UKC

Evening all.

Has anyone on here recently (last few years) climbed Elbrus independently without using an tour / guiding company?

If so:

- How successful were you?
- Which side did you do it from?
- How many of you were in the party?
- Would you recommend it?

Look forward to the response to this.

Cheers,

LM

In reply to adman29:

Not entirely an answer to your question, but... I went out there in 2014 and summited from the north side of the mountain with a trekking company. From my experience, if you don't speak Russian, it might be very interesting to sort all of the politics / logistics / red tape. I can just see it being a nightmare!

However, the route itself is relatively straight forward and should be ok to navigate. A small section of crevassed terrain from ABC and then steep slopes to slog up beyond that, with no real technical issues.

Whatever, you decide to do - Good Luck!

In reply to adman29:

4 of us climbed Elbrus independently in May 2013.

We climbed from the south side although took an alternative route to walk up from the valley avoiding the ski lifts.

We used a company called Elbrus Tours to sort out permits and airport transfers but apart from that climbed on our own camping on route.

In reply to LakeDistrictMountaineer:

Did it completely independently in July 2013. We did a North-South traverse, four in the group. We all summited.

Would I recommend it? Depends. Far more exciting than Mont Blanc, and a much bigger overall adventure. However, the mountain (esp. south side) is pretty filthy and the terrain isn't particularly interesting. The caucasus do seem like an interesting range though, and I'd like to go back. Surrounding area is nice too, the locals were very welcoming and the beer is cheap.

PM me if you want more details. As mentioned above, the language barrier is a serious obstacle.

In reply to alexm198:
Hi,

Thanks for your feedback. Just in the early stages of planning at the moment.

I will most likely take up the offer to private message you but just quickly, as you say you did a traverse, what did you make of the North side as this was the route I was thinking?

Need to finalise a few things with my climbing pal and then I'll no doubt be in touch.

Appreciate all the advice.

LDM

In reply to LakeDistrictMountaineer:

North side is much nicer than South. There is still some infrastructure (permanent camps etc.) but much more remote feeling, and much cleaner. Far fewer people on the North side overall. The terrain can be quite heavily crevassed (I've heard) though in the year we did it, it was very amenable from an objective danger standpoint.

The flipside of this is that it was much more difficult for us to source transport from Kislovodsk to Elbrus BC, as nobody knew what the f*ck we were talking about.

Yep, feel free to fire me a message whenever!

In reply to alexm198:

Thanks again for the info.

Could you recommend a map and guidebook? Preferably covering north and south side or individual ones that cover both separately.

Thanks.