Viphotel Stavropol

... 7 tasks from which you should choose 4. Practice included 10 points,Extent of a route has made 7 kilometres. In the end of practice tour were tents and field army raution. At our free time and days between the olympiade tours we was walking on vicinities - Caucasus is a very beautiful miracle of nature.

... s go NOW." It turns out the officer wasn't please that Eugene was carrying currency from the Ukraine (he is from there), and was asking for a bribe to be paid. Eugene had to explain that the money he had was only enought to get a train ticket home - instead offering up a few bars of chocolate in desperation. His offer proved to be enough, and hw was released (but not without threats of being taken to jail). Hopefully this is my first, last, and only experience of such a kind ...

... I had come up against - at least in the conditions of our climb (5 hours of bad sleep, little rest from the 12 hour hike the day before, cold and very windy, not enough breakfast to eat, and dehydration). But we kept on and eventually reached the "turn" - where I thought we had reached the bottom of the last stretch to the top of Elbrus. I became filled with energy that we were so close. We sat for a few minutes to rest. We tried to drink tea from my thermos, but it was ...

I feel good right now - very content. We woke up about 7am, had breakfast, then put together our gear/food we only needed for the hike. Of course, I was unaware of this and was nearly half-packed (completely) before anyone said anything (in other words, I thought we were camping higher, which turned out wrong). We put on our harnesses, crampons, and packed lite - carrying only our trekking poles. Even though it was only snow, we wore the crampons ...

... over quickly. Eugene and I rested and I took photos as we waited for the others. When they caught up we went up another 50m where we set up camp inside an old shelter that is now just concrete walls with open windows and no roof (I later got the story that it was a three-story inn where the owners ran the boiler too hot and it exploded catching the place on fire. People were stuck inside and had to jump out of the 2nd/3rd floors to get out alive ...

... in Russia - as though transportation provides some entertainment. When I was on the train I saw the same kind of thing, old men/women sitting and watching it go by - not with some naive wonder, but rather just pure interest in the machinery or who might be onboard.) I also got a glimpse of what I suppose was a traditional Russian funeral. Cars lined the road in this small village and we saw many people dressed very formally. As we passed a large wall around a courtyard (very common ...

... Tomorrow we will rent all of these things. We start at 7am for our first acclimatization hike. I don't know the details yet - but I know we are packing light and will return to our flat at the end of the hike. After we got settled in we had tea, cookies, and I had some noodles (kind of like Raman). We went for a short walk to get some air and see the area, stopping at a small outdoor cafe/pond area where other tourists ...