Last Chance!

Finally got a call from Scott tonight after he has been unable to get a signal due to the horrible weather the past few days.  He said that their spirits are still pretty good, even though it's been frustrating to be "stuck" at camp since July 2. [As noted previously, they were able to make it up to ~15,800 feet and snowboard/ski down, but the weather has been so nasty that the snowstorm, high winds, and low visibility prevented a summit attempt.]

He assured me that at least from that elevation, the ride down was not too steep, and he compared the terrain to riding down from the Cascade chair lift at Mt. Hood Meadows!  The snow is wet and heavy - also similar to Mt. Hood conditions - but there is a lot of fresh snow, and it's very rideable.  Fortunately there are also markers (red stakes to mark the path) every 150 feet or so to help keep them on course. The main path is a fairly wide open snow field, but beyond the primary track, there are crevasses, so the markers are a safety measure that the mountain guides set to designate the main path.

Today they are packing up camp as much as possible so that they will have little to do to finish when they return back to camp.  Because they fly from Mineralnye Vody (MRV) back to Moscow on Thursday, they have a compressed schedule to descend the mountain and drive to MRV.

So tonight is the final chance at the summit.  Though a bit unconventional to climb at night on Elbrus, they will start out at 9 or 10pm with the goal of reaching the summit by 5 or 6am. They will snowboard/ski back down to camp and pack up the rest of their gear.  Then it will be a race down to the gondola, which closes by 3pm.  From there they have a 3-hour cramped car ride back to Mineralnye Vody where they catch their flight to Moscow.

 The all-too-familiar view from Camp toward the summit of Mt. Elbrus before a final summit push.