We went straight up and over the East Summit, then down to the saddle and up to the West Summit. It was a great trip. I've put a draft copy of a friend's trip report below if you are interested.
All the Best
Brice
Written by Murray Brown
There were 5 of us in the team including 2 friends of Brice who had climbed Mount McKinley in Alaska with him last year – Chris, a student from Chicago, and Dan, a management consultant from Toronto. Also joining us was Jon Huss, a lawyer from Wyoming that Brice and I had got to know during our climb of Aconcagua.
We all met up in Moscow and took a flight to the spa town of Mineralnye Vody, followed by a 3-hour minibus ride to the Baksan valley. The only other passenger for the drive was a climber from St Petersburg, a small wiry man in his late 40’s/early 50’s, who was working as a guide and who had recently climbed Everest without oxygen.
After a night in the hotel, a taxi dropped us off further down the valley in Elbrus Village and we began by climbing up the valley leading to the Irikchat glacier, crossing the glacier and then up the steep east face of Elbrus to the summit. It took us 8 days to complete the climb, and we each had about 10 days of food supplies with us.
We chose a route that was rarely used, partly because it involved a longer walk in, and partly because the ascent was steeper and more technical than the normal tourist route. The advantage is that this side of the mountain has more spectacular scenery, is more interesting and hardly has any other climbers around. The disadvantage is that there’s nobody to help rescue you if you get into serious trouble.
After 2 days spent trekking up a largely deserted and unspoiled valley in the mist, the weather improved and we made the base of the glacier on the 3rd day with clear skies, warm sunshine and fabulous views of the Caucasus range.
The following day we roped up to make the traverse across the glacier, with Brice leading the way through the crevasse areas. Fortunately the crevasses didn’t present any barriers, and our crossing was relatively short and straightforward, without anyone disappearing down a hole.
The hardest part was the next climb up a steep snow and ice slope - it started off at 30 degrees, then just got steeper and steeper. For hours I climbed up this slope with my ice axe and crampons. If I'd slipped, there was a clear run for 1000 metres down this slope with a deep crevasse waiting at the bottom. Thankfully I didn't make a mistake!
Our map was a very small scale one that failed to indicate how long and arduous this slope was likely to be. The scale of the mountain makes it very deceptive to estimate the distance to the next stage, even when it doesn’t look very far.
As the day wore on, my energy levels were dropping and I was getting colder and colder as the air above started to tumble down the mountain. I could see by the human figures the size of small black dots up ahead that I still had another 2 hours to go, with no place on the slope to stop for a rest or don warmer clothes safely. By the time I eventually reached the campsite, I was exhausted and the wind was coming in progressively stronger gusts. Brice and the team had spent a long time digging out flat sites into the steep slope, but when we tried to pitch our tents, there was little resistance in the soft, crumbly volcanic soil, and the tents being sideways on to the wind just couldn’t stay up.
While Brice was trying to get his tent secured, his expensive 900 fill down jacket wrapped in a stuff sack came loose and tumbled down the slope – there was nothing we could do but to watch it bounce down and drop off the edge of a cliff into the glacier below and a waiting crevasse, never to be seen again.
Finally we got one 3-man tent anchored using a combination of boulders and long metal pitons; we opted for all piling in for the night into our sleeping bags without eating or drinking anything and trying to get some rest. By this stage I was shivering uncontrollably in the lightweight clothes I’d climbed up in.
Five big guys crammed into a tiny tent, part of which was perched over the edge of a crumbling steep slope, meant that a miserable nights sleep ensued for Brice, who drew the short straw of sleeping next to the edge. Even with us packed in together, like Gulag prisoners trapped in a stolypin wagon bound for Magadan, it took 2 hours for me to stop shivering – a warning sign perhaps, that reaching the first stages of hypothermia had been closer than I’d imagined.
The next morning, Brice was feeling rough with the after effects of a cold, so he and Jon opted to climb down and camp at a lower level for 2 days to acclimatize. A good move, as it turned out to be warm and sunny down there during the day, with a plentiful source of clean water. I would have done the same, but couldn’t face the risk of climbing down the steep snow face knowing that one trip would have sent me plummeting head first, with a huge pack on my back to add to the momentum. Probably not the best time to be learning self-arrest techniques with an ice axe for the first time!
We got caught in some bad weather and so Chris, Dan and myself spent 2 days and nights sheltering in the tent, which was being pelted periodically by loose gravel whipped up by the wind. We slept on the flat bit, me in the middle, with our legs hanging over the eroding shelf and I had to drink a lot of water to stave off the altitude-induced headaches. Chris and Dan later joked that they got used to me waking them up in the middle of the night as I put on warm clothes to step outside into the howling wind, only to climb back up the shelf, my head appearing first, gasping for breath as I pulled myself back up into the tent, and then sat breathing heavily for 5 minutes each time before letting them get back to sleep again!
The view from outside the tent at this altitude during the night never failed to astonish me. An endless vista of snow covered peaks in a sea of glaciers, all bathed in moonlight, with no noise or signs of human habitation for as far as the eye could see. It was absolutely stunning.
In such moments it felt like being in some Roger Dean inspired album cover artwork, made popular by English rock bands in the mid 1970’s. Hawkwind’s ‘Warrior on the Edge of Time’ would bizarrely be playing inside my head at these times.
When the weather cleared up, we melted snow for drinking water and set off aiming for the summit. However, after another day spent climbing up another long stretch of steep snow and ice, we were still some way off the top as the weather closed in again. The last stage involved walking up and then traversing a 60-degree slope that made me afraid to look down again. Occasionally I glanced down between my legs and saw Chris climbing about 15-20 metres below me, and I hate to think what could have happened there if any of us had fallen.
In retrospect we should have used ropes and a belay for this stage.
By mid-afternoon, there was no chance of us reaching the summit with the clouds closing in and snow beginning to fall - so we pitched the tent on top of a cliff, with a perfect flat spot, somewhere around 5200metres. This ensured a comfortable night’s sleep for a change, despite nighttime temperatures of minus 15C to minus 18C. We spent the evening melting snow, with the cliff just outside the door of the tent, and the 60-degree snow slope not far to the side. I took care to scoop up snow from the edge of this slope, since I was wearing the smooth soled liners from inside my plastic boots, and straying too far would have sent me sliding on a one-way ticket down this icy chute.
During the night, Brice and Jon had bivouacked at our previous camp, and then set off at 2am to wake us up at 6am on their way to the summit. At 3am I looked over the edge of our cliff and saw their torchlights flickering down below, so I knew they were on their way. Curiously, two other climbing teams from Moscow and Kiev had disappeared, presumably having decided to give up and turn back for home. Brice couldn’t hang around in the cold, on account of having lost his warm jacket, so they pressed on ahead. The dawn brought clear skies, and by late morning we’d reached the summit of the East peak - a beautiful volcanic crater/caldera - and we were only the 4th team this year to reach the top via this route.
Brice had talked about an optical illusion at the summit, and sure enough, as we approached the caldera, the natural response was to head for the higher side initially rather than opt for the lower side with the monument and flag on top!
It was fantastic being the only people on the East Summit. Elbrus is a twin peaked volcano, with a saddle between the two. By coincidence, Brice and Jon had already reached the West peak at the same time, and they were waving madly to attract our attention. For our part, all we could make out was a row of black dots moving slowly up the tourist route, and couldn’t tell which ones they were. All the suffering of the previous few days was instantly forgotten!
By now I knew that the danger was over for me, and the rest of the climb would be straightforward scrambling and walking up snow tracks in crampons - so I could relax and just enjoy the rest of the expedition without taking risks beyond my experience level.
We scrambled down the East peak to the saddle, and joined the tourist route to the higher west peak. It was afternoon by now, but the sun was still shining and we were the last people of the day to reach the summit, since everyone else had come up earlier via the normal route. The lack of drinking water meant that we were getting dizzy with dehydration, and I resorted to eating chunks of snow just to help myself reach the top. Dan was waiting for us at the top, with Chris and myself lagging behind, Chris suffering more with dehydration than me. We hauled ourselves up the last steep bit to the top and finally we had the roof of Europe to ourselves! On both peaks there’s monuments to the 2nd World War, with German soldiers briefly occupying Elbrus and taking the summit.
On the way down from the saddle, the clouds moved in, so we descended in the mist down the other side of the mountain, following footsteps in the snow and snow pole markers till finally reaching the top of the chairlift as darkness fell. Brice and Jon had made it down in time to catch the last chairlift of the day, so were already back at the hotel by this time.
At the top of the 3rd chairlift, there’s a collection of large metal ‘Barrels’ with beds inside (which are used by organized tour groups), so I managed to buy the last three remaining places that night, and persuaded some ladies in the kitchen to cook us a meal for 100 roubles each, which was just wonderful.
The next morning we elected to scramble down a rocky footpath under the cable car, and were rewarded with amazing alpine views in warm sunshine, as we made our way back to the hotel and the prospect of a hot shower, a change of clothes and a slap-up meal!
At the top of the Baksan valley, in Azau village, it’s warm and sunny during the day, but the mist and rain rolls in by 4pm, and the place is deserted at night. The hotel was also extremely quiet with very few guests staying that night.
Russia is a funny place in that the strangest things just happen spontaneously when you least expect it. After dinner, Chris and Dan, who were sharing a room with me, decided to crash out early and catch up on some sleep. I wandered out into the deserted darkness of the village to find Brice & Jon, and duly found them on the terrace of a closed café bar with a group of visiting Russians. They had come equipped with food, wine and homemade vodka and insisted we help them finish everything before they drove(?!) for a couple of hours back to the town of Nalchik.
Brice and I retired to the hotel bar for a quiet nightcap and got talking to Andre, the hotel administrator and former climber. It should come as no surprise therefore, to anyone familiar with PGS offshore personnel, that we somehow found ourselves, three bottles of cognac later, joining in with the karaoke till 3am! Andre and myself ended up doing duets of some well-known Russian songs, and couples actually danced to my rendition of ‘What wonderful evenings in Russia’ by Beliye Orel. And I can’t even sing!
Andre explained that he had been in a rescue helicopter that went to the aid of stricken climbers several years ago on the mountain of Ushba (the most difficult mountain in the Caucasus to climb), when Georgian soldiers shot it down. This started a war that ended up killing 50 people, and the situation on the border is still quite tense.
At some point in the evening’s proceedings, I decided it was a good idea to return to my room and retrieve my camera-phone so I could show our Elbrus pictures to Andre. Chris and Dan were sound asleep as I wandered in looking around for the phone, which was plugged in, and charging at the foot of Dan’s bed. Instead of doing the obvious thing of unplugging the phone first, I just yanked it from the charger, whereupon a blue flash shot out, all the lights in the hallway fused, and Dan jumped 2 or 3 inches above the mattress. I stumbled out, banging my leg against assorted tables and chairs in the ensuing pitch darkness feeling slightly guilty for disturbing the guys and possibly giving Dan an electric shock, but luckily they remembered nothing about this incident when I asked them about it the following morning.
The next day Chris, Jon and Dan left to visit Pyatigorsk and then Moscow for some sightseeing, while Brice and I walked down the Baksan valley to the ski resort of Cheget and took the chairlift up to 3500metres, on the other side from Elbrus.
This drops you off near the top of a mountain looking directly across to the north face of the 2nd highest peak in the range - ‘Donguz Orun’, and an incredibly impressive close up view of 2500metres of vertical rock, snow and ice walls.
Brice had wanted me to climb this peak with him, but there would have been too much technical rock climbing at the summit for me, and besides, the aforementioned Georgian border guards would have shot us on our return to the hotel if we’d tried!
So instead, we went to visit another PGS colleague, Nikolai Gritsenko (Navigator, Orient Explorer) in his hometown of Kislovodsk before returning to my apartment in Tula (near Moscow) for a party.
We had a nasty episode with the DPS Road police in the Baksan valley when we left for Kislovodsk. About 1 hour from Azau hotel at the end of the Baksan valley, our battered old Lada Zhiguli taxi got pulled over for 'document checks'. The driver paid the customary 50-rouble bribe, but on noticing that the car had foreigners, they searched our documents and luggage.
All our documents were in order, but they just searched through the top pockets, not the main bags until they found Brice's Iodine tablets and some left over vitamin tablets of mine. Brice couldn't speak Russian so they left him alone, but I made the mistake of trying to explain in Russian what they were. So they hauled me inside for 40 minutes of aggressive questioning and threats, accusing me of having narcotics and saying I was going to prison for a few days until the results of the tests came back. I said I'd done nothing wrong, but they weren't giving up so easily.
Brice said they took our taxi driver round the back of the building while all this was going on then released him shortly afterwards. Eventually I asked them how much it would cost to fix this problem (always dodgy trying to bribe police, especially in a foreign language). They asked how much did I have. I pulled out a pile of roubles(1100, or $40 worth), and they said it would cost 10,000 roubles. I didn't want them to search me and discover I had $800 on me, so I just argued a bit more.
Eventually, they changed tack and asked me did I know what the date was.
I said it wasn't important, but they disagreed, saying it was 1st Sept i.e. the anniversary of the Beslan school tragedy in which Russian special forces attacked Chechen terrorists holding the school hostage. It's a big day in Russia for the start of the school season, and the country was nervous about another terrorist attack.
They suggested I should understand, to which I replied angrily (perhaps in retrospect a mistake) 'na xuya?' - roughly translated as a stronger version of ‘what on earth for?’ - whereupon one of the guys standing to the side took a baton and made a glancing blow across my forehead.
I didn’t see it coming, and things were starting to go out of control quite quickly, so I just paid up $200 plus my roubles, and they said I was then free to go.
They offered the iodine tablets and vitamins back, but I declined, and they even offered me a cup of water for the sore head. A friend of mine also works for the DPS road police on the motorway between Moscow and Tula, and he said I was lucky to get away with paying such a small price.
Very interesting. Thanks for posting it here. The east peak is really nice i think. I was the only one going for it the day I climbed. A nice escape from the masses.
The Russian police can be real bastards!
I think I have been quite lucky when I have had my disagreements with them.
michaelhaifa - Oct 4, 2005 2:38 am - Voted 10/10
Untitled CommentThanks for doing this interesting page. Only assign group so it will be easier to find.
Michael
Brice Neugebauer - Oct 4, 2005 4:16 am - Hasn't voted
Untitled CommentI have added it to the Caucusus group as you suggested (still working on the page). Thanks for voting!
Gangolf Haub - Oct 4, 2005 4:21 am - Voted 10/10
Untitled CommentGood page Brice. The only suggestion I have refers to the picture captions: maybe you could name more of the summits of the Caucasus Range..
Corax - Oct 4, 2005 5:58 am - Voted 10/10
Untitled CommentA very interesting page!
One question:
Did you continue straight to the east summit of Elbrus or did you traverse below the slopes to the normal route?
There are some very nasty crevasses a couple of hundred meters to the east of the normal route on Elbrus.
Brice Neugebauer - Oct 4, 2005 6:48 am - Hasn't voted
Untitled CommentWe went straight up and over the East Summit, then down to the saddle and up to the West Summit. It was a great trip. I've put a draft copy of a friend's trip report below if you are interested.
All the Best
Brice
Written by Murray Brown
There were 5 of us in the team including 2 friends of Brice who had climbed Mount McKinley in Alaska with him last year – Chris, a student from Chicago, and Dan, a management consultant from Toronto. Also joining us was Jon Huss, a lawyer from Wyoming that Brice and I had got to know during our climb of Aconcagua.
We all met up in Moscow and took a flight to the spa town of Mineralnye Vody, followed by a 3-hour minibus ride to the Baksan valley. The only other passenger for the drive was a climber from St Petersburg, a small wiry man in his late 40’s/early 50’s, who was working as a guide and who had recently climbed Everest without oxygen.
After a night in the hotel, a taxi dropped us off further down the valley in Elbrus Village and we began by climbing up the valley leading to the Irikchat glacier, crossing the glacier and then up the steep east face of Elbrus to the summit. It took us 8 days to complete the climb, and we each had about 10 days of food supplies with us.
We chose a route that was rarely used, partly because it involved a longer walk in, and partly because the ascent was steeper and more technical than the normal tourist route. The advantage is that this side of the mountain has more spectacular scenery, is more interesting and hardly has any other climbers around. The disadvantage is that there’s nobody to help rescue you if you get into serious trouble.
After 2 days spent trekking up a largely deserted and unspoiled valley in the mist, the weather improved and we made the base of the glacier on the 3rd day with clear skies, warm sunshine and fabulous views of the Caucasus range.
The following day we roped up to make the traverse across the glacier, with Brice leading the way through the crevasse areas. Fortunately the crevasses didn’t present any barriers, and our crossing was relatively short and straightforward, without anyone disappearing down a hole.
The hardest part was the next climb up a steep snow and ice slope - it started off at 30 degrees, then just got steeper and steeper. For hours I climbed up this slope with my ice axe and crampons. If I'd slipped, there was a clear run for 1000 metres down this slope with a deep crevasse waiting at the bottom. Thankfully I didn't make a mistake!
Our map was a very small scale one that failed to indicate how long and arduous this slope was likely to be. The scale of the mountain makes it very deceptive to estimate the distance to the next stage, even when it doesn’t look very far.
As the day wore on, my energy levels were dropping and I was getting colder and colder as the air above started to tumble down the mountain. I could see by the human figures the size of small black dots up ahead that I still had another 2 hours to go, with no place on the slope to stop for a rest or don warmer clothes safely. By the time I eventually reached the campsite, I was exhausted and the wind was coming in progressively stronger gusts. Brice and the team had spent a long time digging out flat sites into the steep slope, but when we tried to pitch our tents, there was little resistance in the soft, crumbly volcanic soil, and the tents being sideways on to the wind just couldn’t stay up.
While Brice was trying to get his tent secured, his expensive 900 fill down jacket wrapped in a stuff sack came loose and tumbled down the slope – there was nothing we could do but to watch it bounce down and drop off the edge of a cliff into the glacier below and a waiting crevasse, never to be seen again.
Finally we got one 3-man tent anchored using a combination of boulders and long metal pitons; we opted for all piling in for the night into our sleeping bags without eating or drinking anything and trying to get some rest. By this stage I was shivering uncontrollably in the lightweight clothes I’d climbed up in.
Five big guys crammed into a tiny tent, part of which was perched over the edge of a crumbling steep slope, meant that a miserable nights sleep ensued for Brice, who drew the short straw of sleeping next to the edge. Even with us packed in together, like Gulag prisoners trapped in a stolypin wagon bound for Magadan, it took 2 hours for me to stop shivering – a warning sign perhaps, that reaching the first stages of hypothermia had been closer than I’d imagined.
The next morning, Brice was feeling rough with the after effects of a cold, so he and Jon opted to climb down and camp at a lower level for 2 days to acclimatize. A good move, as it turned out to be warm and sunny down there during the day, with a plentiful source of clean water. I would have done the same, but couldn’t face the risk of climbing down the steep snow face knowing that one trip would have sent me plummeting head first, with a huge pack on my back to add to the momentum. Probably not the best time to be learning self-arrest techniques with an ice axe for the first time!
We got caught in some bad weather and so Chris, Dan and myself spent 2 days and nights sheltering in the tent, which was being pelted periodically by loose gravel whipped up by the wind. We slept on the flat bit, me in the middle, with our legs hanging over the eroding shelf and I had to drink a lot of water to stave off the altitude-induced headaches. Chris and Dan later joked that they got used to me waking them up in the middle of the night as I put on warm clothes to step outside into the howling wind, only to climb back up the shelf, my head appearing first, gasping for breath as I pulled myself back up into the tent, and then sat breathing heavily for 5 minutes each time before letting them get back to sleep again!
The view from outside the tent at this altitude during the night never failed to astonish me. An endless vista of snow covered peaks in a sea of glaciers, all bathed in moonlight, with no noise or signs of human habitation for as far as the eye could see. It was absolutely stunning.
In such moments it felt like being in some Roger Dean inspired album cover artwork, made popular by English rock bands in the mid 1970’s. Hawkwind’s ‘Warrior on the Edge of Time’ would bizarrely be playing inside my head at these times.
When the weather cleared up, we melted snow for drinking water and set off aiming for the summit. However, after another day spent climbing up another long stretch of steep snow and ice, we were still some way off the top as the weather closed in again. The last stage involved walking up and then traversing a 60-degree slope that made me afraid to look down again. Occasionally I glanced down between my legs and saw Chris climbing about 15-20 metres below me, and I hate to think what could have happened there if any of us had fallen.
In retrospect we should have used ropes and a belay for this stage.
By mid-afternoon, there was no chance of us reaching the summit with the clouds closing in and snow beginning to fall - so we pitched the tent on top of a cliff, with a perfect flat spot, somewhere around 5200metres. This ensured a comfortable night’s sleep for a change, despite nighttime temperatures of minus 15C to minus 18C. We spent the evening melting snow, with the cliff just outside the door of the tent, and the 60-degree snow slope not far to the side. I took care to scoop up snow from the edge of this slope, since I was wearing the smooth soled liners from inside my plastic boots, and straying too far would have sent me sliding on a one-way ticket down this icy chute.
During the night, Brice and Jon had bivouacked at our previous camp, and then set off at 2am to wake us up at 6am on their way to the summit. At 3am I looked over the edge of our cliff and saw their torchlights flickering down below, so I knew they were on their way. Curiously, two other climbing teams from Moscow and Kiev had disappeared, presumably having decided to give up and turn back for home. Brice couldn’t hang around in the cold, on account of having lost his warm jacket, so they pressed on ahead. The dawn brought clear skies, and by late morning we’d reached the summit of the East peak - a beautiful volcanic crater/caldera - and we were only the 4th team this year to reach the top via this route.
Brice had talked about an optical illusion at the summit, and sure enough, as we approached the caldera, the natural response was to head for the higher side initially rather than opt for the lower side with the monument and flag on top!
It was fantastic being the only people on the East Summit. Elbrus is a twin peaked volcano, with a saddle between the two. By coincidence, Brice and Jon had already reached the West peak at the same time, and they were waving madly to attract our attention. For our part, all we could make out was a row of black dots moving slowly up the tourist route, and couldn’t tell which ones they were. All the suffering of the previous few days was instantly forgotten!
By now I knew that the danger was over for me, and the rest of the climb would be straightforward scrambling and walking up snow tracks in crampons - so I could relax and just enjoy the rest of the expedition without taking risks beyond my experience level.
We scrambled down the East peak to the saddle, and joined the tourist route to the higher west peak. It was afternoon by now, but the sun was still shining and we were the last people of the day to reach the summit, since everyone else had come up earlier via the normal route. The lack of drinking water meant that we were getting dizzy with dehydration, and I resorted to eating chunks of snow just to help myself reach the top. Dan was waiting for us at the top, with Chris and myself lagging behind, Chris suffering more with dehydration than me. We hauled ourselves up the last steep bit to the top and finally we had the roof of Europe to ourselves! On both peaks there’s monuments to the 2nd World War, with German soldiers briefly occupying Elbrus and taking the summit.
On the way down from the saddle, the clouds moved in, so we descended in the mist down the other side of the mountain, following footsteps in the snow and snow pole markers till finally reaching the top of the chairlift as darkness fell. Brice and Jon had made it down in time to catch the last chairlift of the day, so were already back at the hotel by this time.
At the top of the 3rd chairlift, there’s a collection of large metal ‘Barrels’ with beds inside (which are used by organized tour groups), so I managed to buy the last three remaining places that night, and persuaded some ladies in the kitchen to cook us a meal for 100 roubles each, which was just wonderful.
The next morning we elected to scramble down a rocky footpath under the cable car, and were rewarded with amazing alpine views in warm sunshine, as we made our way back to the hotel and the prospect of a hot shower, a change of clothes and a slap-up meal!
At the top of the Baksan valley, in Azau village, it’s warm and sunny during the day, but the mist and rain rolls in by 4pm, and the place is deserted at night. The hotel was also extremely quiet with very few guests staying that night.
Russia is a funny place in that the strangest things just happen spontaneously when you least expect it. After dinner, Chris and Dan, who were sharing a room with me, decided to crash out early and catch up on some sleep. I wandered out into the deserted darkness of the village to find Brice & Jon, and duly found them on the terrace of a closed café bar with a group of visiting Russians. They had come equipped with food, wine and homemade vodka and insisted we help them finish everything before they drove(?!) for a couple of hours back to the town of Nalchik.
Brice and I retired to the hotel bar for a quiet nightcap and got talking to Andre, the hotel administrator and former climber. It should come as no surprise therefore, to anyone familiar with PGS offshore personnel, that we somehow found ourselves, three bottles of cognac later, joining in with the karaoke till 3am! Andre and myself ended up doing duets of some well-known Russian songs, and couples actually danced to my rendition of ‘What wonderful evenings in Russia’ by Beliye Orel. And I can’t even sing!
Andre explained that he had been in a rescue helicopter that went to the aid of stricken climbers several years ago on the mountain of Ushba (the most difficult mountain in the Caucasus to climb), when Georgian soldiers shot it down. This started a war that ended up killing 50 people, and the situation on the border is still quite tense.
At some point in the evening’s proceedings, I decided it was a good idea to return to my room and retrieve my camera-phone so I could show our Elbrus pictures to Andre. Chris and Dan were sound asleep as I wandered in looking around for the phone, which was plugged in, and charging at the foot of Dan’s bed. Instead of doing the obvious thing of unplugging the phone first, I just yanked it from the charger, whereupon a blue flash shot out, all the lights in the hallway fused, and Dan jumped 2 or 3 inches above the mattress. I stumbled out, banging my leg against assorted tables and chairs in the ensuing pitch darkness feeling slightly guilty for disturbing the guys and possibly giving Dan an electric shock, but luckily they remembered nothing about this incident when I asked them about it the following morning.
The next day Chris, Jon and Dan left to visit Pyatigorsk and then Moscow for some sightseeing, while Brice and I walked down the Baksan valley to the ski resort of Cheget and took the chairlift up to 3500metres, on the other side from Elbrus.
This drops you off near the top of a mountain looking directly across to the north face of the 2nd highest peak in the range - ‘Donguz Orun’, and an incredibly impressive close up view of 2500metres of vertical rock, snow and ice walls.
Brice had wanted me to climb this peak with him, but there would have been too much technical rock climbing at the summit for me, and besides, the aforementioned Georgian border guards would have shot us on our return to the hotel if we’d tried!
So instead, we went to visit another PGS colleague, Nikolai Gritsenko (Navigator, Orient Explorer) in his hometown of Kislovodsk before returning to my apartment in Tula (near Moscow) for a party.
We had a nasty episode with the DPS Road police in the Baksan valley when we left for Kislovodsk. About 1 hour from Azau hotel at the end of the Baksan valley, our battered old Lada Zhiguli taxi got pulled over for 'document checks'. The driver paid the customary 50-rouble bribe, but on noticing that the car had foreigners, they searched our documents and luggage.
All our documents were in order, but they just searched through the top pockets, not the main bags until they found Brice's Iodine tablets and some left over vitamin tablets of mine. Brice couldn't speak Russian so they left him alone, but I made the mistake of trying to explain in Russian what they were. So they hauled me inside for 40 minutes of aggressive questioning and threats, accusing me of having narcotics and saying I was going to prison for a few days until the results of the tests came back. I said I'd done nothing wrong, but they weren't giving up so easily.
Brice said they took our taxi driver round the back of the building while all this was going on then released him shortly afterwards. Eventually I asked them how much it would cost to fix this problem (always dodgy trying to bribe police, especially in a foreign language). They asked how much did I have. I pulled out a pile of roubles(1100, or $40 worth), and they said it would cost 10,000 roubles. I didn't want them to search me and discover I had $800 on me, so I just argued a bit more.
Eventually, they changed tack and asked me did I know what the date was.
I said it wasn't important, but they disagreed, saying it was 1st Sept i.e. the anniversary of the Beslan school tragedy in which Russian special forces attacked Chechen terrorists holding the school hostage. It's a big day in Russia for the start of the school season, and the country was nervous about another terrorist attack.
They suggested I should understand, to which I replied angrily (perhaps in retrospect a mistake) 'na xuya?' - roughly translated as a stronger version of ‘what on earth for?’ - whereupon one of the guys standing to the side took a baton and made a glancing blow across my forehead.
I didn’t see it coming, and things were starting to go out of control quite quickly, so I just paid up $200 plus my roubles, and they said I was then free to go.
They offered the iodine tablets and vitamins back, but I declined, and they even offered me a cup of water for the sore head. A friend of mine also works for the DPS road police on the motorway between Moscow and Tula, and he said I was lucky to get away with paying such a small price.
Corax - Oct 4, 2005 6:35 pm - Voted 10/10
Untitled CommentVery interesting. Thanks for posting it here. The east peak is really nice i think. I was the only one going for it the day I climbed. A nice escape from the masses.
The Russian police can be real bastards!
I think I have been quite lucky when I have had my disagreements with them.
mtwashingtonmonroe - Oct 4, 2005 10:17 am - Voted 10/10
Untitled CommentGorgeous page!
-Britt
vvujisic - Oct 4, 2005 2:27 pm - Voted 10/10
Untitled CommentNice page! Very impressive mountain!
Regards,
Vlado
Scott - Oct 5, 2005 2:41 pm - Voted 10/10
Untitled CommentLooks good, and looks like an interesting peak. Just make the links at the bottom live and it will be perfect.
Tomek Lodowy - Dec 17, 2005 11:17 am - Voted 10/10
Untitled CommentCaucasus ...ohhh yeaHHH