With a beautiful summit day, our team topped out on Europe’s highest peak, Mount Elbrus, this morning.  Here is Garrett Madison with a recap of this quick climb:

Hello, this is Garrett calling in for the Madison Mountaineering Mount Elbrus climb. Today is Friday, September 10th and we had a perfect summit day on Mount Elbrus.

We were blessed with beautiful conditions, couldn’t have been a better day. No winds, no clouds in the sky and good route conditions. Chase and I got up to the summit with our Russian guide, George around 7:00am and had it all to ourselves for a little while. We took some photos and admired the views and made it back down to our high camp and then descended all the way back down to Terskol and Cheget, where we had a celebration dinner with our group and another group that we summited with today.

It’s been a great climb here on Mount Elbrus, a very quick climb.  Normally we spend a few days here, acclimatizing here at the Terskol/Cheget area and also up on Elbrus at the high camp.  But due to the weather, we knew today was the good day, and we had to go for it. So, we took advantage of the good weather and did a quick climb and got lucky with a beautiful summit.

So, we’re going to rest here a couple of days, do some fun activities and then head off to our next mountain, Dykh-Tau in the Bezengi base area, not to far from here.

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In addition to these expedition dispatches, you can also follow our teams as they make their attempts on the world’s most formidable mountains on:

– Amazon Alexa devices with the Madison Mountaineering Flash Briefing skill:

• Enable the skill and add to your flash briefing to hear Garrett Madison’s daily audio expedition updates on select expeditions.  Just say, “Alexa, play my Madison Mountaineering flash briefing.“

– Instagram:

• @MadisonMtng
• @GarrettMadison1

– our Garmin inReach Mini powered real-time tracking map:

• https://madisonmountaineering.com/maps/elbrus-2021-09

Straight from head guide, Mark Tucker, here is the full recap of summit day on Mt. Elbrus:

We got pretty lucky with the weather — except for it trying to blow us off the summit ridge! And then after we descended the fixed lines (that are installed annually to protect against a fall on the steep terrain) we hit some white-out conditions, but just for a bit. Aside from that, I guess you could call it a beautiful day on the mountain!!! Which it was.

We started with a bit of help from a snow-cat at 02:00 AM moving up the lower part of the climb.

After a few hours of climbing, we were welcomed by a beautiful warming sunrise. We were fortunate to witness the very unique sight of the mountain’s shadow being cast on the horizon by the rising Sun. The beautiful hues of pinks, blues, and greys were enough to take your breath away. Or was it because were were working so hard at 17,000’? 🙂

The team did a fantastic job taking care of themselves and climbing strong. On the last bit to the top, the wind was blowing so hard that the team gathered even more strength to crawl to the summit! We hunkered down for a quick couple of photos.

Everyone did an awesome job heading down safe, healthy and yes, a bit tired!