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July 22, 2006
Mt. Elbrus Expedition '06
Here is the post expedition wrap up summary.
Thanks to everybody for your words of encouragement and notes as we progressed on our trip. As you probably already know, the summit was a success. We had a fairly large team of about 17 people including our lead guide Vern Tejas. Turns out in addition to Verns lengthily mountaineering resume as you can see by clicking on his name, he is also a two time Eco Challenge veteran. He has raced with Team Pharmanex in Eco Challenge Fiji or was it Borneo (cant remember now) replacing Roman Dial who went to race with Team Playboy Extreme and then Team Yahoo! In Eco Challenge Patagonia. And he raced in the inaugural Alaska Mountain Wilderness Classic. So we had a lot to talk about.
Out of the group only three were not able to make it to the summit. Some fell to stomach ailments and some to exhaustion and other altitude related issues. The weather was great. It started off very windy but clear and as day broke there wasn't a cloud in the sky but it remained consistently windy. Summit day started at 3:30 am and it was about 12 hours roundtrip. We reached the summit at 11:05 a.m. local time.
Since I have been back I feel pretty good, but come 9:00pm I am exhausted! Can't shake that jet lag I guess.
I also want to say thanks to Adam "A-Bomb" for relaying my SMS text messages to the trip blog from the mountain camps that I sent him via my Blackberry whoch was only getting a GSM signal. I know it must have been a pain in the but, but I really appreciate it!
Below are links to related resources including pictures and my Motion Based GPS tracks of our acclimization hikes and summit day push as well as a Google Earth file of Summit Day.
Photos
Adam's Elbrus Photo Album
Filtered out the boring ones for a consolidated short album here.
More photos from other team members soon…
Sometimes Ofoto (Kodak) expires the above links. If this happens let me know.
Data
MotionBased track of Summit Day
(Terskol, Kabardino-Balkarskaya Respublika, Russia )
MotionBased track of acclimatization hike outside Schiget
(Terskol, Kabardino-Balkarskaya Respublika, Russia )
MotionBased track of acclimatization hike to Observatory
(Terskol, Kabardino-Balkarskaya Respublika, Russia )
De-acclimatization hike to local Glacier near Georgia border
(Dzhaga, Karachayevo-Cherkesskaya Respublika, Russia)
Google Earth route of summit day.
* * *
Here is all the important information needed to track my trip to Mt. Elbrus in the Russian Federation. At (18,510ft/5,642m) feet it is the highest mountain in Europe. I start my trip on Saturday July 22nd and fly down to LA for last minute preparation and gear check. On Sunday we depart LAX for St. Petersburg where we will rendezvous with the rest of the team.
This launch page contains all the links needed to track our progress. Here you will be able to read the official team cybercast, track my own personal progress through daily mobile blogs (MBlog), view proposed itinerary, current regional weather and post questions to the forum. If I can I’ll answer from the road.
Personal MBlog: Click here to read...
As long as I have cell reception during our trip I will post a daily (maybe even multiple daily) update son our progress. I will probably not know when cell reception will cease. So if my daily updates just stop abruptly, were fine, just refer to the team satellite update below from Alpine Ascents. I have provided a snippet of the last few MBlog entries here on this page for easy access. Clicking on title will open the full article.
Team Cybercast: Click here to read...
*if you get an error after clicking, refresh the browser page and try again.
This news feed is provided by Alpine Ascents via a satellite phone that we carry with our team. Our goal is to provide daily dispatches from the filed which then get transcribed and posted online. The process is a bit archaic and there are much better solutions that companies like Contact3 provide that allow thee team to send an email and a picture that automatically gets posted to a site... but not in this case. Because of this there may not be a dispatch every day, even multiple days. So if you don't see an update, don't worry it just means were probably relocating or busy or out of range temporarily. Just keep checking back.
If the below area is blank try refreshing the page. If that still doesn't work click here.
If the above area is blank try refreshing the page. If that still doesn't work click here.
Our proposed itenerary: Click here...
I have posted much more information on the Perculator.com page.
Here you can find maps, weather, GPS data and information on the region and mounain. Click here to read more.
Posted by adoti at July 22, 2006 07:45 PM
