You might have noticed that I’ve changed the titles from ‘Mount Elbrus’ to just ‘Elbrus’. Our Irish guide informed me that I’m perpetuating a fallacy by calling it Mount, so I’ll stop. He also told me he doesn’t like my shorts and would like to take my gloves if I don’t make it. I’m taking this as positive feedback on my choice of gloves, but I’ve stopped wearing the shorts. Feeling hurt.

Tomorrow we leave our hotel in Terskol for the huts up on the mountain. So this could be my last blog post until Saturday or Sunday. If possible, I’ll try and get something out.

I’ll miss my bed and our little suite of rooms. I’ll particular miss the very special shower – it has a regular nozzle, an overhead waterfall function and little horizontal powerjets to waah your back. It even has a built-in Am/Fm radio!  How cool is that?! It doesn’t actually work, but kudos to the designer (except for the whole water + electricity thing, I guess).

Today we took our first steps on Elbrus itself. We took a cable car up to 3,500 metres and walked up to 4,100 metres from there. We were above the snowline most of the time.

One of tge side effects of altitude and diamox is that it’s a diuretic. You need to keep drinking water and then you need to pee. I wandered a few metres off the track at one point to answer a call of nature until Olek shouted at me to stop as I was approaching a crevasse. After that scare, stage fright was not a problem.

The weather was very changeable. We started in the snow in t-shirts, got to a little chilly when it was windy and when we stopped walking and ended by running back to the cable car in raingear as rain and hail pelted us and a bolt of lightning struck a pylon less than a hundred metres from us.

To aid our acclimatisation, we did a little exercise at altitude. We first visited the skankiest, smelliest,  most vile set of toilets in existence. Basically it involved balancing on a few warped planks a few feet above a giant pile of human waste. Luckily this is not where we are staying.

We also visited the brand new Italian Huts. Sci-fi looking cylinders balanced at the side of a cliff. They were clean,  spacious,  warm and had hot showers and (I heard) a television where a gang of German hikers watched the match last night ‘bis zum bitteren Ende’ in preparation for their summit attempt tonight. Unfortunately this is not where we are staying either.

When we stopped for lunch we learned about defibrillators and their relative pointlessness on a summit attempt where there is no access to follow up medical attention. As we discussed this we watched three Russian hikers strip off their tops and roll around topless in the snow, grunting.  I’m told they looked like Newcastle supporters and were clearly kept very warm by ample layers of sub-cutaneous chip fat.

We heard about the world high altitude sex record, set by a couple on Denali at 6,200 metres in minus 42° C temperatures while waiting for a storm to pass. A lot of us were unsure whether we’d be able to participate in such a record attempt in those conditions.  But like all high altitude activities, the best solution to any difficulties is going down.

Our journey down in the cable car was dependant on each us agreeing to carry a black refuse sack of rubbish in the lift with us. It was a rather odd end to the day, but as we were 1.5 kilometres above our hotel in the middle of a thunderstorm, we didn’t have much of a choice.

Tomorrow we head back up to out huts. We’ll do a few more days acclimatisation and training then, if we get the weather, we’ll summit on Friday and come down Saturday. If not, we have a spare summit day Saturday, so we’d only be down Sunday. Wish us luck!

Well done to the Concern climbers who summited Carrauntoohill in the rain on Saturday while I was blagging pretzels off middle-aged ladies on airplanes.  They had a very tough day and raised a chunk of money for a great charity. If you like the hills you should join them on their next challenges. Or if you fancy something a little more adventurous try the crowd who are bringing me up Elbrus, bringing me up Aconcagua and slagging my shorts, Earth’s Edge. My own fundraising page in aid of Concern’s work in the world’s poorest countries is here.