We have arranged for one of the first snow cats at 4am in an effort to get up and back down to the Barrel Huts before the upper lifts close at 3pm so that we can go all the way down to the lodge.  If we do not make it in time, then we will either walk down to the gondolas (about 30min) which close at 6 or stay another night at the Barrels.  

 

Up at 3am for breakfast, it is a quiet night, not a cloud in the sky, ten billion stars lighting the freshly fallen snow.  I have spent the last 48 hours pondering and debating just what I will wear on summit night; this has driven Marek crazy.  Finally the night is upon us and the conditions have presented a warmish night of 25F at the huts.  It will be much colder on top but it will be daylight in a couple of hours, so I decide.  On the feet : liner socks, medium wool socks, plastic boots, gaiters and crampons.  On the legs : my hiking pants and insulated pants.  On the torso : light thermal shirt, fleece jacket, goretex shell.  Head : light balaclava, winter cap and headlamp.  Hands : midweight fleece gloves.  In my pack : 2L water (1L Gatorade, 1L hot apple cider), 3 bars (2 nutritional, 1 snickers), light liner gloves, waterproof down mittens, camera (in the fleece pocket I am wearing), glacier goggles, glacier glasses, snow walking poles and ice axe.  Everything is lighter than I thought it would be.  It is important to layer properly on Elbrus because the temperatures this day will vary from about 20F to 90F.

 

We jump on the snow cat and off we go up to the base of Pastukhov Rocks.  We head straight up the snow slope toward the minor summit of Elbrus, about 45 degrees incline.  There were two guides sent out first to cut trail and there is one group in front of us; still it is deep enough to chill our boots.  After less than an hour of hiking, the sun is coming up and I take off my headlamp and put on my ski goggles.  I fiddle with my balaclava a lot as my nose gets cold, but when I pull it up I feel I am oxygen deprived.  Note to self : cut mouth hole in balaclava or neck gaiter in the future.  We reach the point where the trail turns left for a long traverse to the saddle.  The trail that we take is less steep, but the fall line is steeper.  We are in the shadow of the minor peak and things cool off a bit and it is here that my toes go numb.  I wiggle them a lot but don’t get the feeling to return for quite a while.  Eventually jambing the toes solves the problem.  These are minor annoyances and nothing to be concerned about.  

 

On the far side of the saddle is the sun and we stop for a break, drop our packs (we aren’t taking them any further) and grab what gear we need for the summit.  Marek’s gloves suck and I lend him my down mittens.  Nevertheless, things warm up from here to the crest quite a bit.  I grab my ice axe and the steel is bitter cold and I can feel that right through my gloves, so I wrap the leash around the head where I am holding it and that does the trick.  Others have insulated hand grips.  I had ice axe tape (a thinner solution) but I neglected to put it on before the trip.  

 

We divide the next section from the saddle up to the crater rim into two parts; the first is fairly easy walking up and across a snow slope at 30 degrees inclination with about a 50 degree fall line.  The second section is much steeper at over 45 degrees inclination with 60+ degree fall line and this is the dangerous portion.  If you fall here and do not self arrest quickly, the slope falls off dramatically getting ever steeper.  We get to the rim and Oxana and the other guides are sitting in the snow with a client or two, so I sit; so does Marek and someone else.  I’m kinda playing in the snow when Oxana asks, “what are you doing here?”.  I respond, “You’re the guide, I’m waiting for you”.  She says, “go ahead on to the summit”.  Marek and the others aren’t ready to leave and Marek directs me to go on ahead so I do.  

 

I cross the virtually flat crater to the far side where there is a 10m (30ft) slope up to the summit.  I reach the summit of Elbrus 5642m (18,510ft), the highest point in Europe and my 3rd of the 7 summits at 10:50 and take a few photos and a video.  On the summit there is a stone marker.  The summit is about the size of a small dining room and there are about 12-15 people crowding the top.  At one point one of our guides needs some space and takes a step, catches his crampon on his leg which causes him to fall forward.  He catches his balance two steps later, which is fortunate because the third step would have been a good 1000ft down the face.  Marek comes along at 11:03 and we take some pictures together.  Then I take some pictures of him and some video.  After only 20-25 minutes on the summit I am ready to go, every motion to set up all these shots is a chore and I want to have energy to get back down.  I tell Marek I am leaving, that I’ve had enough (which probably pissed him off a bit, after all we did come to climb the mountain together).  I go back to the rim and we all gather there.  While I sit, Stipkovits is sitting behind me.  We wait and wait and I am wondering why we are waiting.  Fifteen minutes go by and I realize Stipkovits is hyperventilating, he still cannot catch his breath.  He needs to go down to a lower altitude…NOW!!!   I tell him, “you are having trouble breathing, you need to go tell Oxana that you need to go down now.”, which he does.  In typical Oxana response, she says, “No”, but it is clear she realizes he is in trouble.  She immediately says to the Spaniards, Jorge and Nacho, “You go now, I trust you can climb this dangerous part, be careful”, since they have experience.  Then she turns right back to Stipkovits and says, “You go now” and then we all fall in line.  We get down to our packs at the saddle without incident, some glissading the final 40m.  

 

We take off our crampons because they will be more of a hindrance to us from here on out.  The traverse back around to the main trail down is very long.  We round some rocks and are traversing a steep 60 degree fall line when the call from the Norwegians comes back for water.  No one has any….except me.  But I am uncomfortable doing this here on the steep slope and said, “It is dangerous here, can’t we do this later”.  They say they need water now.  Mistake #2.  So I take off my pack and put it against the slope with my knee on it, grab the water bottle out of the pack and am trying to pass the bottle up, but they aren’t taking it.  As I lean further toward them my knee comes off my pack and it slides right down the slope 25ft.  The pack contains another thermos, liner gloves, glacier glasses, headlamp and crampons…perhaps $300 worth of gear (including pack) that I won’t need to get down the mountain but I’d still like to retrieve.  I angrily pass the water bottle forward and then turn around to Oxana (who is about 4 people behind me).  “Can I get that?” “No, we will get it.”  A guide just carefully goes down and gets it.  I know there are crevasses down there, but he is not roped.

 

Shortly after this point Marek runs to catch up to me just to tell me, “I’m not going to make the 3pm cutoff for the lifts.  Go down, pack up all the gear and get it down so that I don’t have to hike it down to the upper lift.”  It’s on.  I blaze as fast as I can.  When I finish the traverse, it’s straight down the fall line.  A lot of people have cut the corner here, but I stay with the wands.  As soon as I can and as often as I can from here on out I glissade down to save time.  At one point I see a very long glissade track and take it.  At the bottom, just getting up from their glissade, is Hege and Stine with guide Sergey.  After hugs with the girls, Sergey asks me if I know where the rest of his clients are.  You’re kidding me, right?  I chat with the girls for 3 minutes, but that’s all I have to spare because time is running short for those lifts.  I eventually catch up with Patrick, but then can’t keep up with him and need a break.  I unzip my thermal pants and jackets because it is getting really hot, but I don’t stop to take anything off or drink any water for fear that I will miss the lifts.  Finally I stop to take my ski goggles off and put glacier glasses on.  In fact I am so concentrated on my goal that I miss a photo shoot with models in bikinis on the glacier a few hundred feet above the Barrel Huts…..seriously!!!!  

 

I get to the Barrels about 2:40, get the key from the dining area and am in the door at 2:43.  I leave the door open because it is hot.  Marius has already come through, packed up and gone down the lifts.  I am probably the 4th into camp.  First things first, I take some gear off because I am hot.  Next, I need hydration.  I throw something in the backpack.  Geez, it’s already 2:50, I’m never going to make it.  All of a sudden, two older and not very attractive Russian women who have seen Marek’s snow sign linger in.  They want to talk.  “Did you make the summit?”  “You’re really cute” is all they know in English.  I am trying to explain that I need to get packed up to make the chair lift, but they won’t let me pack.  As the minutes pass I try to be polite and patient.  Then “beep beep” goes their watch.  They explain in broken English as best they can (but believe me I understand perfectly) that they have to catch the last lift down at 3:00 and that it’s 2:55.  Thanks bunches.  I start throwing everything in the pack and am 99% done when who walks in but my favorite mountain climber Hege.  Well, I gotta find some time to show her some love  and even though I do, I think I made her feel like GTFO.  OK, so it’s 3:10, I’m packed but I don’t know if the lift is still open.  I walk Hege to the dining hall and to check the lifts and they are still running….cool.  As I go back to get the gear (thinking to myself “how am I going to carry all this stuff to the lift by myself”) Marek walks into camp.

…

Meanwhile, Marek has also had a couple of interesting adventures on the way down.  When he finished the traverse and got to the point where many people had cut the corner (I didn’t), Marek and Bjoern figure they will cut the corner too.  All of a sudden they stops in their tracks.  All the traffic has uncovered a 7m (23ft) deep crevasse that people had just been walking over and luckily not falling in that had been hidden by the freshly fallen snow.  Marek says something to Oxana who directs him back up to the path and marks the area with warning wands.  

 

The whole way down Marek’s boots were digging into his leg bone every step of the way and he was tired.  In fact, Juarez, Bjoern and Marc are also running a bit slow.  They can all get down, no problem; but not in time to get to the lodge tonight.  It is looking like they will have to spend another night at the Barrels.  Somewhere above the Pastukhov Rocks Marek asks Oxana if they can get a snow cat to come up to the Rocks.  Again, in true Oxana fashion she answers, “No, that will cost a lot of money”.  Boots suck and energy is gone, but money we got.  Marek, Bjoern and Marc pay for a snow cat; Juarez refuses it and hikes the rest of the way down.  This is how they get to camp at 3:10.

…

Marek is trying to find out what everyone else is doing (going down, staying here) when I tell him that the lifts are still running and I have all our gear packed so let’s get outta here.  He checks the barrel and approves of my packing.  Bjoern packs up quickly and the 3 of us head to the lifts.  We run into Oxana and she wants us to go together with the rest of the group.  We are nervous the lifts will stop and tell her we will meet her at the next station down.  She tells us to pay and she will pay us back later.  I ignore this and just tell the lift operator that Oxana with Pilgrim Tours is coming and will pay.  When we get to the next station they are not amused and want us to pay, but we sit down to wait for Oxana and this seems to satisfy them.  Are you ready for the punchline?  Well, the lifts stay open until 4:30 that day, so I ran around like a lunatic for nothing.

 

When we get back to the lodge we check into our rooms, sort the hastily packed gear and take a shower.  We go into the market at the base of the lifts for a beer before dinner.  At dinner we had very good Borscht followed by way, way, way overcooked chicken.  We went to the bar for a beer, while the Norwegians snuck out for a steak (I would have liked one) before joining us.  It only took me one beer to be falling asleep so I went up to the room early.  Some of the others stay out late and even go bar hopping and falling into holes injuring themselves.