Yesterday we reached the Mount Elbrus summit at 6:45 AM, the highest mountain in all of Europe.  We had fantastic conditions, very calm winds and almost no clouds in the sky, allowing us to see for miles around!

We began our summit push in the dark using our headlamps at 2:45 AM and passed a few teams as we made our way up the snow covered glaciers, eventually reaching the saddle between the east and west peak around 5:30 AM.  The sunrise was spectacular!  Then we continued up to the west peak (highest) and to the summit.  We had it all to ourselves for about 30 minutes, enjoying the 360 degree views of the Caucasus mountains, then another climbing team reached the top and we took a few photos together.  Accompanying the climbers was a wolf dog, who was very friendly!  On our way down we used our skis / snowboard, a fun way to quickly descend part of the peak.  We descended back to our hut and now have reached the village of Terskol, and are planning a few fun activities here today.  Tomorrow we will head back to Moscow!

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Mount Elbrus summit

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Greetings from 12,870 ft. on Mount Elbrus! We are currently at our mountain hut for the night. We had a great day riding the lifts up from the village of Terskol, where we spent the previous night, after an acclimatization hike on the local trails. Today we climbed to 15,000 ft. on Mount Elbrus to continue our acclimatization strategy and we skied down which was very fun and saved a lot of time. Conditions were great for skiing and snowboarding. Our newly constructed mountain hut on mount Elbrus is very clean, has wifi, nice bathrooms, and we are served 3 meals a day. We feel a little spoiled but we appreciate this level of comfort in the mountain. Tomorrow our plan is to continue our acclimatization in preparation for a summit attempt in the following days. The weather forecast looks promising so we hope for good conditions in the days ahead.

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Mount Elbrus

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Mount Elbrus

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Mount Elbrus

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Mount Elbrus