Cybercasts

Comrades, Family & Loved Ones,

Greetings from our hut on Mt Elbrus! We are comfortable and dry, but the day was quite wet.

We made it up it to the hut in a whiteout but managed to not get too drenched. Once settled, we practiced some skills- rope management, clipping fixed line, etc. We then headed out onto the glacier and into the whiteness. By then, the precip had tapered off, and it was great to get out on the snow and thread our way around the crevasses. You can see from the pics below that the views were still very white.

Our fingers are crossed for better weather tomorrow but either way we will have fun climbing up to Pastakov Rocks!

Talk to you tomorrow,

Carole and Vern Tejas

Comrades, Family & Loved Ones,

Luckily, the overnight rain tapered off this morning shortly before Team Red on Arrival started our hike. Did we mention that the word Red also means “beautiful” in Russian?

We walked up a carriage road towards an Observatory on the lower flanks of Elbrus. On the way up, we visited Maiden Hair Falls. Kevin wanted to frolic but he forgot to bring his bathing suit. We continued uphill, almost to the end of the road, and took a rest at the “Crazy Man House”, an abandoned shack where some decades ago it is said that a schizophrenic patient was successfully treated by a local doctor. After a sustaining lunch of barley soup and hichin (potato cheese stuffed pancakes), we had Knot Class where we practiced some of the basic climbing knots.

Super psyched to move up to the huts tomorrow, rain or shine!

Thanks for following!

Carole & Vern Tejas

Comrades, Family & Loved Ones,

After a careful and lengthy (very lengthy) deliberation, we are pleased to announce that our Team will be referred to hereafter as “Red on Arrival”. It was a Team decision, but Tracy won the prize for naming the Team (an awesome Elbrus coffee mug!) and Kevin won honorable mention (and a half deck of playing cards with scenes of Elbrus on the back) for spearheading the process.

Once named, Red on Arrival went for a nice hike today up Cheget Ridge.
The weather held out until after our hike was over, so we had some good views of down valley and Elbrus, including the lower part of our climbing route.

We descended to the Village of Cheget for lunch, which featured chicken shashlik, followed by more chicken shashlik.

Our gear check this afternoon went very smoothly so we had a couple of hours afterwards and before dinner to relax and browse in some of the local shops.

Tomorrow we are planning to continue our acclimatization by hiking on the lower reaches of Mount Elbrus itself. Everyone is doing well!

Thanks for following,

Carole & Vern Tejas

Friends, Family & Loved Ones,

Sad to leave Moscow but eagerly anticipating our climb, we flew this morning from Moscow to Mineralne Vody, the gateway to the Caucasus region. We had a lot of luggage…

We stopped for lunch (Azerbaijani crepes stuffed with cheese and herbs, or lamb). And stopped again for ice cream. We continued to drive further south to Terskol, a small village that we are using as our base for the climb. The drive became more and more scenic as we entered the Baksan Valley and drove alongside the rushing river of the same name.

Over dinner at our hotel, Vern briefed the group about our hike tomorrow.

We’re happy to be here and can’t wait to hit the trail tomorrow.

Thanks for following!

Carole & Vern Tejas