Janne has already published two web pages about this trip (both in Swedish):
Stormkorp
Utsidan
Lots of great photos there.
Photo credits for my pages are diffuse. Sometimes naming can help: PICT#### is by me, F####### is by Backlund, Test### by Janne. Ljungberg's photos are named [abcd]##. Panoramas are by me. These rules might not cover all. Not that I can stop you, but please do not use any of these photos for commercial use.
Due to the two Stefans I have taken to calling them by their surnames in the following text. It is not a military thing, just practical.
My mistake led to no pick up in Mineralny Vody :(. A telephone call (for 8 rubels) settled that and after a few hours of waiting we are in Nalchik at the office of the company operating Bezengi camp. Everything sounds nice, and after a stop at the supermarket we travel towards Bezengi on bumpy roads.
It was raining too much for us to care for raising the tents when we arrived at midnight, the camp served a late dinner for us and let us have an empty room.
Starts the hike in carrying climbing gear and food for twelve days, sleeps at approximately 2600 m.
But at least we enjoyed the beautiful view of Koshtan and the rest of the northern massif on our way up here. Breaking 3000m is celebrated with Laphroig (carried in glass bottles) and a couple of games of chess (Jonsson-Ljungberg 3-0).
I forgot my sun hat, a sad mistake. As we set up camp just above 3200 m, my head is banging. Feeling nauseous from the hight and whiskey my nights sleep is nervous and I am frequently rattled by the avalanches going of on the northern massif. Waking is always done as if I had just lost my breath, a fish on land panting desperately for air.
I do not travel to Italy today. Boxing is the main topic of today, a list of top ten fictious boxers is attempted. Who will win 10 round match, 3min rounds? Superman, The Incredible Hulk and Spider-man are topping the list, but who's on fourth? Tarzan or the Phantom? Maybe Batman?
I noted in the diary that I brushed my teeth this night.
Nobody tries to summit, we play around some around camp instead, basking in the sunshine, climbing ridges and enjoying life.
Main problem is the ranking of Karate Kid, Bamse and Pippi Longstocking into the top ten boxing list.
We retreat from Misses tau and decides to go back to Bez camp. We realise that Koshtan is too much for us to handle.
With the boxing list more or less finalized we rank the top five qualities of India. Cricket is on the list.
We reach Bez camp and have dinner. Soup, cheese, bread, ... Heaven!
A trio consisting of myself, Ljungberg, and Janne heads towards the Bezengi wall. The peak Lialver has a grade 2a route to the summit that we have decided to take. We hike in and as a punishment for me not celebrating my father more properly I trip and fall on the endless morrain! The ground rushes up in my face and my balance is shifted thanks to the backpack. Blam! My glasses snap in the middle, but I suffer no head injury thankfully. Ljungberg comes up and talks a bit, no concussion on my part but minor shock. Carrying some tape I manage to mend my glasses to surprising quality, allowing for a continued good trip.
We plod on over the morrain and negotiate a nice path up to camp from where we will summit tomorrow. I wrote "Morrain gives migraine" to remember what I thought about walking on loose medium sized rocks without markers/cairns/track.
A dead "thor", (? local mountain goat), is decomposing not far from us. Spirits are high even though I am pretty tired.
We close in on Lialver and committing to do it I get obsessed and charge at it. Really steep snow is not stopping us. I reach a rock field that definitely requires more than walking. Not necessarily difficult, but definitely loose, technical climbing would be required. I try to walk around it, no luck. Janne and Ljungberg scouts another way, still no luck. Can we be on the wrong face?
The view back over Bezengi wall is amazing. We try to enjoy ourselves, which is hard as we are realising that we must give up on yet another summit. The way back is pleasant and speedy. At least we were lucky with the weather.
We make a speedy progress but misnavigates while trying to get onto the morrain. A time-consuming process of avoiding (clearly visible) crevasses ensues.
We stop at a supermarket to restock (and taste the kebab sold in a street corner) before heading to Elbrus. We buy a kind of braided cheese that is a favorite snack in the group.
We get to the bottom of the lift that will take us to "the barrels", but it has stopped operating for today. We set up camp down at the river. Everything is in worse shape here compared to Bezengi, cows scavenging for food in the dumpsters etc.
What surprised me was the density of snow boarders. All lived up to the prejudice about baggy pants, huge boots, and nothing but cool dude attitude. Happily there was a peaceful coexistence between "climbers" and skiers.
The height is no real problem due to our time spent in Bezengi. We encounter many less fit/acclimatized persons on the mountain.
There is no possibility for us to climb the wrong face today! Several hundred people are already plodding on ahead of us. Some of them can't be feeling to well since the trail is coloured with fresh vomit every now and then. Some people are also leaving garbage along the trail. This is not untouched nature...
Feeling in great shape and not wanting to be at high altitude for too long, I push ahead and leave Backlund/Ljungberg behind. Nadine is taking a break in the col at 5400m where I catch up with her. Janne, who is in extremely great shape, is doing the eastern summit as well, which makes me and Nadine leaders towards the western peak.
We talk to some people descending and it seems that there are only three people on the summit. We get extra energy from the insight that if we hurry we might be alone on the highest peak of Europe today. The wind is picking up, and despite any arguments about less air up here, it is really biting. I feel a slight head-ache building up which I contribute more to the wind and my crappy sinuses than the elevation.
We see people leaving the summit, and Janne catches up with us and we do a combined photo/aerobics session at the summit. My long time travel companion Make the Lemure is happily posing with Nadine and Janne for the summit photos (only bring what you must). We stay less than five minutes allowing for Israelis, Russians, Chinese, and other people of other nationalities to do their thing on the summit.
Ljungberg and Backlund are going steadily as we meet them on our way back. I tease Ljungberg with the "pok pok pok" cackling, which he at first can't believe but then laughs about. I ask if they want company to the summit, but they say they are alright. Lucky for me probably. Further down Janne stops and talks with a guide that among other things reveals that he has climbed in most parts of Caucasus but Bezengi, "Only the pros go there". A similar notion is made about Mt. Ushba: "Maybe I could summit Ushba, but you don't try that if it is a maybe". I think that he also recommends us to go to Adil-su for the rest of our time in Caucasus.
Back at the tents my headache has escalated and after a brief attempt to build snow walls to stop the wind from getting to our tent I crawl into my sleeping bag and try to sleep. Ljungberg gets back, tired but not with my head ache. We manage to somehow fetch water and cook dinner. The scotch was left behind for this trip so no celebration in that respect.
A taxi down to Terskol costs us less than rub 150. I manage to buy stamps at the post office here, and have to haggle to actually get money as change. I bought two stamps at rub 15 each, payed with a rub 100 bill. The cashier's first offer was more stamps as change... No good, I want only two, and you have a huge pile of cash there right next to you, I say in my nonexistent Russian. Her second offer is two stamps and three bars of soap for my rub 100 bill, an offer I fail to take as a comment to the fact that it was four days since I last washed and I have been sweating some since. But I am adamant and finally get my rub 70 back in cash.
We walk down the main road and shop at an outdoor store. From there we wait for local bus, but is picked up by a taxi which takes us to Adil-su. The taxi driver offers to drive us up to the national park entrance but the price is too steep. After leaving some stuff at a camping as well as buying some fresh food we walk 8 km up towards the np. A taxing end of the day, we sleep happily next to a stream.
Walking past a military outpost which is operated by really bored Russians. But I expect they are happy that they are not stationed closer to Inguskija and Chechnia.
The walk follows a beautiful river upstream, it is really lovely to see the green contrast the snow-clad mountains in the background for once. Elbrus was only snow, and Bezengi was mostly rocks and snow.
We reach the tent village which is surrounded by huge piles of corrugated cans, really disgusting, especially with the cows walking around sniffing the garbage and our tents. They are not too aggressive though.
We follow in the footsteps of what must be unaclimatised hikers/climbers. They move slowly and take long breaks. We head up to the saddle towards Djan-Tugan, a 2b summit we believe we might try another day. On the way up we pass a crevasse where I, unknowingly, pose for some intimidating photos. As we reach the saddle we run into a rescue operation. A person from a polish group has had an accident and is going to be lowered down the way we came. He is tied up pretty heavily and dragged/lowered on the ground. We help out the best we can, but the rescue team is not lacking any resources.
To avoid disturbing the rescue team we avoid going down the way we came. We head for what we think is Gomashi (no one brought a map today). A nice climb ending with a short passage of mixed ice/rock leads to a good spot which we later found out was the summit of Aristova.
The slopes down from Aristova are excellent and we descend at maximum speed after donning water-proof pants. Two more descents are done in this fashion and we are extremely happy when we get back to camp.
We get help from Inturist to get a room at the full hotel. Showers for everyone!!!
With these personal challenges I was of course nervous before this journey, and in retrospect I am amazed how well everything worked and what we experienced. Some kinks (mostly with the Russia topic) I could have been without, but one has to be realistic too.