Start Point: Stepaside, 120m

End Point: Hotel, Moscow Airport, 335m

Okay, so half the point of keeping this blog is to be honest. I like the idea of having a record of how I actually felt at various points of a mountain trip and not sugar-coat it so it sounds more impressive. In that spirit… I’m a bit pissed.

It’s twenty past midnight in Moscow now. It’s about 19 hours since we all met in Dublin airport. I just watched Germany being knocked out of the Euros by France. The group of 13 on this climb is nearly all guys between 25 and 40 (best guess), which leads to an interesting dynamic for the one girl in the group. While the lads were given a bright blue hoodie, she was given a hot pink one. Because… girls like pink?

From a two minute conversation I found out that our one girl has been up Kili, Aconcagua and got to Camp 2 on Everest, which is far more than the rest of us. If the hot pink hoodie means anything, it means respect.

We had to be at the airport at 4.15 this morning for a 7.15 flight. My taxi driver called at 3.55 to complain I was running late. Turns out a 23kg duffel bag and a 10kg rucksack are a bit of pain to transport on foot, even from an apartment to a cab. He was annoyed. He had another job at 5 and I’d delayed him. On the ride to the airport we managed to bond over the price of a flight  (very high) and my knowledge of the geography of Romania  (very low), so by the time he deducted  €75 from my credit card we were best buds.

I have a huge collection of notes of my last few weeks of preparing for this trip. It includes an aborted attempt to summit the twelve bens in Galway but being hampered by big black slugs named Chuck, camping on top of rivers, following ridges in zero visibility, and haunted civil-war hostels in Connemara warded by three-legged goats.

As it happens I’m in a bed in Moscow, wondering at the snores of my roommate and knowing I have less than 5 hours until we need to get on the next flight, so I’m going to get a bit of sleep.

Tomorrow is another day of travel so there should be enough opportunity to tell you of the ice cream that tastes like chalk and looks like playdough; the time they served pizza on a plane; and of our waiter Alexei, who didn’t smile for three hours and charged us import prices for domestic beers.

Tomorrow’s update should be written from a different Russian hotel room a bit further south.

Cheers 

Derm