In late August, I set off to Russia with the goal of climbing Mount Elbrus, the highest peak in both Russia and Europe at 18,510 feet (5,264 m). It lies in the Caucasus Mountains, very close to the border with Georgia, and it has been a training ground for the best Russian mountaineers since the early Soviet period.
The journey to the base of the mountain was exhausting but hit no major snags. I flew to London and then to Moscow’s Domededovo Airport. before taking a train into the city center. Since I had a few hours to kill, I changed into shorts, and went on a long run into the city. I passed the Kotelnicheskaya Embankment Building first, one of Moscow’s seven sisters skyscrapers. These were constructed on Stalin’s orders in the 1940s and 50s as part of his modernization programs following WWII. I ran to the Kremlin, did a lap around its walls, and then headed back to the train station.
I took the metro across town to another train station, where another train was waiting to bake me to Sheremetyevo Airport on the city’s northern fringe. My flight left shortly after midnight for Mineralnye Vody (Russian for “mineral water”) in the country’s south. My train left at sunrise for Nalchick, where I caught a taxi to Terskol, the village at the base of Elbrus. The journey took around 36 hours.
The next morning I was ready to hike, so I took a practice hike up the lower slopes of Elbrus. I climbed from my hotel at 2,000m to the second cable car station at 3,500m. The view was incredible, but I only had enough time for a cup of soup before I needed to start back down. For the rest of the week, I typically hiked in the morning and worked late into the evening, resting before the real test. To help myself acclimatize, I took the cable car on Thursday back to the second station and climbed to the third and final station at 3,847m before descending to the hotel.
On Friday I took the cable car back to the third station and started looking for a place to spend the night. I eventually found two Russians who would share a bunkhouse with me for the evening. Artem had brought a watermelon all the way from the valley below, which we shared at 12,600 feet.
The next morning I climbed with all my equipment to the Diesel Hut at 4,130m where I dropped my bags and continued up to the Pastukhov Rocks at 4,700m. This was very close to the highest altitude I’d ever reached (4,754m high in the mountains of Tajikistan), but breaking that record would have to wait until I returned to the hut, ate some pasta, and squeezed in a few hours of sleep.
I started the summit climb a few minutes after midnight, knowing I’d be one of the slowest climbers. I clipped into my crampons by the light of my headlamp and started the slow climb upwards, one breath for each step. Eventually I shut the light off, climbing under the full moon. After several hours of climbing I was past the Pastukhov Rocks and each step was a new personal record, higher than I’d ever been before. The sunrise over the Caucasus was one of the most beautiful I’ve witnessed. My phone camera fogged up at the least opportune moment, so I have only memories.
After sunrise I could see the other climbers – around 30 of them – making their way to the summit. Though I was climbing alone, I met several other climbers during rest breaks, including a pair of married Polish lawyers. By this point in the hike, my right boot was beginning to irritate my achilles tendon, and the temperature plummeted with altitude and wind. Eventually it reached -18 C (zero Fahrenheit) with the wind chill. I put all my layers on before beginning the steepest section of the climb, just below the summit.
The final 100m of climbing was was slow, stuck behind other climbers on the fixed ropes and dogged by increasing heel pain, exhaustion, and the altitude. But with the sun warming my back, I slowly trudged to the summit, not the last of the climbers to reach the roof of Europe that day. The descent felt almost as long as the climb, but I made it back down to Terskol in time for dinner. The next day I got some work done and rested my sore legs before setting out for Sochi the next morning. I planed to visit the Black Sea for a few days before returning to Moscow to catch my plane home.
