Seb - 2 Poles and 7 Summits

Elbrus -Europe

Background

This was mid way through my expeditions and I pretty confident that I had the technical skills, experience and fitness to deal with this. 

The Mountain

Elbrus is a pretty straight forward mountain. There is nothing technical and it is not that high. The main problem tends to be that expeditions tend to be quite short and it can be tricky to fully acclimatise in that time. Also the camp site (the Barrels) is a reasonable distance from the summit so the final ascent is a long, cold one through the night - don't underestimate it!

Decisions

There are two decisions in planning for this. The first is acclimatisation time. There is not much of a similar height near to Elbrus and it can be hard to get sufficient time at the Barrels, but an extra day there can really help prepare you for the summit. 

The second is using the snow cats. Pretty much everyone now seems to take one of the snow cats from the Barrels up the long, slog of a slope to the summit ridge - I think that we were the only people out of a few hundred not do so on our summit day. How you can claim to have climbed a mountain when you have been transported all but the last few hundred metres is beyond me, but, at the same time, this is probably the only way that some people will make it. 

Route

Cable car to base camp at the Barrels, then straight up the slope to the base of the right hand summit, along the shoulder to the main summit and then the final slope to the top.