The horseman

First, we headed out into a side-valley for acclimatization on a peak on the border with Georgia. This was an experience in itself. There was a local horse man who was to help us with our luggage, the horses carrying the luggage and tents. When we arrived, we were told to wait. It took 30 min before the horseman came and he was there only for a few minutes then said he’d be back. We waited for another 30 minutes, 1 hour, 1,5 hours and while our local guide got more and more frustrated, we were patiently waiting in the sun. Finally, the horse man came back. He seemed to be a bit drunk but he loaded up the luggage onto the horses and we could finally start to walk. It was a very nice trail with green grass and summer flowers along a little river that was running a little lower down than the trail.

Suddenly the horseman seemed to lose balance and fell off the track towards the river with the horse he was holding onto tightly. It was only a few meters down, but it did not look good. He got himself up onto the path again and we continued. Not very long after this, it happened again. This time he and the horse tumbled down a bit further down the rather steep hill towards the river. Now I realized what happened. He was more than a little drunk and he’d lost his balance and dragged the horse with him off the path! Not good. I was thinking to myself, I seriously hope this does not happen again. He needs to keep himself on the track.

Before I knew it, he’d again lost balance and he and the horse tumbled round and round down towards the river. I was afraid that the horse had been hurt – perhaps with a broken leg or something. I thought to myself, this has to stop. 

Thankfully a few of the boys in our team ran down towards them, helped them both up, and carried the luggage back up to the trail. One of them also took the horse’s bridle so the horse man could focus on walking by himself and not drag any of the horses down if he stumbled off the trail.

Fog'y aclimatization

We finally arrived at the campsite, pitched our tents, and cooked some dinner. It was a very green area, especially for this altitude, and we could see the glacier not too far from the camp. The peak we were heading for was yet not in view.

The following morning, we woke up to a low-hanging fog all around our tent. Not what we wanted. We decided to still go for our acclimatization trip as we needed that as part of our preparation for Elbrus. We got to a point on the glacier where our guide stopped us and said, “The fog is giving us such low visibility that we cannot continue. Let’s take a break, eat our lunch even though it is a bit early, and see what happens.” 

After the break, it was much better and we could continue, but only up to the ridge where we could see over to Georgia. There was too much fog for us to be able to continue to the summit. We sat there for 30 minutes or more to breathe in the thinner air before we returned down to our camp in the valley.

On our way back to Cheget, we stopped for lunch at a local restaurant. The weather was pleasant so we could sit outside in the sun at a large wooden table they had there. They had a big barbeque and cooked us one of the best barbequed meals I have ever had with meat and fresh vegetables.

What is mentionable was that on this acclimatization trip we’d seen a few places where there was anti-aircraft artillery stationed.

Moving up to the Barrels

The next day, we headed to the Azau station to take the lift up to the “Barrels” on Elbrus. A part of me felt it was a bit wrong to take the lift up, but that’s how it is at Elbrus. On this route, there is a single-person lift up to the Barrels at 3750m.

The Barrels (also called Garabashi) must have been amazing 20-40 years earlier. It was no longer luxurious but it was a dry place to sleep as an alternative to sleeping in a tent. This is where the snow stays all summer and where we stayed all the time. Previously, it had been normal to move higher up to  Priut–11 Hut at 4050m, but when we were there, there was no access to clean water at this location and we were told that people who had attempted to stay there had become sick because of that. So, the decision was to sleep at the Barrels for our time at the mountain. From here, we did further acclimatization climbs up to Pastukhov Rocks at 4670m before we were ready to head up to the summit.

A sad day for  the mountainering world

One of our rest days in the Barrels ended up being a very special day. We received news of the disaster at K2. We knew there were some Norwegians there and we waited more or less the whole day for information about how it was going with them. Our guide counted the hours from the time they were last seen or heard from, and it did not look good. I have to say that it was very special to sit at almost 4000m altitude knowing that southeast of us there were many people on a mountain at almost double our altitude doing their very best to survive what ended up being the worst single accident in the history of K2 mountaineering. Eleven people died.

The day that we could have gone to the summit the weather forecast was not good. Our guide decided to wait one day before attempting our summit push, which was a good decision as it was very windy with low visibility on the summit that day. An American team headed for the summit that day but not very successfully. Several people had to turn around because of the cold and one of them managed to lose his gloves and got severe frostbite on his fingers.