Journey to Mt Elbrus

It was Sunday evening and we started in Karlsruhe to fly to Mineralny Vody. We wanted to climb Mt Elbrus, together with young mountaineers from all over Europe. The expedition was organised by Alexander Zaidler and the Ukrainian Mountain Federation as part of the Global Youth Summit 2008 - Program. This is a program of the UIAA.
Ansgar, Ansa and I flew first to Moscow. At the airport we met Anita and Konrad. We just had to ask young people with big backpacks if they belong to the expedition of Alexander.
Anita is part of the youth commission of the UIAA, a little bit older than 30 but nevertheless part of our team. Konrad is from South Tyrolia and became Ansgar’s tent partner.
While we were waiting for our flight we met Laura and Pilar from Catalonia. These two missed their luggage when we arrived in Mineralny Vody and had to wait another two days until they got their backpacks.
After our flight, which was very loud, we left the airport. A lot of taxi drives offered their services, and it was hard to get rid of them. Nevertheless we found Alexander. With him was Pedro from Portugal. Matt and Sergey arrived with the same flight as we did. They both study in Nottingham, but Sergey is originally from Russia. He became our translator and we are very grateful for that. None of our guides was able to speak more than a few words English.
Another 6 Spanish people should have arrived with our flight. But their first flight was late so they missed the next one.
We left without them to drive to Ochag our camp in Adylsu a valley next to Baksan Valley, after Matt from New Zealand had arrived. He is working in Italy at the moment.
Our bus wasn’t able to drive the whole way up to our camp because the road was too steep. So we had to change to an old truck, where we got a drive on the loading space together with our backpags.
At the camp we pitched up our tents and went to bed after a late dinner. During the night the Spanish guys arrived and we could meet them in the morning.
This day became a very lazy one, but we still managed to go for a stroll up to the Green Hotel, a very nice place, a bit further up the valley. Normally you can see Mt. Elbrus from that point, but it was very cloudy, so we didn’t get a chance.
The next day we spent with a walk up the glacier. Our guides wanted to check if everybody was able to walk on crampons. Everyone did quite well and we had lots of fun doing a little bit of ice climbing with our ice axes. During our glacier hike we got a first glance to Mt Elbrus. But we were already back at the camp for lunch.


Vitali, from the Ukraine, Irina, our translation lady, Matt (GB), Matt (NZ), Keka, Ansa and I went up to the Green Hotel again. So we didn’t have to hang around the camp the whole afternoon.
Thursday morning we prepared for our acclimatisation attempt. After sorting out the food we had lunch and started at 2 pm to climb up the mountain. We were two teams: The Spanish team with Sergey for translation and team international, the rest of our expedition.
At 3200 m altitude we set up our tents, with a perfect view to Mt Elbrus. Originally we wanted to climb Kurmuichi (4058m), but it was to much ice there, so we went up to Andyrchi (3913) the next morning. It was a really nice walk and we had lots of fun. It was so easy to walk up to nearly 4000m in altitude, so we were quite sure we should be able to climb Elbrus during the next days.
The Spanish guys got the information that the weather should change on Monday. So everybody started to get quite nervous. Nevertheless our guides decided that we should have a rest day on Saturday. We used this day for a little walk up the beautiful Shkhelda Valley. While we were hiking Anita went down to the village to buy our food for the Elbrus ascent. During the afternoon we sorted out the food and packed our backpacks.
Now we were ready for Mt Elbrus. So we went to bed quite early to get up again at 5 am.