Cybercasts

Hi everyone.

This morning at 10:10 Russian time our Team reached the highest point in Europe! At this moment, all Team Members are back in the barrels resting.

Happy campers!

Elbrus greeted Team Emmy this morning with a spectacular deep blue sky and not a cloud in sight. The twin peaks of the mountain were a blinding white just perched over our camp here at 12,000′. Today is our last climbing day before our summit push in a few days so we have a long march this morning up to the Pastukov Rocks at just over 15,400′. (Though we did get a bit of help for the first 1,000′ from the most crowded, diesel belching snowcat on the mountain…)

Staring up at the summit, Team Guide Willie guided us up long glacial snowfields, focusing on moving as a team and proper crampon use on varying types of ice. Everyone on the team got up to our target rocks without a single problem, so a quick mountain lunch (cheese, salami, yogurt and cookies from breakfast) and we pointed downhill!! Several members of the team, Dora, Cyrus, George, Chimu and Willie all decided to get down the mountain a bit faster than the rest of us and went ‘glisading’ (French for sliding down on your bum…) the mellow face of Elbrus!

Back at camp, we all were nursing a few sore muscles, tending to blisters and dealing with oh so plush ‘facilities’. In the midst of this, though, team attitude is very high, specially after a visit today from the Aeroflot Gear Fairy. One unlucky member of our team – me – was fortunate enough to have Aeroflot completely lose my entire bag of climbing gear on the way from St. Petersburg. After four days of praying, and everyone very generously lending gear to get through the last two days of climbing, the bag arrived at basecamp today! A very impressive team effort to help a member – great work Team Emmy!

As we settled back into camp after a wonderful dinner by our camp cook, Sasha, our wonderful weather disappeared. Grey thunder clouds, a hail storm and the loss of clear skies doesn’t deter us. Bring it – we are ready…

This is Team Emmy on the ascent of Mt Elbrus.

Today we used two old trams and one chair lift to move all of our equipment and food up to 11,000′ to a place called the Barrels. The Barrels gets it name because many of the sleeping quarters are made of large old round oil barrels. We are sleeping in two shipping containers with 8 bunk beds.

After lunch we ascended farther up the mountain to 13,000′ for acclamation then returned to the Barrels.

Lots of love to my beautiful wife Pam, my beautiful daughters, and my wonderful family.

Love,
Marshall

PS Emmy and Mom are doing well.

Good day all,

Today was the second acclimatization hike to the observatory before our gondola ride tomorrow to the barrels. Since we really don’t care about the numbers, you won’t hear about them anymore.

It was a great day for hiking with very clear skies. This truly is a beautiful country. The deep gorges and high peaks make for a lot of rushing water. Part way up the team broke into two groups to see if we could reach the observatory generally around the same time. While we ended up being 20 minutes off, each group had outstanding views. Some of us walked through miles and miles of flower covered mountainside and under a natural stone arch passing a memorial along the way. The first group climbed through the valley and had closeup views of the avalanche barriers and waterfall. After the climb to the observatory we made a decent down a gravel road and took time to play under a waterfall. Many of us went underneath the falls for the opportunity to get wet and cool off. It made for a great photo op as well.

We had a late lunch at a trout farm where one could catch and eat your own fish. Our meal was a little lighter as we needed to save room for supper which was 2 1/2 hours later.

One of the more important lessons we learned today was to never ask Willie to get you a drink…check with Mario and Dora for details. Yes is Willie go and get your drinks!!!

On a more personal note, I received word that I became the proud grandfather of Emersyn (Emmy) Sophia weighing in at 5lbs. 9ozs. and 20” long. Mom and Emmy are doing very well.

The team graciously agreed to name the team in her honor, so henceforth, we are TEAM EMMY. I am indebted to each of our team members for this tribute.

Looking forward to a great week.

Thomaskosky

Hello everyone,

Today was the first of two acclimatization hikes before moving onto Mount Elbrus. We took it nice and slow gaining a good 3051 feet in a total of 4 hours, 3 minutes, and 33 seconds over a distance of 5.29 miles. Out total moving time was 2 hours, 50 minutes, 31 seconds…. but who’s keeping track, right?!

Along the way, we were rewarded with amazing views of the surrounding snow capped mountains. While hiking, we took an unscheduled break to photograph signage warning of the border area and to keep out. On one of our breaks, clouds parted at the right time and just enough to give us a peak of the summit of Mount Elbrus. At the top, around 10,000 feet, we took a moment to snap a few group pictures before making our way down. Instead of nice and slow, we raced down the mountain over scree and brush in a record time of 31 minutes, 45 seconds. Just kidding! We took a nice and lazy descent using the ski lifts and going out on a limb by crashing through some overgrown trees.

For lunch, we indulged on barbecue lamb and some of us even enjoyed a 5642 beer, or Mount Elbrus beer. (The 5642 is a reference to the summit height in meters) We ended our day by making our way to our hotel just before the rain started.

After a brief time to clean up, our guide Willie went to each of our rooms for a detailed gear check. Our evening concluded with a delicious dinner of fish soup and stuffed peppers with potatoes.

Alessandro