Elbrus August 2005
At the end of the August 2005, I traveled to Russia to climb Elbrus (5642m, 18,510 feet), the highest peak in Europe, and the second of my seven-summit-dream pursuit. I successfully reached the summit on Sept 2 amid the worst weather I’ve experienced in mountains.
There were three people on my team – Damien from Australia, Sami from UAE, and myself. We arrived at the foot of Elbrus on Aug 28 and met with our Ukrainian guide Oksana. For the next three days, we gradually hiked up to 4800m to acclimatize and moved our base camp to the Barrels at 3800m.
The fourth day was a rest day to prepare for summit. We did a light hike up to Diesel Hut at 4050m again. We have had blue sky and bright sun shine during the past few days that I was able to snap some happy pictures. But weather started turning later that day. By the late afternoon, to walk the 20 meters to the toilet, I needed to put on more layers than I was wearing while hiking at 4800m the previous day. The forecasted weather for the next few days was only getting worse, so Oksana decided that we can’t wait. We are going tonight! I was very cheerful at dinner time. The extra challenge of bad weather got me both nervous and more excited.
I was too excited that I stayed awake almost all night. At our 3am breakfast, I tried to keep myself relaxed, drank as much water as I could and put down as much solid cereals as I could hold in my stomach. It was windy and cold outside, so I put on all the clothes I have, with an extra windproof fleece layer under my heavy duty Gortex shell.
A snow cat dropped us off at Pastuckhov Rocks at 4800m, and we started moving up the steep slope shortly before 5am. Wind was blowing hard from the west, filled with icicles and snow, and slashed hard on any exposed skin. About one hour or more into the hike, sun started coming up. Despite the heavy clouds on our mountain, it shined sharply bright from my right side that I felt I could be blinded by just a glimpse. So I had to force my face to the left side to brace for the hash wind. Air became thinner the higher we went. Balancing between gasping for air and avoiding frost bite on the face became a delicate game. I frequently pulled down my balaclava to catch a few deep breaths then quickly covered up. From my past experience, I was expecting toasty hot once sun came up and was planning to take off the fleece once I started moving at a good pace. This time it was different. As day got brighter and we went higher, the wind also got stronger. The heat generated by my movement was instantly carried away by wind, I was left shivering all the way despite the multiple windproof layers. I made constant effort to wiggle my fingers and toes to *keep in touch* with them. I also tried to touch my nose and ears from time to time to make sure they were still there.
The trail above Pastuckhov Rock was a very steep. Most people moved in one line at similar pace while a few gradually dropped behind. It was said that once passed this section, it would be a long flat traverse. I could see people started turning left from far away, and thought that would be the end to this relentless vertical climb. What seemed so close actually was hours away. Patience is such a virtue for any mountaineers. To think about it, it takes 1 hour to move up 200 meters vertically for average person at such altitude. So anything visible (when visibility is good) is actually as far as star! I kept my self patient by having my mind occupied. I kept encouraging myself with my memories of the hard trainings I had done in the famous New England winter on Mt Washington. I also went through every detail of my climbing on Cotopaxi and Kilimanjaro, on both of which I was surprised that I could make it. Being patient is also very important to coordinating breath rhythm with pace. It would be exhausting once these two are out of synch.
After a forever hour, I moved to the “turning point”, but only to discover that the so called *flat* traverse was still a long relentless upslope, only slightly less steep than the previous section. So I gave up hope for anything *flat*, and prepared myself for none-stop upslope. It was so cold that we were not allowed to stop for anything. “You will be frozen to death if you stop”, Oksana kept telling me. A few people stopped for gear adjustment, but became too cold to move on afterward and ended up backing down.
Finally, I was rewarded about a hundred steps of real flat trail to arrive at the Saddle, the 5400m low point between the east and the west summit. I have become very tired after the none-stop battling with the wind and shivering in the cold that I was walking as if I had had a full bottle of vodka. Barely able to keep my balance, I felt ready to drop dead at any moment. A lot of people turned around at this point. Summit was still two hours away, and wind kept getting stronger. Though we were just 200m below both summits, we could see none of them through the fog.
For a mountaineer, there is only a fine line between mental toughness and sound judgment. When I climbed Cotopaxi, my first mountain, I only knew to go for summit, thought mental toughness is everything. Later, I learned “summit is optional, coming down safely is mandatory”. “Mountain will always be there, don’t kill yourself on this one” is often what I heard. Learning to say “no” was a big step for me. On most mountains, more deaths happened on the way down than on the way up. But if one never takes any risk, he or she could never become a successful mountaineer. It takes experience to learn the balance between the two sides.
At this point, seeing many stronger people turned around, I was prepared for any verdict. But from the bottom of my heart, I wanted up. I said, “I’m really tired”. Oksana replied, “Everyone is tired here. You want up or down?” Having had no food no drink for the past 4.5 hours, I barely had enough strength to squeeze out “up”. Oksana encouraged cheerfully, “You are still strong. Let’s go!”
I have never appreciated so much for that little encouragement at such moment. I couldn’t believe how I moved up another forever steep slope and pulled through another 2 hours to make to the summit. When we were approaching the summit, it started to blow really hard, blizzard, fog. Visibility reduced to only a few meters. I couldn’t see what the summit was like until I was standing there, and immediately crashed in front of the summit sign. Weather was turning worse and worse really fast, we had to descend immediately after just one photo. This was the summit that I stayed for the shortest!
On descending, wind knocked me off the trail a couple times. The fog became so thick that we had to rely on Oksana’s GPS and experience to find our way through the few-meter’s visibility. We also picked up several people who got lost and were hiding behind rocks. Had Oksana not been there, not sure how many of us could have come out of this mountain alive that day.
Of the 20-30 people set off for the summit that day, only 8 made to the summit, and I was the only female and probably the weakest in physical strength among all people there. There’re people who made Denali or Aconcagua but didn’t make this one. Many people under-prepared for the weather and came back with frost bites. Physical strength is not the determine factor on mountains.
The lesson I learned here will carry me a long way towards my journey to the rest of the seven summits and my life.