​Start Point: Camp 1, 3,730m

High Point: Middle Lenz Rock, 4,837m

End Point: Camp 1, 3,730m

Today was an acclimatisation day. We were planning on gaining 1,100m altitude to get our bodies used to the lower oxygen in the thinner air. Climbing high, spending a little time up there and then sleeping lower down is the best way to get the body ready for going higher again.

However I was also very aware that tge temperature usually drops about 1 degree for every 100m ascent, and given we were starting at 3,700m, the chances were that it would be well below freezing by 4,800m. It wasn’t. It was a fecking scorcer! We got roasted.

We took light enough bags containing our summit down jackets and summit mits, but I had to delayer before we even started and spent most of the day in a t-shirt and light top. And the top was really only to keep the sun off my arms. Unfortunately that particular top has little holes for your thumbs, through which I got two little round circles of sunburn so bad it seems to be grey. Oddly I didn’t even notice it until we were back in camp.

The team continues to be plagued by stomach bugs. One guy sat out the day’s training and another was very sick soon after returning. The cause isn’t clear as we’re all eating and drinking more or less the same food and water and following the same (minimalist) hygiene routines. I might be next.

Other people are suffering a lot from blisters – probably exacerbated by the rental boots and the heat. Again, I might be next, though at least I am well used to the boots at this stage.

One of the lads who was recovering from his dose was given a helping hand by Vlad today in the form of a snowball to the back of the head for not sitting facing the mountain to check for avalanches.

For an acclimatisation day, it was very tough. The heat was one factor and the steepness of the track through the snow another. Luckily the sbow had frozen overnight meaning while our boots had dropped right through it yesterday, today we were sometimes able to more or less walk across the top.

The steepness increased at one point when we were about 300m above camp. It was probably all quite safe but it felt pretty hairy to me when I looked behind me to see the team below me and camp well below them again. 

It took us four hours to trudge uphill in the snow to the lower Lenz Rock at 4,550m, which is reasonable though not fast going. We past the wheel of a helicopter which had crashed a few years before and began to wonder where the rest of the helicopter was if only a single wheel was here.

The team noticed Ivan’s unusual timekeeping. His watch slows or speeds up depending on his own speed. So when he is walking and tells us a rest stop is 15 minutes away, it’s actually between 30 and 40 minutes. But when resting and he gives us 10 minutes to have a drink and a snack, those 10 minutes rarely last more than 4 or 5.

At Lower Lenz Rock, Ivan told us he needed to collect some gear from the Middle Lenz Rock another 300m up. Six of us volunteered to go with him. It took us about an hour to get there – again, very tough going – then Ivan left us to rest for 30mins while he went to chat to a team who were camping nearby and to find the stash of equipment his mates had deposited but not collected. After half an hour, I was expecting Ivan to come back with tents and fuel cannisters for us to stow in our bags. Instead he came back with a box of crackers and a wheel of ice cold Laughing Cow spreadable cheese triangles (mushroom flavoured). Possibly one of the nicest mountain snacks I’ve ever had. We had spent the 30 minutes admiring the view we now had over the Caucasus and into Georgia, taking each other’s very high heart-rates, and wondering what smelt so bad (it was us).

On the way down, Ivan took us “exploring”. We passed the rest of helicopter as well as what appeared to be some sort of mountain siren sitting on a rock smiling and waving at us. She was from the team who were camped nearby and were actually just using Elbrus as training to prepare for Peak Lenin in Kyrgyzstan, rather than as a challenge itself.

Getting back down to camp on tired legs, in scorching heat and with no water was a struggle. 

We got back to camp around 3pm and had the afternoon to kill, which lead to a very heated and aggravated game of cards that I think would be better not to talk about. I don’t want to get sued – and it seemed like a possibility for a while. The game’s controversies can be summed up as: 1) if you forget a rule exists, that does not mean it it has just been made up; and 2) just because a rule seems stupid to you, doesn’t mean you refuse to let the game proceed until you get your own way.