just that it was a large number of people.

Russia

I enjoyed Russia. Moscow is one of the few cities of that size which I liked. It wasn't crowded, polluted or congested with traffic. While there were a lot of high-rise apartment buildings, they were all near green places, parks or forests. The Russians we came in contact with, especially our translators and our climbing guides, were fun people. I saw a little of the bureaucracy that you hear of but nothing which really affected me.

The only really strange thing was the exchange rate. The official exchange rate was about .7 rubles per dollar. However on the black market, the rate was 10 rubles per dollar. In fact people wanted dollars instead of rubles.

Ricardo Torres

Ricardo Torres was the leader of my trip to Mexico last year. He was an assistant leader on this trip. During last year's trip I learned about an expedition to Mount Everest this year that Ricardo was part of. Ricardo made it to the summit on May 16 this year. He became the first Mexican and the first Latin American to make it.

What Next

Although we didn't make the summit, I consider this trip to be a success. However, I prefer longer trips which spend more time away from civilization. Mountain Travel had a trip this year which I hope they offer next year which sounds like just the thing. It is a one month trip to Nepal and includes a fair amount of trekking and ends up with an attempt to climb Mount Mera at 21,000 feet. If I made it to the summit, this would set personal records of highest campsite (19,000 feet - old record 17,000 feet) and highest altitude (21,000 feet - old record 19,000 feet). We'll see.

Follow-up

I went on the Mount Mera trip discussed above and made the summit.