Dublin, 6am.
I hate packing.  I’m bad at it. I usually procrastinate until the last minute, then throw anything remotely clean in a bag.

Packing for a mountain climb is a little more complicated than usual, so I am a little worse at it than usual. The goal is to pack lots of heavy equipment as lightly as possible – physics is not your friend. Mountaineering boots, ice axe, crampons, harness, sleeping bag – it’s all ridiculously feckin heavy and a right arse to squeeze into a bag. I tried three different bags, and finally settled on packing one bag inside another.  Somehow more stuff fit inside the bag within the bag than in either alone. Physics, oddly, doesn’t seem to mind. It turns out I am 4kg overweight anyway. That’s not a problem with the Dublin – Paris – Moscow flights,  but could be problematic on the internal Russian flights.

Mount Elbrus is Europe’s highest mountain.  At 5,642 metres, it’s a few hundred metres smaller than Kilimanjaro, but being in Russia rather than Tanzania, it’s a lot colder. It’s a trekking peak, but it’s permanently covered in ice and snow, so we’ll be using ice axes, crampons to move  and we’ll all be strapped together on the steepest sections.

There are 13 of us flying from Ireland to attempt it. We’re travelling with an Irish adventure travel agency, Earth’s Edge, who have provided us with a guide,  a doctor, and a medical kit the size of a small car.

We were met at Dublin airport at 3.30am. 12 of us turned up on time.  The other fella overslept and got himself an extra hour in bed. Lucky bastard.

Paris, 11am.
We’re in Paris now waiting for our connection to Moscow.  We’ve just had a briefing on the importance of hydration, the acceptability of credit cards in rural Russia, and the questionable morals of aome of the team’s former travelling companions.  I can’t say any more without risking slander. (PM me for details).

We’re trying to stick together as a group and act as a team: one girl lost an earring and we all helped her look for it (it was in her handbag). But each of has has also lost the group at least once – hardly reassuring.

Although this climb isn’t being organised by Concern, I am carrying a Concern flag to fly from the summit if/when I get there.  They got me into mountain climbing on Sliabh Donard four years ago, so I kinda owe them. Also they are all off to County Kerry this weekend to climb Ireland’s highest mountain, Carrauntoohill, in aid of a hospital building programme in Sierra Leone. I feel a little guilty to be missing the party. I’ll be posting a fundraising link at some point, in case you’d like to help out with Concern’s work.  Or better still,  join them on one of their challenges – they’ve certainly made my life a lot more adventurous.
(Edit: here’s the fundraising link https://yourconcern.concern.net/dermot-magee/mount-elbrus-aconcagua)

I’ll be trying to keep this regularly updated but I am not sure how much phone signal or wifi I’ll have at 5,000 metres. If you’re eager to follow our progress, Earth’s Edge should be posting regular updates on their Facebook page (the guide has a satellite phone.  Lucky bastard).