A as we were going to press, our team of intrepid readers on the Trek & Mountain Elbrus ‘13 expedition were arriving back from Russia having completed a north-south traverse of the mountain. The summit eluded them unfortunately due to white-out conditions on summit day, but the team made a magnificent effort to cross the saddle and make it down safely on the south side.
Trek & Mountain’s second Reader Expedition (our first was to Kilimanjaro in January this year), sponsored by Berghaus, set out to climb Europe’s highest peak by the most challenging route possible – by starting on the remote north side of the mountain, and climbing to the saddle between Elbrus’ two summits, continuing to the main summit, before retracing the route back to the saddle and descending down the south side. In the end the summit proved to be ‘a ridge too far’ but as expedition leader Gavin Bate said; “Doing the traverse with full packs was in itself a major achievement and summit day was a really big challenge and a success. Everyone made it over the top, with a high point of 5400 metres.”
You can read all about the expedition in next month’s issue of Trek & Mountain, and we have plenty of video to share with you too, courtesy of our intrepid cameraman Oz (who, to his credit, was climbing his first peak overseas). In the meantime, we’d like to thank Gavin and his team at Adventure Alternative for doing such a great job in organising and leading the expedition, and to Berghaus for providing the team with terrific kit which performed superbly in some harsh conditions. Finally we’d like to congratulate the Elbrus ‘13 team on a fantastic effort – you did us proud!
RELATED LINKS
www.berghaus.com
www.adventurealternative.com