2005 expedition to Elbrus

Welcome

Early summer 2005 we left for the Caucasus in the Russian Federation. Our aim was to climb the east summit of Europe’s tallest mountain, Elbrus (west summit 5642 meters, east summit 5621 m). We did not take the regular route (99% of the climbers take the normal route from the south), but the route from the north. The biggest advantage of this approach was that we first had to do a trekking of several days, which improved our acclimatisation. In order to even better prepare ourselves we hiked in the area of the mighty Bezengi Wall for almost a week prior to our Elbrus trek.

Russia is not a very easy country to travel in. Most people do not speak English. Therefore we used the services of Yury Kolomiets. He worked for RusAdventure / GoElbrus. He advised and assisted us during our preparations. Amongst others he took care of ‘visa support’, which is needed if you are going to apply for a visa.