23rd - First day on summit trip

Today the last trip started where the end goal is to reach the summit of Elbrus. As we are staying at Diesel Hut the entire time and we won’t be doing much walking before arriving it was easy to justify to bring main pack for the usual stuff and my day pack for the walks we will be doing (and at the same time saving a lot of weight on these!). In this case the day pack was filled with the two 5-liter jugs I had bought as there is no source of water at the hut (except the snow, but it has to be cooked before use).

We drive to a small town at app. 2300m where we took two cabin lifts and a chair lift all the way to 3800m. It was a little peculiar seeing chairs coming up with nothing but a bag on it. (Fun fact; there are two parallel cabin lifts up to the chair lift. The each run every second day so only one is running at a time. Apparently the two lifts are owned by two different fractions of the local mafia, so doing like that they avoid any unnecessary competition and therefore conflict). When arriving with the chair lift the luggage was loaded onto a snow cat which took it the 200 meters up to Diesel Hut while we walked the distance. Arriving we occupied the dorm and a room for sleeping and we soon had found our places in the building. A tight fit but it seems OK – except for the fact that there is barely any ventilation, effectively boosting the temperature and humidity in the room.

After lunch we went for a small walk (300 meters up). The original plan was to stay at the high point for half an hour, optimizing the acclimatization, before going down again, but seeing thunder clouds gathering in the distance we were ordered down immediately as fast as possible. It is an advantage having a high 0-degree altitude but it means that despite we won’t be freezing (or it will be harder to) the high temperature gives us a surface that most of all reminds of slush ice. It’s heavy, but it’s only just around and above the hut for the first 400-500 meters, afterwards it ought to be cold enough to give a firm easy surface.

Tomorrow with be a relatively short day; 700-800 meters ascent and return being back for lunch, followed by an afternoon where we do as little as possible before departing to the summit in the night. It feels weird that we have returned from the summit in less than 48 hours.

Getting into the first cabin lift there was a lot of attention directed towards what looked like a bullet hole in both ends of the cabin.

3 people in the group decided to walk all the way up without using the lifts - here escorted by a guide.

Food arriving by chair lift...

... and also our bags.

Diesel Hut, the dorm. 

Dusk at Diesel Hut.

Dusk panorama at Diesel hut.