Success! We did it!
We officially stood on top of the highest point in Europe. It was the nicest day I've ever had here on Elbrus- clear, calm, and great overall climbing conditions! Add on top of that our local guide Vladimir (hero) not only negotiated a snow cat ride of a life time, but he broke trail all day to help us achieve our goal. The team did a great job of climbing and taking care of themselves all day.
We enjoyed the summit and amazing views for about 20 minutes before descending back to camp, where we had a quick lunch and headed all the way back to Cheget for hot showers and beer! We have just wrapped up the evening with dinner and are headed out to explore the Cheget nightlife.
RMI Guide Casey Grom and a happy crew!
Hello from Mt. Elbrus -
Today the team got up a little early to make use of the firm snow to practice using our crampons, and we had a refresher on self-arrest too. After our morning session we enjoyed breakfast and then relaxed near camp chatting with other climbers till lunchtime. Shortly after lunch we had our summit talk where we discussed all aspects of the climb to come and then spent the remainder of the afternoon packing and finalizing all of our gear we will need for the climb.
Everyone has their face mask ready in case the wind howls like it did on my last climb. And we even managed to play a game of trivia where the winner gets to make a satellite phone call from the summit. So if there's someone out there who's favorite musical group is Krewella and loves Simba. Then expect a call around 1am. Which will be roughly 8:30-9am for us.
We'll check in again tomorrow after our big climb.
Wish us luck!
RMI Guide Casey Grom and crew
It was another beautiful day here on Mt. Elbrus! We woke to clear skies, calm winds and a amazing view of the enormous Caucasus range. We had our standard breakfast of porridge, boiled eggs, assorted meats, cheeses and coffee.
Today was our planned acclimatization day and the team set shortly after 8:30 and hiked for about 3 hours uphill and reached about 15,000', which was a new record for some! Along the way we ran into former RMI guide Craig Van Hoy. It was nice seeing an old friend and chatting with other Americans. We enjoyed the views took a few photos and then headed back down to camp for another amazing hot lunch cooked up by Russia's finest, Albina! The remainder of the afternoon has been spent relaxing in camp, listening to the thunder outside and taking naps.
All is well and the team is looking forward to doing a little technical training and resting tomorrow.
RMI Guide Casey Grom and crew
I see you’re making great progress, Liz I know you’re having a great time! Could someone explain to me what porridge is? I can wikipidea it or I can dig deep in my chef roots, but can you have someone please explain!
We started our day at a reasonable hour with breakfast at 8:00 am; we had porridge, fried eggs, and of course plenty of the Starbucks coffee we brought along.
After breakfast, we finished the remainder of our packing and headed over to the gondola and hitched a ride further up the mountain to our new base camp. Two gondola rides and one super long single chair lift delivered us to our new home just over 12,000'. Our new home is basically a retrofitted shipping container, and to be honest it's reasonably comfortable.
We had a nice lunch prepared by our wonderful cook, Albina. She's a great cook, but I think is a little over worked as she's been up here since my last trip.
With our gondola and chair lift rides this morning, we needed some post-lunch exercise so we headed out to stretch our legs and continue our acclimatization process by hiking for a little over an hour and gaining well over a thousand feet of elevation. Everyone did great and we are now back at camp watching the evening clouds roll in and getting ready for dinner.
RMI Guide Casey Grom
All is well here in the Baksan Valley, at the base of Mt. Elbrus. We've settled into our comfortable hotel here in Cheget, which doubles as a ski town in the winter. Picture a lush green valley surrounded by many large snowy mountains!
We woke to a beautiful morning and finally we were able to get out and stretch our legs a bit. We made the most of the local ski lifts, (to save our knees of course) and hiked up the neighboring peak to start our acclimatization. It started off a little cloudy today, but eventually cleared for some decent views of Mt. Elbrus. After our ascent we headed back down to town for a nice lunch and headed over to the local climbing shop to pick up a few last minute things. We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing, getting our bags packed and just wrapped up another enjoyable Russia dinner with some wonderful Georgian soup.
All is well here and we'll check in again tomorrow!
RMI Guide Casey Grom and crew
Hello again everyone
It was one long day of travel here in Russia for us again. We departed Moscow moderately early and flew southward to the town of Mineralnye Vody (which means mineral water) where we were meet by our local guide Vladimir. We loaded all of our duffels into the waiting van and continued heading south towards Mt. Elbrus. This part of Russia is very rural and the countryside is mostly used for agriculture purposes, especially sunflowers! It has been heavily influenced by the Turkish and is there for predominately Islamic. It's beautiful here, but it also seems a bit behind the times when compared to Moscow or St. Petersburg. The team enjoyed the views, had a little fun, but everyone is ready for some exercise!
RMI Guide Casey Grom and crew
Hello everyone and welcome to RMI's July 25th Mt. Elbrus trip!
After some very long flights the team safely arrived yesterday, we briefly touched base about today's plan before folks retired to catch up on some much needed sleep.
Today we had our official team meeting over breakfast at our hotel. It was hard to concentrate while enjoying plenty of fresh bread, cheeses, meats, juice and other delightful things. Once our bellies were full we stumbled out the door to explore the Kremlin and Red Square which is only a short distance away. A few folks visited Lenin's tomb and a few of us wandered around the area enjoying the site.
We met our tour guide around 10:30 am and spent much of the day with her visiting St. Basil's Cathedral, the Kremlin, and the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Our tour guide even took us on a brief tour of the amazing Moscow subway - it has a 194 different stops and most are elaborately decorated and incredibly clean! We did visit the famous Red Square but for unknown reasons it was closed and blocked off today.
Afterwards we took a short break where most of us took cat naps to help adjust to the almost 12 hour time change and then headed back out for a quick dinner before calling it a night.
Everyone is doing great!
RMI Guide Casey Grom and Team
Our final night in St. Petersburg!
The team had a great last day here in Russia, with a visit to several beautiful churches full of mosaics. We then visited the very famous Hermitage Museum, where we saw paintings and sculptures by many well-known artists including Picasso, Rembrandt, and even Da Vinci. We took a small break and wrapped up the day with a fantastic evening boat cruise to see this amazing city by water.
It's been a wonderful adventure here in Russia, but it's time to say our goodbyes and return to family and loved ones.
Thanks for following,
RMI Guide Casey Grom and crew
Hello everyone!
Today was our travel day from the mountain to St. Petersburg. It was a pretty long day with the four-hour bus ride to the airport and then a three-hour flight. It was a pretty uneventful day, but the team is doing very well. Everyone is happy to be here in this beautiful city and looking forward to our city tour tomorrow.
RMI Guide Casey Grom and crew
Enjoy that beautiful city! From underground in the subways to the glories of the Hermitage amid memories of the long siege—it is a glorious city. So glad you are having a chance to visit it. MA
Posted by: MaryAnn on 7/22/2014 at 8:32 am
Down off the mountain and now you get to visit a city that many of my friends and relatives want to visit or have visited and think it is great. Have fun and enjoy Mom and Granny
Posted by: Cornelia Granny on 7/22/2014 at 6:47 am
Wow. Looks like a clear sky and beautiful weather. Good for you. Congratulations!
Posted by: Fernando de Aragon on 8/2/2014 at 6:33 pm
Congratulations !!! Great summit picture. Thanks to the guides for everything. Enjoy your. success.
Posted by: Josie on 8/2/2014 at 9:41 am
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