Elbrus - Part 2

July 2017, Russia - In 2006 Outside Magazine voted the toilet on the slopes of Mt Elbrus as the worst in the world. And here I was, about to take the plunge for the first time. We’d been hunkered down in Igor’s hut at 13,500 feet for two days waiting out a mild storm before making our summit attempt. I’d been holding on as long as possible but the time had come to face the music. It was a beautiful spot, visually at least, but 20 feet away (and upwind) I could smell it. Before opening the door, I took a deep gulp of air, thinking I could hold my breath the entire time. But at that altitude, I started seeing stars within seconds and figured it was better to endure the smell than pass out on the floor covered in mud, snow, and god only knows what.

The wind was blowing up the roughly cut hole in the floor and the blast of freezing air created conditions not terribly conducive to the task at hand. It took a surprising amount of mental fortitude to power through the moment and accomplish my mission. “The summit will be a piece of cake compared to that” I joked as I walked back into the relatively sanitary confines of the hut. Igor chuckled… apparently, poop jokes are universally appreciated.

Back in the hut, sited where the infamous Priut Hut had been located before it burned down in 1998, our climbing team was passing the time in style by playing a variety of card games and drinking copious amounts of tea. While the hut was in pretty poor condition, it was quite spacious and comfortable by mountaineering standards. There were bunks for sleeping bags, a gas stove, heat, and a large picnic table. The hut provided great protection from the wind howling outside, and during the storm, we were quite comfortable with plenty of space to move around and stretch out. I cursed it at the time, but the hut was positively palatial compared to how I’d spend weather days on Denali a few years later.

Igor’s hut, however, was more windproof than it was waterproof. The hut, after all, was a modified shipping container that had spent the last 20+ years on the harsh alpine slopes of Mt. Elbrus. One afternoon, while most of the team was napping, I noticed that the plastic garbage bag that has been duct-taped to the ceiling started to fill with water and sag like a giant bladder right over where my dad was sleeping. Alerting him to the impending danger we quickly mobilized and found a pot to collect the dripping water just as the bag burst open. Fearing history would repeat itself, my dad scooted away from the leak and understandably encroached on my space from then on. And so, the wonderfully wacky experience of climbing in Russia continued.

"We woke early and donned our gear, but after more than two hours of waiting for the weather to clear, conditions were still poor as strong gusts of wind rattled the window panes and shook the outhouse."

One of the clients in the group, who I’ll keep anonymous, had a hard time making it up the 1,500 feet from the top of the ski lifts to the hut. It just wasn’t in the cards for him to attempt the summit, and so he and Mike agreed that it would be best for him to head down once the weather eased up a little bit. On the morning of day three, he headed down the mountain with Sasha who would come back up and rejoin us later that afternoon.

On the morning of day four, still at Igor’s hut, we thought the weather might break enough to give the summit a shot. We woke early and donned our gear, but after more than two hours of waiting for the weather to clear, conditions were still poor as strong gusts of wind rattled the window panes and shook the outhouse. Alas, another waiting day was in store for us.

Personally, I find these weather days to be some of the most challenging while in the mountains. It takes a lot of energy and mental preparation to get ready to climb and to go through those motions just to stand down for another 24 hours is very demoralizing. This is especially the case on Elbrus when you know it means one more rotation to the toilet… Thankfully we had a terrific group and everyone kept a positive attitude, taking the day as an opportunity to extend our multi-day card tournament.

Day five was showtime. The team woke up just after midnight and we began readying ourselves for the summit attempt. I reluctantly gulped down some instant oatmeal for breakfast and meticulously worked through my packing list for the climb: water, snacks, tons of layers, gloves, mitts, glasses, goggles, ski poles, ice axe, and so forth. The group decided the day before that we’d take a snowcat, a truck-sized machine equipped for travel on steep snow slopes, from Igor’s hut up to the Pastukhov Rocks at 15,400 feet. I agonized over this for a while, not sure if that was considered cheating or not, but eventually agreed on that course of action since the climbing on that portion of the route was not terribly aesthetic. We’d walked up there a few days prior for an acclimatization hike and it was basically a groomed slope with snow machines whizzing by at all hours and clogging the air with two-stroke exhaust fumes. That section was definitely worth skipping in hindsight and I have no regrets.

We loaded onto the snowcat, still in the dark of night, and “drove” up the mountain for 10-15 minutes. As the cat moved up the slope, the temps steadily dropped and the wind started to pick up with big gusts blowing spindrift down the back of my neck. It was a rude way to start the day but was thrilled to be there. We got off the snowcat at the top of the rocks and took a few minutes to get organized and ready for the climb. With just a hint of dawn rising in the east, we started up with Mike in the lead and Sasha taking up the rear. Because there are no crevasses on this portion of the route, we were able to climb unroped and with ski poles instead of ice axes which made for faster and more comfortable climbing.

The team was really strong and everybody was making quick work of the initial slope which ramped up from around 30 to 40 degrees in steepness. At 16,000 feet we passed an abandoned snowcat, half-buried in the ice, that by the looks of it must have been stuck up there for a decade or more. It reminded me of Han Solo frozen in carbonite!

A little ways higher we took our first rest break and were able to enjoy the incredible view that was coming into view behind us as the jagged and inspiring caucuses mountains were being lit up in the morning sun. From this vantage point, I felt quite fortunate that Mt. Elbrus, with it’s gentle slopes and relative benignity, was the tallest peak in Europe instead of one of the other more foreboding mountains in the range.

The wind was still blowing hard and the sun was nowhere near high enough to be shining on us. For warmth, I put on my big over-mitts, a first for me in fact, and swapped out my glacier glasses for goggles which would provide more warmth and wind protection for my face. This change-up made for much more comfortable climbing for the new few hours as we traversed upward and to climber’s left towards the large “Sedlowina Saddle” between Elbrus’s distinct East and West Summits.

Like most Elbrus climbers, our objective was the West Summit at 18,510 feet, just fifty feet taller than the East peak. The traverse took much longer than I anticipated and the relative “sameness” of the terrain, mixed with the cold temperatures, made time pass much more slowly than usual. Only after 4 or more hours of climbing, which felt like an eternity, did we make it to our rest break in the saddle and enjoy the warmth of the sun for the first time.

Our team had spread out somewhat by this point but everyone was still in relatively close proximity to one another, no more than 5-10 mins apart. As I started to regain some warmth in my hands, we began uncoiling ropes and getting our ice axes out for the steep slope that led to the summit plateau. This portion of the route was fairly direct and ascended steeply up and slightly to climber’s right. We could see there was a fixed line in place near the top to protect against what appeared to be a “high consequence” portion of the route where a fall would drag a rope team over a pretty nasty looking boulder field of refrigerator-sized rocks. A small queue was starting to form below and above the fixed line as climbers clumsily tried to pass by one another at this bottleneck in the route.

"The wind was still blowing hard, kicking up bits of snow and ice off the ground and whipping them at gale force directly into our faces. A small collection of climbers on the summit came into view and my eyes welled up with tears knowing that I’d made it."

I was on Mike’s rope team with my dad and Dr. Paul Pottinger, who upon summiting Elbrus would complete his seven summits quest. “Hey dad, we’re the only slouches on this rope team who haven’t been atop Everest!” I shouted over the wind. Indeed, it was an honor to share a rope with those guys.

Sasha and her team were right behind us, and our two rope teams headed up the slope towards the fixed-line. Within minutes we’d made it to the bottom anchor of the fixed-line, but were blocked from moving upward due to the traffic jam we’d seen developing from below. To put it bluntly, the team in front of us was completely incompetent and once they were clipped into the fixed-line were taking an eternity to pass by the periodic anchors that secured the fixed-line to the mountain. For experienced climbers, the move of clipping past an anchor is quick and trivial. But the group in front of us was really struggling and one of their climbers kept falling down and lying prostrate in the snow every 30 seconds or so, thus blocking the route. “What a yard sale” I muttered in frustration to myself. Mike decided that we should pass them and so we briefly unclipped from the line and quickly went by on the uphill side. “That’s just a small taste of what the wait is like on Mt. Everest,” said Paul.

At the top of the fixed lines, we were just a stone’s throw from the summit. Sasha’s team had gotten stuck behind the slow-moving group and so we took a final rest break to wait for the second rope team to catch up. It took more than 15 minutes for the slow group to top out on the fixed lines and for Sasha and her team to meet up with us. By now, the group between us was climbing on their hands and feet, essentially crawling up the mountain on relatively flat ground. None of us viewed their situation as actually dire, more a demonstration of dramatic Russian flare than anything, and the sight coaxed a few sly grins from our crew.

Despite the entertaining “dramatization” playing out before us, I was itching to keep moving and could feel the pull of the summit just a few hundred feet away. After our rest break, we grabbed our bags and started up the final section to the small summit pyramid. The wind was still blowing hard, kicking up bits of snow and ice off the ground and whipping them at gale force directly into our faces. A small collection of climbers on the summit came into view and my eyes welled up with tears knowing that I’d made it. I let my dad get in front of me and paused to snap an absolutely epic picture of him walking up to the the summit. I relished the moment.

A few moments later, I walked onto the summit of Mt. Elbrus and was standing on the highest point in Europe.