Russia 2004
My Voyager card wasn’t even cold yet. We had just returned from climbing South America’s highest peak, Aconcagua, and already the plans for another expedition were well underway. I can even remember the sun glaring off the aluminium blinds; I put down the phone and said beamingly “Russia… 21st June!” Part excitement, part disbelief. Correction…mostly disbelief.
And that is how it usually happens. It’s called the John Black theory on travel, and it goes like this: “book the air ticket and the rest will fall into place”. Hell, it worked before, two trips to Argentina, East Africa…and now Russia.
Mount Elbrus is the highest point in Europe, ever since East and West became buddies and created a Union, Elbrus is the tallest peak on the continent at 5642 metres above sea level, and for the next five and a bit months, it would be the focus of my every waking moment.
In order to get into Russia, it is necessary to be invited, so John pulled some strings and before we knew it we were all thumbing through our passports trying to pronounce our own names as they were written on our Visas.
Finally the day came, June 21st, and the slog would begin. John was coming up from Cape Town and my cousin was in transit on her way to Italy, so by the time we were told that our flight to Frankfurt was cancelled, I had already been in the Airport for 3 hours. Engine trouble, not delayed, not late…cancelled.
It was about that time that the departures terminal turned into a boiling cauldron of irate Germans, rerouted flights, hotel reservations and lines long enough to make the Nigerians proud. It was like watching an Ebola breakout at a university car squash.
Two hours later, the Lufthansa lady was in tears (ala John) and we would be leaving the next day. Luckily, my mom has a friend in Virgin Airlines and she managed to pull some strings (different strings to the ones John had pulled earlier) and we were sent bolting down the tunnel screaming “hold that plane”. We were bumped up to Upper Class (you get to keep the headphones) via London- the land of the worst Burger King I have ever chewed through.

From London, we flew four hours to Moscow, where the people are so sour; you’d swear that they were still mourning Stalin. While waiting in the custom’s queue, we met an ex- South African guy, living in the USA as a professional skydiver. (Small world but I wouldn’t like to paint it). Once out of the airport, we were driven to our hotel where the night disappeared into a couple of beers, some Vodka and a cover band doing a great rendition of Alphaville’s “Forever Youngski”. Photos from the next morning show that I slept on the floor, two feet from my bed, but I still maintain I was looking for my contact lens.

Day 2 started with an hour-long drive to the Domestic Airport, where we flew Siberian Airlines to Minralye Vodi. Siberia stands for Suddenly I’ve Become Extremely Religious In this Aeroplane. Min Vodi is a one-horse town similar to De Aar, but without the stop sign.
This is where we met Marina Ershova, later to be named “The Machine”, a forty-year-old woman who looked fit but a little shy. She was to be our guide on the mountain and she ushered us to the mini van for our 4-hour drive to Tjerskol, the village at the base of the Mountain. We had left Johannesburg on Saturday afternoon and finally hung our hats late Monday afternoon. By the time we reached our 4th floor rooms, I was so tired, I couldn’t even run next door to show the guys that the toilet paper had no hole in the middle. All paper, how practical!
The next few days were spent on acclimatisation walks to Cheget (3500m), ice climbing on the glaciers up the valley, and an unscheduled rest day due to a misunderstanding in the local pub. Apparently, after five bottles of Vodka, there was a slight case of fisticuffs between Dirk, Ollie, John and a couple of supple Russian valley boys. I am not at liberty to report on anything else as I was redefining the term “fall down drunk”. Reports suggest that I had coughed a kitten, square in the middle of the road before passing out cold on the tarmac. I swear I was looking for my contact lens.
I suppose this would be a great opportunity to introduce the team and correct any misconceptions from the paragraphs above.

Robby Kojetin
I “grew up” in Johannesburg and was introduced to mountaineering by John. Since that sordid day, we have climbed in East Africa, Kilimanjaro (3 times) as well as Aconcagua, which is where we met Dirk. I one day plan to summit the big 7 and want to be the first horizontally challenged person to do so. Oh yes, I tend to lose contact lenses as well.
John Black
John lives in Cape Town, working for Cape Union Mart. He was introduced to climbing through Scouting, which were I met him. John masterminded the SA Scouts 3 Peaks Expedition, with the intent of summiting the three highest mountains in Africa in a month. I brought up the idea of climbing Kilimanjaro one day, and he turned into an epic. Talk about mountains and molehills. John has since climbed Kili 3 times with another ascent planned for September, Aconcagua in Argentina as well as Mount Stanley and Mount Kenya. John calls me Fatty a lot. I am glad he got smacked in the melon.
Dirk Uys
Coming from Van Der Byl Park, we were glad to have Boertjie on the trip on the evening of the bar brawl. He says that odds of 8:1 aren’t that uncommon, but he is usually on the other end of the ugly stick. Dirk comes from a background of hiking in the Drakensberg, summiting Mont Blanc and a newfound love of ice climbing. “Hy is nie so slim nie, maar hy kan swaar dinge optel.”
Oliver Osborne
Ollie joined John and I on our second ascent of Kilimanjaro. It is always good to see the mountain bug bite, and when we mentioned our trip to Russia, he was committed like a German shepherd on a lamb shank. Ollie is also my dentist so it is needless to say that he is a bit painful to be around and he is usually down in the mouth.

Marina Ershova a.k.a. The Machine.

The team had words with John on the first acclimatisation walk we went on. We discovered that Marina was not only an Olympic Cross Country skier and climber, but her mountaineering portfolio had more peaks than the front row of a Backstreet Boys concert, including Everest (to 8500m). She was also in training for K2, as in The Savage Mountain, as in K2 the mountain you usually do last…
Forty years old, 1,7m tall, mother of three. Blood type – Titanium.

By now summit fever was rife and were itching to get onto Elbrus. It had been a week since we left not seen the top yet as it was hidden like a Tsar’s daughter behind a shroud of silver satin cloud. Our last acclimatisation day would take us onto Elbrus to the main ski slope, which is the start of the main ascent.
The start our trip was a series of two cable cars and ski lift, which whisks you up past the loose scree slopes and up to the altitude of 3500m, the Camp known as “the Barrels”. Unfortunately there would be no whisking that day, as the final chair lift was not in operation. So we shouldered our day bags and started the two-hour trek to the first camp.
This was to be the first night’s camp, but today we would only stop there, as a lunch spot, and then walk another hour or two up the slope and return to the hotel later that day. The old mountaineering theory on acclimatising is to Climb High and Sleep Low, so we did just that.
The following day was the actual start of the climb, the real reason we were in Russia braving the “omelttes” and the “porridge”. Again we went to the cable stations and again we chugged our way up to the snow line. To our delight the chair lifts worked and we were soon cruising up the slopes like tourists, complete with camera and dorky grin.
Marina’s gift of a bottle of brandy got us shacked up in one these steel coke cans for half price. Proving that money makes the world go round, and alcohol lubricates the bearings. The cylindrical zozo hut sleeps five and has a kitchen counter for cooking, but still was only big enough to swing a very small cat inside.
From the Barrels the next day, we left the snow boarders behind and made our way up to Priut, a stone wall hut with a roof made of timber and iron.
(Helpful Hint: Sleep upstairs. It is much warmer and the lower level smells like Gandhi’s slip slops after the New Delhi marathon.)
The Priut penthouse sleeps about 25 people with a stunning rustic dining area and double glazed airplane windows. It isn’t much but it was home for next 3 nights.
Once again after lunch we would take another walk further up the slope in an effort to prepare our bodies as best we could. We wanted to give ourselves the best possible shot at success, even if it did mean an extra 3 hours in the frigid cold.
The day after reaching Priut was spent confined to our sleeping bags, waiting out an incredible blizzard that plummeted temperatures to lower than the value of the Zim Dollar, and less visibility than Stevie Wonder in a wine cellar. The waiting is more difficult than it appears to be, hour upon hour, Welsh jerk after Welsh jerk. (A Welsh group pitched up the day after us, one of them in shorts.) The day passed slowly as we brewed tea and ate as much as we could stomach. Despite the loss of appetite at altitude, it is necessary to stockpile as much as possible for the marathon that lay ahead. That afternoon Marina lost most the popularity points she had begun to accrue. She said after lunch it would be good idea to walk maybe two hours up to Pastuchov rocks for good acclimatisation. I personally thought that time out in horrible weather like that would be more destructive than the added acclimatisation was worth. Needless to say I was outvoted we trundled off into distance for an hour and half, braving the blizzard…enjoying the lack of Welshmen.

Tuesday, June 22nd the fifth day of our ascent. The alarm went off at 2:55am and I tried in vain to ignore it using my car park attendant impression

(“I heard nothing, I saw nothing”) but alas it was time to go – this was it. Ollie and Dirk put on the bare essentials and went downstairs to check if the weather was going to smile upon us. I cursed as they came back reporting no clouds and low winds.
By the time we had dressed into our thermal underwear, fleece layer, salopettes, outer jackets, two pairs of socks, plastic double boots, gaiters, crampons, beanies and goggles, there was just enough time to fill up our water bottles and swallow some Oats-so-Easki.(Boomerang Banana flavour – it repeats on you, coming back for hours afterward). We were in good time to make our 4:30am start. The thermometer read –8?C.
The next few hours were spent in a prudent space walk, left foot followed right foot. Tick followed tock, followed tick, followed tock. It was so cold that the ice squeaked with each footstep, the teeth of my crampons, the only thing between me and a slip ‘n slide back to the barrels.
By the time we saw the first signs of sunrise, the temperature had dropped to –12?C, and that was taking the wind chill factor into consideration. It had been blowing constantly since we had left Priut, and it would continue all day. Wind burn on the left side of my face and my left hand, all the way up, and the right side of my face…all the way down.

The way to the top is a straight and featureless slope all the way up to Pastukhov rocks, a small dark band of granite, a common starting point for some expedition teams. I had been carrying the video camera in my hand, filming what I could along the way, until I stopped for a well-deserved rest, 2 hours since we had started. It was about this time that I realised that the camera battery was frozen and had stopped working. The catch 22 with cameras at high altitude, balances between keeping the camera warm, which causes the lenses to fog up with condensation, and keeping them cold which freezes the battery…Not only was I unable to continue filming, but I had to lug a R30 000 brick of shit to the summit. Unimpressed to say the least.

From Pastukhov rocks, the summit route leads across to the left and into the saddle, a small valley between the two bosoms of Elbrus with left / western summit being slightly higher…well that’s what the guidebook says. What it doesn’t say is that it gets steeper and the foreshortened route appears a lot shorter and easier from the lower camp.

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By now exhaustion had set in and the episode with the camera had left me bleak. I was tempted to turn around, but the thought of the schlep involved in a return trip soon made the option of going home seem like a bad idea. So it continued, left foot, breathe breathe, right foot, breathe breathe, rinse, repeat.
Once in the saddle, the route continues along the contour of the eastern summit to the point where we had sat down (collapsed) for a chance to recover before facing what lay ahead.
As I sat there that day, I could help but wonder what would be more painful, standing up to continue in the snow, in the scathing cold, my swollen ankles like stone ploughs, or the pain and defeat that accompanies the coward on his walk home.
By now it was around 10am. I sat surveying the escape route up the sidewall of the western summit ridge. From here it was going to a piece of cake (month old fruit cake…really hard). The sidewall ascends at approximately 60? with a vertical rise of 200m. Add the knee-deep snow, howling head wind, extreme fatigue and you have the recipe for the sequel to Stephen King’s Misery. As we topped the ridge leading on to the summit plateau, we met a heap of Canadians, sheltering in vain from the wind. John, Ollie and The Machine were about 60 m ahead and after the third repetition, I managed to decipher what John was shouting, “can- see-it”. My heart soared, and the wind was in my sails again…for the next four steps. Despite the summit being 300m in the distance, we were still unable to increase our pace to anything more than out Left foot, right foot, rinse, repeat routine.

The altitude at 5600m makes you feel like your lungs are the size of golf balls and you breathe like a stalker in a phone booth. At 12:35 on Tuesday June 22nd, my team and I stood atop the tall mountain on the European continent. Below lay the modern world and the horizon sung the glory of ten thousand angels. As far as the eye could see was a rumbling sea of clouds and mountaintops.

I must have watched the summit footage a thousand times. This is it; I pray to God that I never have to come back here, the lump in my throat wedged like a potato in an exhaust pipe. The only thing I remember from the top was Dirk, collapsed against the summit rock, a string of little coloured flags and how the wind stung as the snow whipped us from every angle. The summit held few if any answers as to why we were there.
If anything, I put a lot things into perspective on this trip…I came to realise that I have spent every cent (and more) of my working career on seeing the world from mountain tops, and that maybe there were other areas in my life that needed attention. I sent myself an email stating that I had promised to put my climbing on the back burner for two years and to focus on buying my own property, cutting up my credit card and getting my new business firmly on its feet.
I learned that there are things in life more important than following the path less travelled and perhaps my focus was a little tainted. Maybe “they” were right and it was time to do the sensible thing, find my feet and settle down. Maybe I had been missing the point, always off to the far corners of the earth, in a search for a life less ordinary… Maybe this time would be good for me, a chance to work out exactly what are the things in my life that are truly important.
I hear Alaska is fantastic in the springtime.