Chapter 4
Azau Lodge May 28, 2005 Elevation: 9,000feet
We spent the first night in Baksan Valley surrounded by Caucasus mountains, and so we woke up to massive snow covered mountains. At 8:00am we all had a simple Russian breakfast--cheese or pastrami sandwich with coffee or tea--and we went to our rooms to prepare for the first official acclimatization ascent practice. I put on my red plastic boots with gaiters, and squeezed my winter jacket, undershirts, gloves, sunglasses, over trouser, sun block lotion into my backpack. Tanya prepared sandwiches wrapped in napkins for our lunch and I put one in my backpack as well, and I carried trekking poles and an ice ax. At 9:00 am we, all 16 members of our team, assembled together in front of the lodge and started to walk to the ski lift station which was about one and half miles away. On the way to the ski lift station we noticed the display of cannons. Yuri said it was not just a display, but that the cannons were fired several times in the winter time, depending on the amount of snow fall, to induce the small snow avalanches, so the snow wouldn’t be accumulated and massive, dangerous avalanches would be prevented. When they fired the cannons the local government announced that people in that area should be stayed inside their residence. We continued to walk through aromatic stands of trees and crossed burbling streams, and also noticed the thundering waterfalls, and strolling lamb and goats in the mountain. It was a beautiful scene that I had not seen for long time. There was plenty of arable land every where and which could be terraced and planted with barley, buckwheat or potatoes. As we approached the ski lift, there was a group of merchants (just like a small swap meet in LA), selling some gift goods, local clothing, soft drinks and vodka.
We rode long and tedious ski lifts and arrived at the snow covered Cheget Mountain entrance or tailless trail head, and its elevation was about 10,167 feet. Every body in my team was still very highly spirited, and we assembled altogether and started to climb to the summit of Mt. Cheget of which the elevation was 11,800. Yuri led the team as a head guide and Bryan followed as an ascent captain; DK and Sandra followed. As a head guide, Yuri stepped on the snow to make sure the snow was not too deep and then we all followed his foot steps. We all trekked at our own pace, pausing a couple of times for refreshment, and I frequently found myself traveling in the company of HJ, Mr. Yang, Lim and Chang. As we approached the steep hill, there were rocks and granite boulders. I always had problems stepping on rocks, because I couldn’t adjust the center of mass of my body when I wore my plastic boots.
I had a terrible experience of hiking on the rocks with my plastic boots last May when we hiked Santa Paula Canyon in the Sierra Madre Mountains. At that time there should have been a hiking trail, but since we had heavy winter rain, the trails were washed away, and we had to hike through the rocks and boulders near the huge stream that had been created. Consequently, the Santa Paula Canyon became Santa Paula Chaos or Santa Paula Calamity. I couldn’t take each step comfortably and stayed behind the group; I ended up with a group of member who also wore plastic boots, they were Chang, Eunsook, and Mindy who didn’t wear the plastic boots but was another nice lady in my club and also a friend of my wife. We had struggled to follow the main group of our club, and, as things got worse, Chang found out that we were hiking in the wrong direction after he had radio communication with DK. At that time it was too late to change directions, and so we had lunch at some comfortable location near by and tried to descend. On the way to the parking lot we couldn’t find the trail we ascended, and so we tried to make our own trail, and felt like trail blazers. Along the trail I had been stabbed by yucca plants, slapped senselessly by boomerang branches, upended on slippery scree and I fell into freezing stream that turned my double layered plastic boots, with REI’s special heavy duty winter socks, into heavy water buckets. Mindy and I were separated from Chang and Eunsook, and we couldn’t find each other for a while, but miraculously Mindy remembered the trail we came from and there all four of us assembled again and walked to the parking lot where the other group had been waiting for about two hours. Chang and I were very exhausted and thirsty, and we had some water left in our backpacks, but we agreed not to drink that water in order to make the room for beer at the parking lot. When we arrived at the parking lot, somebody handed me a beer, and that beer tasted sooooooooooo good.
Under Yuri’s guide we all ascended very close to the summit whose elevation was about 11,800 feet, and for safety reasons he didn’t take us to the right summit. This was our first successful acclimatization ascent, and at that location we were able to catch a glimpse of the snow covered Mt. Elbrus summit, which resembled a sleeping cat or smiling panda bear. It was about 2 hours of climbing and we descended to the village using the ski lift again. At the ski lift station, I stopped by the merchant to buy two 750ml bottles of vodka, that cost me about $9 each. We had lunch at a café in Cheget place and the main menu was famous lamb kebab, and I didn’t have good experience with lamb meat because of its flavor, especially lamb chops, but this was the first time I had ever really enjoyed lamb and I didn’t taste any lamb flavor which I had before, or a glass of vodka might have helped. On the way to the lodge DK stopped by the post office to call MJ in Los Angeles and pass along the message that we had a successful first acclimatization ascent,and every body was sturdy and exuberant. In the lodge, my room was on the 3rd floor, and whenever I went up to my room I felt some high-altitude symptoms, so I had to breathe somewhat heavily. We all relaxed and were very satisfied with our first ascent, and had dinner around 7pm. The dinner menu consisted of pasta soup, fried fish, mashed potatoes with gravy and some vegetable, and coffee or tea plus we shared a couple glasses of vodkas.
Chapter 5
Base Camp at Barrels Huts May 29, 2005 Elevation 12,333 feet
We all got up around 7:00am and filled up one duffel bag with only the most necessary climbing gear, and then we carried the other duffel bag to the room where Chang and DK stayed, so that their room was completely filled with duffle bags. After that we went to the lodge cafeteria at 8:00am to have breakfast. Each of us carried one duffel bag, one gallon water bottle and backpack to the tram station to move to the Barrel Huts where we would set the base camp. Yuri introduced us the other four guides from his company who would help us for this ascent. They were in their late twenties or early thirties, and looked very athletic and polite. In some way, they appeared as if they could be Yuri’s henchmen. They helped us to carry the duffel bags into the tram, and some of us rode the tram to Mir station – elevation 11,567 feet- and further ascended to Garabashi station, and finally at 12:30pm we arrived at “The Barrels”, which was our base camp-elevation 12,333 feet. At Mir station I happened to leave my trekking poles and take the ski lift to Garabash station, and then I explained the situation to Chang at Garabash, and he said “Soldiers cannot go to the war without weapons.” And he talked to Yuri about the case and Yuri called Mir station, and they sent me the trekking poles to through ski lift. Chang cleaned my rear end really well, and I appreciated that.
The hut was a cylindrically shaped bunker and it contained 6 beds, and no bathroom and no sink. There was electricity, and an antique heater that worked reasonably well. We were very pleased with this facility since we expected that we had to crawl in and crawl out the freezing tent. Mr. Yang, HJ, Mr. Kim, Mr.Cho,Bryan and I shared the same bunker, so we felt like a family in Russia. Since the elevation was more than 10,000 feet there was no vegetation around there, and the snow covered everything. In addition, there wasn’t any running water and working plumbing system, and so they melted snow to use the water for drinking, washing, which meant they didn’t have to pay any water bills. In the kitchen, since there weren’t any refrigerators, they stored food underneath the snow outside next to the kitchen. In this case we couldn’t have any ice, and so if we needed something to be cold , we had to use snow, and also when we need to wash our faces or hands we had to use the snow too. They had a very strict rule that no one could urinate or had bowel movement outside beside the outhouse, and so people in the Barrels could use snow safely. Another important facility was the outhouse, and there were two of them located about 200 feet from the kitchen. It was empty wooden floor with deformed elliptical hole without toilet paper, and there were always some kind of human feces on the floor but it was not as terrible as the one we saw on the way here. It was somewhat inconvenient to go the outhouse, which was about 400 feet away from our bunker, every time we had urinated, especially in the cold and dark night, so we used empty one gallon water bottles as peebottles. However, we didn’t have any other options when we needed to have bowel movements, so then we had to squat in the outhouse. There were two dining rooms, and we used the large one, while the employees and guides used the other.
We had lunch at the Barrel kitchen and ready for the major acclimatization ascent up to Pastukhov rocks – elevation 15,633 feet. At 2:00pm we all assembled in front of the bunkers, and started to ascend led by Yuri and the other four guides mixed with us. Yuri was seriously observing us if any of us could have any physical difficulties or symptoms of high altitude illness as we climbed further. All of my teammates performed very well, but at 14,000 elevation 3 of our teammates started to suffer from headaches, vomiting and dizziness. At Pastukhov rocks it started to snow which decreased the visibility, and in 30 minutes the weather changed so rapidly from sunny day to snowing day, and 3 of our teammates became worse. We all hastily descended back to base, "The Barrel", and two of our teammates collapsed onto the bed. At diner in the Barrel kitchen, Vera, manager of the kitchen, made some vegetable soup and vegetable stew for us and we brought ramen and rice, and since we were exhausted and hungry we enjoyed the food very well. DK and Chang did concern about two of our teammates who suffered high altitude illness, and visited their bunker.
On Monday, May 30 2005, I got up in the morning around 7pm, Mr. Kim complained me that he couldn’t sleep well enough because I snored so much previous night. I felt to sorry to him, but that was beyond my control. After we had simple breakfast at 9:30am, at 11: am we started final acclimatization ascend to the Priut hut-elevation 13,667 feet. Yuri and his guides demonstrated several climbing skills, which utilized ice ax, rope, and ascender. However, MJ trained us those same techniques at Mt. Baldy and Ice House Canyon before this expedition. After we descended early, we had lunch at kitchen, and the menu was fruit salad and sandwich. We relaxed the rest of the afternoon and after dinner we had meeting to decide who would challenge the ascent to the summit of Mt. Elbrus. 9 of the teammates expressed their opinion to attempt to ascend the summit of Elbrus- highest summit in Europe, and those were Mr. Kim, DK, Chang, Sandra, Bryan, Dr.Choi, Edward, DC and I. At that time I had some ambivalence about making the decision: I thought that I didn’t have a enough experience and confidence in that ascent, and also at same time I didn’t want to give up in early stage without any attempt. But as the shadow of the summit of Mt. Elbrus cast across my mind, and I talked to myself, “Oh, shit! Let’s get it over with”.
Next!!! Chapter 6
Elbrus summit May 31, 2005 Elevation: ONLY 18,807 feet
.
Azau Lodge May 28, 2005 Elevation: 9,000feet
We spent the first night in Baksan Valley surrounded by Caucasus mountains, and so we woke up to massive snow covered mountains. At 8:00am we all had a simple Russian breakfast--cheese or pastrami sandwich with coffee or tea--and we went to our rooms to prepare for the first official acclimatization ascent practice. I put on my red plastic boots with gaiters, and squeezed my winter jacket, undershirts, gloves, sunglasses, over trouser, sun block lotion into my backpack. Tanya prepared sandwiches wrapped in napkins for our lunch and I put one in my backpack as well, and I carried trekking poles and an ice ax. At 9:00 am we, all 16 members of our team, assembled together in front of the lodge and started to walk to the ski lift station which was about one and half miles away. On the way to the ski lift station we noticed the display of cannons. Yuri said it was not just a display, but that the cannons were fired several times in the winter time, depending on the amount of snow fall, to induce the small snow avalanches, so the snow wouldn’t be accumulated and massive, dangerous avalanches would be prevented. When they fired the cannons the local government announced that people in that area should be stayed inside their residence. We continued to walk through aromatic stands of trees and crossed burbling streams, and also noticed the thundering waterfalls, and strolling lamb and goats in the mountain. It was a beautiful scene that I had not seen for long time. There was plenty of arable land every where and which could be terraced and planted with barley, buckwheat or potatoes. As we approached the ski lift, there was a group of merchants (just like a small swap meet in LA), selling some gift goods, local clothing, soft drinks and vodka.
We rode long and tedious ski lifts and arrived at the snow covered Cheget Mountain entrance or tailless trail head, and its elevation was about 10,167 feet. Every body in my team was still very highly spirited, and we assembled altogether and started to climb to the summit of Mt. Cheget of which the elevation was 11,800. Yuri led the team as a head guide and Bryan followed as an ascent captain; DK and Sandra followed. As a head guide, Yuri stepped on the snow to make sure the snow was not too deep and then we all followed his foot steps. We all trekked at our own pace, pausing a couple of times for refreshment, and I frequently found myself traveling in the company of HJ, Mr. Yang, Lim and Chang. As we approached the steep hill, there were rocks and granite boulders. I always had problems stepping on rocks, because I couldn’t adjust the center of mass of my body when I wore my plastic boots.
I had a terrible experience of hiking on the rocks with my plastic boots last May when we hiked Santa Paula Canyon in the Sierra Madre Mountains. At that time there should have been a hiking trail, but since we had heavy winter rain, the trails were washed away, and we had to hike through the rocks and boulders near the huge stream that had been created. Consequently, the Santa Paula Canyon became Santa Paula Chaos or Santa Paula Calamity. I couldn’t take each step comfortably and stayed behind the group; I ended up with a group of member who also wore plastic boots, they were Chang, Eunsook, and Mindy who didn’t wear the plastic boots but was another nice lady in my club and also a friend of my wife. We had struggled to follow the main group of our club, and, as things got worse, Chang found out that we were hiking in the wrong direction after he had radio communication with DK. At that time it was too late to change directions, and so we had lunch at some comfortable location near by and tried to descend. On the way to the parking lot we couldn’t find the trail we ascended, and so we tried to make our own trail, and felt like trail blazers. Along the trail I had been stabbed by yucca plants, slapped senselessly by boomerang branches, upended on slippery scree and I fell into freezing stream that turned my double layered plastic boots, with REI’s special heavy duty winter socks, into heavy water buckets. Mindy and I were separated from Chang and Eunsook, and we couldn’t find each other for a while, but miraculously Mindy remembered the trail we came from and there all four of us assembled again and walked to the parking lot where the other group had been waiting for about two hours. Chang and I were very exhausted and thirsty, and we had some water left in our backpacks, but we agreed not to drink that water in order to make the room for beer at the parking lot. When we arrived at the parking lot, somebody handed me a beer, and that beer tasted sooooooooooo good.
Under Yuri’s guide we all ascended very close to the summit whose elevation was about 11,800 feet, and for safety reasons he didn’t take us to the right summit. This was our first successful acclimatization ascent, and at that location we were able to catch a glimpse of the snow covered Mt. Elbrus summit, which resembled a sleeping cat or smiling panda bear. It was about 2 hours of climbing and we descended to the village using the ski lift again. At the ski lift station, I stopped by the merchant to buy two 750ml bottles of vodka, that cost me about $9 each. We had lunch at a café in Cheget place and the main menu was famous lamb kebab, and I didn’t have good experience with lamb meat because of its flavor, especially lamb chops, but this was the first time I had ever really enjoyed lamb and I didn’t taste any lamb flavor which I had before, or a glass of vodka might have helped. On the way to the lodge DK stopped by the post office to call MJ in Los Angeles and pass along the message that we had a successful first acclimatization ascent,and every body was sturdy and exuberant. In the lodge, my room was on the 3rd floor, and whenever I went up to my room I felt some high-altitude symptoms, so I had to breathe somewhat heavily. We all relaxed and were very satisfied with our first ascent, and had dinner around 7pm. The dinner menu consisted of pasta soup, fried fish, mashed potatoes with gravy and some vegetable, and coffee or tea plus we shared a couple glasses of vodkas.
Chapter 5
Base Camp at Barrels Huts May 29, 2005 Elevation 12,333 feet
We all got up around 7:00am and filled up one duffel bag with only the most necessary climbing gear, and then we carried the other duffel bag to the room where Chang and DK stayed, so that their room was completely filled with duffle bags. After that we went to the lodge cafeteria at 8:00am to have breakfast. Each of us carried one duffel bag, one gallon water bottle and backpack to the tram station to move to the Barrel Huts where we would set the base camp. Yuri introduced us the other four guides from his company who would help us for this ascent. They were in their late twenties or early thirties, and looked very athletic and polite. In some way, they appeared as if they could be Yuri’s henchmen. They helped us to carry the duffel bags into the tram, and some of us rode the tram to Mir station – elevation 11,567 feet- and further ascended to Garabashi station, and finally at 12:30pm we arrived at “The Barrels”, which was our base camp-elevation 12,333 feet. At Mir station I happened to leave my trekking poles and take the ski lift to Garabash station, and then I explained the situation to Chang at Garabash, and he said “Soldiers cannot go to the war without weapons.” And he talked to Yuri about the case and Yuri called Mir station, and they sent me the trekking poles to through ski lift. Chang cleaned my rear end really well, and I appreciated that.
The hut was a cylindrically shaped bunker and it contained 6 beds, and no bathroom and no sink. There was electricity, and an antique heater that worked reasonably well. We were very pleased with this facility since we expected that we had to crawl in and crawl out the freezing tent. Mr. Yang, HJ, Mr. Kim, Mr.Cho,Bryan and I shared the same bunker, so we felt like a family in Russia. Since the elevation was more than 10,000 feet there was no vegetation around there, and the snow covered everything. In addition, there wasn’t any running water and working plumbing system, and so they melted snow to use the water for drinking, washing, which meant they didn’t have to pay any water bills. In the kitchen, since there weren’t any refrigerators, they stored food underneath the snow outside next to the kitchen. In this case we couldn’t have any ice, and so if we needed something to be cold , we had to use snow, and also when we need to wash our faces or hands we had to use the snow too. They had a very strict rule that no one could urinate or had bowel movement outside beside the outhouse, and so people in the Barrels could use snow safely. Another important facility was the outhouse, and there were two of them located about 200 feet from the kitchen. It was empty wooden floor with deformed elliptical hole without toilet paper, and there were always some kind of human feces on the floor but it was not as terrible as the one we saw on the way here. It was somewhat inconvenient to go the outhouse, which was about 400 feet away from our bunker, every time we had urinated, especially in the cold and dark night, so we used empty one gallon water bottles as peebottles. However, we didn’t have any other options when we needed to have bowel movements, so then we had to squat in the outhouse. There were two dining rooms, and we used the large one, while the employees and guides used the other.
We had lunch at the Barrel kitchen and ready for the major acclimatization ascent up to Pastukhov rocks – elevation 15,633 feet. At 2:00pm we all assembled in front of the bunkers, and started to ascend led by Yuri and the other four guides mixed with us. Yuri was seriously observing us if any of us could have any physical difficulties or symptoms of high altitude illness as we climbed further. All of my teammates performed very well, but at 14,000 elevation 3 of our teammates started to suffer from headaches, vomiting and dizziness. At Pastukhov rocks it started to snow which decreased the visibility, and in 30 minutes the weather changed so rapidly from sunny day to snowing day, and 3 of our teammates became worse. We all hastily descended back to base, "The Barrel", and two of our teammates collapsed onto the bed. At diner in the Barrel kitchen, Vera, manager of the kitchen, made some vegetable soup and vegetable stew for us and we brought ramen and rice, and since we were exhausted and hungry we enjoyed the food very well. DK and Chang did concern about two of our teammates who suffered high altitude illness, and visited their bunker.
On Monday, May 30 2005, I got up in the morning around 7pm, Mr. Kim complained me that he couldn’t sleep well enough because I snored so much previous night. I felt to sorry to him, but that was beyond my control. After we had simple breakfast at 9:30am, at 11: am we started final acclimatization ascend to the Priut hut-elevation 13,667 feet. Yuri and his guides demonstrated several climbing skills, which utilized ice ax, rope, and ascender. However, MJ trained us those same techniques at Mt. Baldy and Ice House Canyon before this expedition. After we descended early, we had lunch at kitchen, and the menu was fruit salad and sandwich. We relaxed the rest of the afternoon and after dinner we had meeting to decide who would challenge the ascent to the summit of Mt. Elbrus. 9 of the teammates expressed their opinion to attempt to ascend the summit of Elbrus- highest summit in Europe, and those were Mr. Kim, DK, Chang, Sandra, Bryan, Dr.Choi, Edward, DC and I. At that time I had some ambivalence about making the decision: I thought that I didn’t have a enough experience and confidence in that ascent, and also at same time I didn’t want to give up in early stage without any attempt. But as the shadow of the summit of Mt. Elbrus cast across my mind, and I talked to myself, “Oh, shit! Let’s get it over with”.
Next!!! Chapter 6
Elbrus summit May 31, 2005 Elevation: ONLY 18,807 feet
.
BISHOP PASS 스케치 네번째