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Flying on another holiday, first Christmas, then my birthday, now the 4th. Pretty good presents I would say. Things ran pretty smoothly at the airport, except we had to pack our carry ons pretty heavily. I spent the whole flight to Minneapolis thinking about Russia. After this trip, the word Russia will bring more to mind than vodka and big furry hats. It feels strange to be traveling to coutries across the globe, all for the sake of climbing. Overwhelming that my parents are putting all their faith in me, for my dreams. And of course its exciting, I mean, no drinking age? Connecting through Amsterdam? Oh yeah. No I'm kidding, it's all work here. So a nice easy start to the trip, hopefully it all runs this well! |
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Now here is where the party starts. Kind of. I fell asleep in the middle of the floor of the Amsterdam airport, and woke up witih a crowd of elder Russians staring at me. My fly wasn't even down either. We then boarded our flight to Moscow, which I slept through the whole way (why so tired?). In Moscow we had to check through customs, which I had been apprehending the whole way, but it turned out to be pretty easy, no cavity searches, no Russian yelling. After that we had to pick up our luggage and step out into the world. Immediately we were attacked by taxi drivers. And apparently we had to find the cheapest one, because we had to transfer to the domestic airport. We found a good guy, drove to the airport, checked in no problem, and flew to Mineralny Vody. Easy. Then, right off the plane some police officers asked for our passports and hotel vouchers. After we were allowed to enter the airport, we discovered a tiny hut pretty much. The whole airport is like 2 rooms, one for arrivals/departures, and one for luggage pick up. Our bags decided to be the last off the plane, so the airport lady was very displeased with us by the time we left. We found the driver to take us to our hotel, and walked about 20 minutes to where he had found free parking. Then, we had the task of loading up the car, a teeny little sedan. Take in mind we have 3 well filled large duffel bags, and a big ski bag. Looks like we have a problem. We managed to fit the duffels, but then had to give our skis to a van who apparently was going the same place as us. The hard part about all this is that many of the people don't speak English. Kind of a problem, because we don't speak Russian...but it's also kind of fun, like a giant game of cherades; eventually the point gets across. So on the 3 hour drive to Terksol, the village where our hotel is, we hit about 50 police checkpoints. It was crazy, we would get rolling, then have to stop and hand out our passports and papers. Eventually we made it, got in our room, and passed out. |
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Today, just sort of a chill day at Terksol village. Getting to enjoy the culture and people. The village is right in the valley floor of a drainage in the Caucasus Mountains in southwest Russia. The mountains are beautiful, the whole landscape is beautiful. The tall pine trees all around in the valley are like Montana, but glacier covered peaks peek out at you like mini Himalayan’s. Rolling foothills nearby are exactly how I imagined Europe, they’re just missing sheep. The skiers and snowboarders are just like being at a terrain park, and the techno is like a club. In the short hours we’ve spent here, I’ve noticed that the people here play any music at any time. Heavy metal plays along with American rap, and classical Russian singing, all at breakfast. It keeps it interesting. So in our wanders today we checked out a couple peaks that have good looking routes on them. We have some extra days here after our summit, so we are looking around for good climbs and don’t need to look far. |
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Very interesting day today, another one of those days where at night, the morning seems like a different day. If that’s not too confusing…I like em. We packed up to go to the mountain, so enough for a few days. On the mountain we’ll be staying in huts, and we are planning on summiting from the bottom huts, so no tent needed. Getting up to the huts is a lot different than I thought. We first rode a gondola, then a mini-tram, and finally a sketchy, clinkity, one-man chair. Not too much work. The huts are pretty ramshackle--metal barrels with bunks in them. And here is where our walk will start. There are two camps higher on the mountain and there is also a terrain park, which has a Red Bull competition going on for the next week. We’ll start from here for the summit, so it will be about 6,500 feet of elevation gain. Pretty solid. So we decided to go to the park. I skied a little bit, Damian hit on girls. He was successful I guess, he got me an interview and photoshoot with one later. But skiing park was pretty rad in mountaineering gear--according to Damian I stuck out like a sick thumb. Back at the huts, we caught a bit of a surprise, Russians drinking mate! We were immediately friends. So we sat around all afternoon chatting and drinking mate. Hopefully we are going to go to Moscow a day early or so to meet up with them and hit up some rock gyms. We all had a big group dinner (we made everyone Denali burritos, and got them hooked), then went and tramped. As in trampoline. Theres one to practice tricks on up at the park. This was pretty unexpected, a terrain park, and now a tramp. Pretty cool, keep practicing even not at home. |
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SUMMIT DAY!
Woke up this morning at 4:30, hoping to head out at 5. We drank some mate, ate some M&Ms, and were ready to head up to the summit of Europe! Most people who climb here either go for the summit from a higher camp, or take a snowcat up to the higher camp. Us? Oh no, we go on foot from here. So we left the huts moving pretty fast, in tennis shoes. Beautiful morning. Undescribable. But I’ll try anyways. As soon as the sun touched the sky everything turned shades of pink and orange. The craggy mountain peaks all around looked blood stained. Small purple and blue clouds dotted the valleys, hiding all but the highest greenery. The snow on the glacier turned orange under our feet, silhouetting our long shadows. The snow was hard, so we moved quickly up past the high camps and started passing people. The whole route is visible from the huts almost. The trail winds up past 2 camps, up a long headwall, traverses at the base of the cone of the east summit to a pass, then turns west up another headwall to the summit plateau. At the top of the first headwall we started to see people. All of them were just staring at us in our tennis shoes. Nearly every other climber was in double plastic boots with crampons and ice axes. Starting across the traverse we quickened our pace as the slope lessened a little bit. It was solid cruising, just walking and thinking. Its funny, this whole day didn’t really feel like a summit day. It was so nonchalant....Just having fun in the mountains. On Everest, there was so much build-up for summit day. But on this peak, we just arrived and went. No big deal. It’s a different feeling, but pretty cool...like a backcountry hike for a ski run. We hit the summit running, literally. We didn’t have a problem with the altitude, and were topped out 4 and a half hours after leaving the huts. We dropped right from the top, sunny blue skies cheering us on to go ski a south facing ridge. Later we learned it’s a probable first descent, pretty cool. It was really fun, skiing down, having the time of our lives pretty much, filming each other, racing, it was nice. We made it back to the barrels about an hour after we left the summit and just chilled. This is a pretty awesome place I decided. Ski park, summit in 4 hours, come back to drink a Red Bull, and lay in the sun. Quite a bit different than all the other trips. No stress, easy rollin, sunny days. We decided to go all the way back to the hotel, had a shower, and slept in comfy beds. All the people at the hotel couldn’t believe we had summited already, they were like “Are you sure you summited?" |
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Another very relaxing day at the hotel, slept in late, (about noon), did some homework, and made a video of our summit push. Its' pretty cool, hopefully I’ll be able to get it onto my website, it is just a bunch of video and pictures, so it's easy to see what we’re up to, and what things are like in Russia a little bit. |
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Red Bull park competition today. We rode all the chairs up to the park, and I was getting excited to compete park, but it got called off. Instead, they had a giant jam session, where everyone was just skiing all the features with as many hits as they wanted. It's cool to see how similar things are on the other side of the world. I was talking with some local guys about ski movies --ski movies I watch at home, that these guys all see too. It's cool. And the whole competition was pretty much the same as ones in the US, too: giant speakers blasting rap, people laying and sitting everywhere watching the action. Then also I was interacting with the culture pretty full on, sitting at the top with all the dudes, watching everyone go, everyone watching me go. Still in my mountaineering gear though. They thought it was pretty cool actually, me being able to do what I did in that equipment. The day was overcast giving the whole valley and glacier a different feel, a sort of waiting feel. Instead of the bright vivid colors that the sunlight brought out, everything was grey, with all the peaks shrouded in clouds. Damian shot some photos, tried jumping a little bit, and otherwise just chilled up there while I jumped. Back to Terksol, beef kabobs, coke, and comfy beds. |
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Woke up at 7:30, sunlight hit me in the eye. So I woke up Damian and we decided it to be a perfect day for hitting the east summit. The east summit is 20 meters lower than the west (this is all Elbrus). We were on the gondola at 9:00. 10:00, and we were starting up the glacier. Today, we decided on a full on speed ascent attack. No stops, no goofing around. Well, it's hard not to goof around with us, but we tried. We stopped once to put on gloves, and once to give a guy water to make it down. About a quarter of the way across the traverse, we cut up a ridge breaking trail for the summit. Damian put on his skis and skinned up- well tried. The snow was being difficult. I took a different approach and scrambled/postholed my way through rocks on the ridge. I thought it was pretty fun, though it probably drained my energy a bit. We hit the summit 4 hours after we left the barrels, so a half hour better than last time, even with breaking trail up the last face. The summit was cold. So much colder than the west one. By the time we left, we both were jumping up and down. The skiing down was awesome. The first chute we dropped was windblown soft snow, crossing the headwall was a bit sketchy ice, then dropping down the headwall all the way to the huts was like corn skiing in the Wasatch. Cruising down everyone was watching us, wishing they were skiing down. The sun was up, throwing our shadows in front of us, like a ghost just barely out of reach. Everything was orange, but an afternoon sort of orange, a hot orange. All the surrounding peaks were wreathed in clouds, yet the clouds weren’t on our mountain, they were only decoratives on the other ones. Back to the hotel by 4:00, so about 7 hours, hotel to hotel. And both of us feel good enough to do it again tomorrow! |
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Homework day. Learning about American Government in Russia, interesting. So we hung out at the hotel, except one venture to go get lunch. For lunch in the village we always go to this one little place for shish-ka-bobs, salad, Coca-cola, and grass. They put this grass stuff on everything. Meat? Oh yeah, salads? You betcha. Not only does it taste funny, but it gets everywhere. I'll look forward to meals without it. The reason we don't eat at the hotel, is that two hungry climbers need more than quarter sized steaks for dinner, with enough grass for a medium sized hamster. Off the subject of strange food, we get to people watch at lunch. Its good stuff here, watching people of another nation. Just everything they do is different, like you don't see too many couples walking around. Its mostly same gender groups, or families, not too many couples. How they dress is so different, how they treat dogs, how they cook, (you get to watch), and everything else. We've had a harsh trip so far, climbing from the hotel, sleeping in beds, eating whatever we can find, tough life. |
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Happy birthday Angel!! Today we had quite an adventure. We left the hotel, and started a traverse over a bunch of peaks, to loop around the valley and end up at the Elbrus ski resort. Big day we hoped. We didn't accomplish the whole traverse, but we had a lot of fun. We scrambled and climbed on exposed towers leaning over glaciers, we discovered a peak broken in half by an earthquake, we crossed though waterfalls-- it was very diverse. The broken peak was actually pretty crazy. The whole thing was a jumble of broken, loose rocks stacked on each other. Touch one fridge sized block, and 4 more move above it. It definitley kept us on our toes. After the whole day of scrambling and climbing, we descended to grassy hills with flowers and butterflies. Then we put our helmets on. (rock fall danger). The whole climb was right on the border of Georgia and Russia, which are in dispute. Because of this it is a big deal to be on the border, so we got checked twice by military outposts. The guys would stroll up, fully geared with huge machine guns and their arms crossed, and start asking us questions in Russian. Speak English? Some of them do, some of them don't.
All day, I just couldn't help but laugh. I'm just having so much fun with life right now, traveling all over the world, with supporitng family and friends. Every day is an adventure, at home and out here. New friends, new places, its awesome. And today was a perfect example of how I feel. We were so free, wandering and exploring a mountain range in Russia, going wherever our feet took us, probing the unknown in a foreign county. This whole trip has been amazing like that, we have had so much time to do whatever we want, to do things not on our agenda untill we we're doing them. Great day in the hills. At the hotel, our muscles are just tired in a good way, in a way that lets you know they've been used well. A hot shower, relaxing, and good times. |
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