Just a donkey ride?

In the California of my youth it was popular to have the donkey ride guy at your Birthday party. He would back four or five animals out of his trailer and they would immediately start following each other's tail. There were no harnesses or saddles or big metal turnstile. They just fell into place and started pacing out a big dusty circle, all the while silently bearing the indignity with sad Pat Paulson faces.

From the earlier description of Elbrus, with as many as one hundred climbers moving up the mountain on busy summer days, I'm already getting a picture that's mindful of those donkeys. Sure, it is the high summit for Europe, but is it such a big deal? It seems like lots of people climb it and lots probably make it to the top. So where is the adventure, the danger, the challenge?

First of all, Mt Elbrus is tall. Compared to the better known European summits The Eiger (13,025ft), The Matterhorn (14,692ft), or Mont Blanc (15,771), Elbrus (18,481ft) is singularly monumental. That altitude means thin air, cold temperatures, and nasty weather. I'll talk about each of those in this blog. The sum total of these and other considerations is illustrated in this 2005 account;

On May 9, nine people died and two more disappeared on their way down from the peak of Elbrus. Sixty rescuers, including volunteers, took part in the search, and so far, some 389 journalists have written about it. Approximately 30 people die every year in the mountains of Russia; of them, ten or so die on Elbrus. This time Elbrus has gathered its annual norm in one serving. […]

More on Prometheus

My son, Chase, just pointed out that Prometheus must have had a very large liver to feed an eagle day after miserable day. Though it is also possible this was a very small eagle. In any case, the whole notion of this episode is, in the fashion of all great greek legends, fraught with implausibilities.

Chase further notes, with a carefully cloaked James Bond reference, that this same liver was probably the reason Prometheus did not die. In other words ...Liver let die. He couldn't help himself. It was right there.

Not liking the Prometheus part

So I have to say I'm not fond of this Prometheus connection. In particular the part where "it embodies themes of the over-reacher, who strives for Romantic ideals of knowledge and experience, as opposed to religion and incapacity. This over-reacher is struck down for his ambition."

This certainly sounds like mountain climbing. Ouch.

I'm not wild either about the part where he is chained to a rock while an eagle eats his liver.

So, through the magic of blogging I will herein change the Prometheus story so "it embodies themes of niceness, where pleasant weather and an abundance of baked goods greet climbers as they pass through flowered meadows full of napping puppys."

A Greek I knew

The Prometheus reference in the last post intrigued me. I don't know who Prometheus was since the only Greek I've studied was a co-ed named Lamia . She was a raven-haired brooding type who often smoked clove cigarettes and spoke of "the nature of things." The most mysterious thing about Lamia was how she had managed to have a room for herself in what was otherwise a brimming capacity of side-stepping residents. I often sought respite from my heel-clicking ROTC roommate by dropping in on her. Lamia's space was comfortable and low lit in a way that makes one consider growing a goatee. There, her wandering rants were tolerable as fair exchange for not having to worry that at any given moment I might have to drop and give twenty. By the third quarter of that year she was forced to take a roommate, a loquacious communications major named Joan. From that day forward I found Lamia to be much less interesting.

So once again I go to Wikipedia;

The Myth of Prometheus is a series of five panels painted by Piero di Cosimo.

Prometheus in Greek mythology is the son of Iapetus, a Titan. He created the first man from clay, stole fire from the gods to give to mankind, and was punished by Zeus, the father of the gods, by being chained to a rock where an eagle came everyday to feed on his liver. According to Ovid, whose work inspired much of the mythological episodes painted by Piero, Prometheus made the figure of a man from clay in the image of the gods. He is shown before a life-size statue which stands on a pedestal.

The Myth of Prometheus

Artist	Piero di Cosimo
Year	1515
Type	Oil on panel
Location	Musée des Beaux-Arts, Strasbourg

The myth of Prometheus is widely seen as central to the Romantic poets' of the late 18th - early 19th century, since it embodies themes of the over-reacher, who strives for Romantic ideals of knowledge and experience, as opposed to religion and incapacity. This over-reacher is struck down for his ambition.

Examples of this are Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' and 'The Last Man', Percy Shelley's 'Prometheus Unbound', and other examples from the likes of Keats, Byron, and others

This painting-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

The Mountain

Here is a brief outline, courtesy of Wikipedia;

Mount Elbrus is a peak located in the western Caucasus mountains, in Russia, near the border of Georgia. Mt Elbrus at 5,642 m (18,506 ft) is considered to be the highest mountain in Europe.

Elbrus stands 20 km (12 mi) north of the main range of the Greater Caucasus and 65 km (40 mi) south-southwest of the Russian town of Kislovodsk. Its permanent icecap feeds 22 glaciers which in turn give rise to the Baksan, Kuban, and Malka Rivers.

The ancients knew the mountain as Strobilus and believed that Prometheus was chained here. The lower of the two summits was first ascended in 1868 by Douglas Freshfield, A. W. Moore, and C. C. Tucker, and the higher (by about 40 m) in 1874 by a British expedition led by F. Crauford Grove. During the early years of the Soviet Union, mountaineering became a popular sport of the masses, and there was tremendous traffic on the mountain. In the winter of 1936, a very large group of inexperienced Komsomol members attempted the mountain, and ended up suffering many fatalities when they slipped on the ice and fell to their deaths. The Germans briefly occupied the mountain during World War II with 10,000 mountaineer soldiers; a possibly apocryphal story tells of a Soviet pilot being given a medal for bombing the main mountaineering hut, Pruit 11, while it was occupied. He was then later nominated for a medal for not hitting the hut, but instead the fuel supply, leaving the hut standing for future generations.

The Soviet Union encouraged ascents of Elbrus, and in 1956 it was climbed en masse by 400 mountaineers to mark the 400th anniversary of the annexation of Kabardino-Balkaria, the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in which Elbrus was located.

From 1959 through 1976, a cable car system was built in stages which can take visitors as high as 3,800 meters. There are a wide variety of routes up the mountain, but the normal route, which is free of crevasses, continues more or less straight up the slope from the end of the cable car system. During the summer, it is not uncommon for 100 people to be attempting the summit via this route each day. The climb is not technically difficult, but it is physically arduous because of the elevations and the frequent strong winds.

The Caucasus Mountains are the result of a tectonic plate collision between the Arabian plate moving northward with respect to the Eurasian plate. They form a continuation of the Himalaya, which are being pressed upwards by a similar collison zone with the Eurasian and Indian plates. The entire region is regularly subjected to strong earthquakes from this activity, especially as the fault structure is complex with the Anatolia/Turkey and Iranian Blocks flowing sidewise, which prevents subduction of the advancing plate edge and hence the lack of volcanoes (though some minor dome structures, such as Elbrus' peaks, do exist).

Mount Elbrus should not be confused with the Alborz (also called Elburz) mountains in Iran.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Mount Elbrus".

To go where some men, and women, have gone before!

I am going to attempt to climb Mt Elbrus. The purpose of this blog is to report on my thoughts and experiences leading up to, and hopefully during, the climb. I am new to blogging and can't help but feel like William Shatner making an entry in the Captain's Log. I will pause now to offer the split V "live long and prosper" hand sign popularized by the Vulcans of the same series.

Though I am not going "where no man has gone before," I am most certainly going where this man has never gone before. If you look at it that way there can be adventure in the most mundane endeavors; A Hemp Festival, that new dry cleaner, or an H&R Block open house might all qualify. Look at you!

Though in this case, there is nothing mundane about where I am going. Mt Elbrus is in Russia, it is the highest summit in Europe, and I will have twelve days to reach the top. Afterwards, I will take a night train to St Petersburg to recoupe and take in the culture for 5 days.

So I'd like to share as much of this as possible. I'd also like to see your thoughts and comments as I blog away. Let's do this together. Let's "make it so!"