Two weeks after we summited Kosciuszko, Dad and Karen came in from a fifty-mile mountain bike ride, and instead of grabbing a sports drink or a shower, Dad grabbed the world atlas and slapped it down on the counter next to where I was doing homework.
“Okaaay, I don’t think you’re ready for Denali, Aconcagua, or Everest yet,” he said, opening to a map of the world. “Antarctica and New Guinea are too expensive right now.”
“What about Elbrus?” I asked. “It’s one of the easiest.”
Mount Elbrus, in the Caucasus Mountains, is in the southernmost part of Russia, near the border of the country of Georgia. Like Kili, it’s a dormant volcano. An Imperial Russian Army scientific expedition reached the lower of Elbrus’s two summits in 1829, but no one climbed to the highest peak for another forty-five years, until an English expedition made it to the summit in 1874.
Mountaineering became a popular sport in the years when Russia was part of the Soviet Union. The Soviets even built a cable car system to take visitors as high as 11,500 feet. But after that you had to climb.
I opened my laptop and searched for a picture of Elbrus. I knew that it had nasty, unpredictable weather, but it didn’t look all that difficult. “Looks like an oversize ski hill to me. Not much of a climb.”
“Exactly,” Dad said. “It’s an easy number three if you still want to do this. Up to you.”
I didn’t have to think twice. “Of course I do. You know I don’t give up on things.”
“Then how about on summer break, Super K?” Dad asked.
She nodded. “Okay. I’ll start designing a new T-shirt.”
I don’t know how much cash we raised selling the T-shirts Karen designed, but we certainly lifted spirits around town. People were excited to hear about my next summit attempt. Rick Herrick, the owner of the local radio station and the former mayor of Big Bear, bought a few, as well as people from local ski shops, the gym, and restaurants—and of course lots of good friends.
Elbrus wasn’t a mountain that required you to hire porters and guides like Kilimanjaro, and Dad and Karen had tons of experience in leading themselves in adventure races all over the world. So Karen booked our flights and first night in Moscow and we planned to wing it from there. She was confident we could handle all the details on our own. “It’s worked in the past,” she said.
We continued our training for the next four or five months—there was no way Dad and Karen were going to let up on that. We ran, hiked, and biked. And since we were heading to Elbrus, I also worked on using crampons and my ice axe. We were so busy that the time flew by. The next thing I knew, we were getting ready to fly to Russia, and I was going to be there for my eleventh birthday. What a present!
• • •
Our first challenge, after a long flight to Moscow, was catching a small plane to Mineralnye Vody, the nearest airport to Elbrus.
We asked directions until we found the right airline counter and bought tickets. Crossing the tarmac to the very small, very old plane, I wondered about our safety.
The metal stairs creaked and wobbled under my feet. “How will this thing get off the ground?” I whispered. “I think it’s held together by duct tape.”
Dad and Karen shared my concerns, but this was the only way to Elbrus.
Most of the seats were broken. The flight attendant didn’t speak any English, but I figured she was describing the usual safety procedures as we got ready for takeoff. No one who could understand paid her any attention. Passengers walked in the aisles during takeoff, and the overhead bins kept flying open. When we did finally land in Mineralnye Vody, the air brakes were so loud they sounded like a rocket blast. It was a good thing I didn’t have a fear of flying, or I would have been terrified the whole time.
The tarmac in this small town was filled with worn-out, old planes like ours. A broken-down school bus towed by a tractor took us to a cinder-block warehouse with nothing but a luggage belt. The arrival and departure boards didn’t work, and it was cold, even inside.
While Karen waited for the luggage, Dad said, “Come on, Jordan, let’s find a car to take us to Nalchik for our permits.”
Nalchik was about sixty miles away from where we currently were, and it is the access point for Mount Elbrus.
I looked around me in confusion at all the Russian signs. No one on our plane had seemed to speak English, and I didn’t have high hopes for the people of Mineralnye Vody knowing the language either. “How? We don’t speak Russian,” I said.
Dad rested his arm on my shoulder. “Don’t be afraid to ask questions just because you don’t speak the language. People always try to help.”
I followed him outside. I felt like we were lost in the middle of nowhere, but Dad didn’t hesitate. Flashing a confident smile, he walked right up to a Russian man standing by the door and used body language to communicate we needed a taxi.
The guy called someone on a cell phone, then smiled and nodded. I guess that meant a car was on its way.
We had no choice but to wait and hope. Dad paced in front of the building. He wasn’t nervous. He was just always on the move. Karen flipped through a Russian phrasebook, trying to figure out how to say a few words, and I listened to my iPod and people watched. A taxi arrived forty minutes later.
Dad pointed to Nalchik on a map. The driver smiled and nodded, and we piled into the backseat. Soon after leaving the airport, Dad used his own version of sign language to let the guy know we wanted to stop for lunch and invited him to join us.
The restaurant was filled with cigarette smoke. A group of men sat at a table, talking and laughing. Dad went to the bathroom and returned shaking his head.
“You won’t believe what’s lying in the hall. I had to walk around a bloody cow’s head just to get to the bathroom.” He sat back down. “I think I’m going vegetarian, at least in this restaurant.”
We all went vegetarian after hearing that. Then we drove through the countryside, passing lots of cattle that seemed to be roaming free, and large deserted-looking concrete-block buildings.
There were several police checkpoints along the way. Our driver seemed a little nervous, especially when the policemen at one of the stops pulled all our gear out of the car and searched every item thoroughly.
My stomach tightened. “What’re they looking for?”
“Don’t know,” Dad said.
Then they hauled Dad inside one of those concrete-block buildings. Through the window I could hear shouted questions in Russian and the low rumble of Dad’s calm voice. I couldn’t hear his words, but I know he was trying to tell them that we were tourists, planning to climb Elbrus.
The Russians kept yelling.
My hands started to shake and I broke out into a sweat. I flinched every time I saw one of those Russian police officers shout a new question at Dad. “What do they want?” I asked Karen. I wanted to sound as calm as Dad, but my voice was high and shrill.
“Don’t worry,” Karen said, taking a deep breath. “Everything’s fine.”
From the backseat of the car I could see the Russians banging our passports on the table like something was horribly wrong.
Karen explained that security was on high alert because Russia had been in a war with a nearby country, Chechnya.
“But that doesn’t have anything to do with us,” I said. “We’re just here for Elbrus.”
“I know, but the Russian police are suspicious of everyone right now,” she explained.
I wrapped my arms across my stomach to keep it from hurting and slid down in the seat, waiting for my dad.
Finally he opened the car door and climbed inside.
“What did they want?” Karen asked when he got settled.
“No clue. I didn’t understand a word,” he said with a shrug.
“Why were they slamming our passports down like that?” I asked.
“Still no clue,” Dad answered. “I guess they finally decided we were so pathetic that they let me go.”
Intimidation never works on Dad. He looks fear in the eye, climbs over it, and moves on. I wanted to be that way too, but still I held my breath every time we came to another police checkpoint.
Finally we reached Nalchik. Our driver took us to the permit building and agreed to wait.
There were a bunch of people inside.
“Does anyone speak English?” Karen asked.
A pretty girl in her twenties came to our rescue. “Yes, a little.”
“How do we take care of all the paperwork?”
“Each of you needs to fill out six documents, but the office closes in five minutes,” she explained.
“We have to do it tonight,” Dad said with that wide grin. “Will you please help us?”
“I’m a guide and must take care of my clients first. Didn’t your tour leader do all of this for you?”
“We’re here on our own,” Karen said.
She raised her eyebrows. “Really? Hardly anyone does that, especially with such a young boy. He’s not climbing Elbrus, is he?”
Dad put on a calm face even though I knew questions like that irritated him. “He’ll be fine.”
She smiled. “I will do my best.”
I watched her walk to a back room and speak in Russian to a man who worked there. He peered around the doorway at us and nodded.
The woman returned a couple of minutes later. “He will stay after closing to process your papers. In the meantime, fill out all of these forms.”
When all was taken care of, it was about dinnertime. It had been a long, exhausting afternoon. We thanked the woman on our way out of the permit office and climbed back into our taxi.
“See,” said my dad, turning to me, “we didn’t need to know Russian. Believe that things will work out, and they do. Most people are kind if given half a chance.”
Our taxi driver drove through many small villages and farm towns on our way up the valley to the country town at the foot of Mount Elbrus. Along the way we passed many of the gray, deserted cement buildings we’d come to expect in Russia. There was dead silence, and there were no lights anywhere. I dozed off and slept until the car pulled to a stop in front of a hotel at the base of the ski area.
“Looks like there are only a couple of hotels in town,” Dad said.
“The girl at the permit office warned us that there wouldn’t be any rooms,” Karen added.
“Won’t hurt to try,” Dad said, ever the optimist. “Everybody out!”
All I wanted was something to eat and a warm bed. I dragged myself into the small lobby, which was paneled with pinewood and had giant stuffed animal heads mounted above the fireplace. They all had horns—deer, moose, elk, and ibex—and they seemed to be staring down at us. It was kind of spooky.
The taxi driver helped us bring our things inside and spoke to the woman at the front desk, but she looked right past him and addressed us in English. After having heard nothing but Russian except for the girl at the permit office, we were surprised.
She leaned over the counter and looked down at me. “Hi, my name is Sweetie. And what would you like?”
“We’ve been traveling all day,” Karen said, “and desperately need a room.”
Sweetie smiled at me. She was very pretty. “I happen to have one left just for you.”
I was so thankful for our luck. Dad gave our taxi driver a good tip for being so nice, and we said good-bye and headed for our room. I couldn’t wait to crawl into bed.
The room was cold and drafty and smelled of mothballs. The floor creaked every time you stepped on it. But I was just happy to have a bed. The blankets were so tiny we had to use our sleeping bags, and Dad’s feet hung off the end of the mattress. Still, I crashed as soon as I hit the pillow.
When daylight came, we explored the town. We needed time to organize our gear and buy water before we could begin our climb, so we’d be spending at least one more night at the hotel.
Sweetie took an interest in me once she found out that I was there to climb Elbrus and that it was part of a quest to climb the Seven Summits.
“Jordan, if you can have whatever food you want to celebrate climbing Elbrus, what will it be?” she asked at dinner on our second night.
That was easy. “Spaghetti.”
Sweetie promised to have it ready for me after my climb, and I was already looking forward to a plate piled high with warm noodles, tomato sauce, and cheese.
Before I could get too excited, though, Karen and I both noticed that Dad was holding his head in his hands.
“What’s wrong?” Karen asked.
“It feels like my sinuses are about to explode.”
Hearing my dad complain was not something that happened often, so I started to get worried.
Karen moved next to him. “When did this start?”
“Two days ago. I thought it would go away, but it’s getting worse. I feel like crap,” he admitted.
For a minute I thought we might have to forego the climb altogether, but I should have known my dad would never give up that easily.
“Let’s reconsider our strategy,” he said.
“It’s not a really long mountain,” Karen said. “Let’s take it easy and go at your pace. Then we’ll see how you feel and decide what to do.”
Dad nodded, but I could see that he was in a lot of pain. “Do you really think you can summit feeling like this?” I asked.
“Let’s push on,” Dad said. “And see how it goes.”
We worked as a team—always. I knew that if Dad couldn’t make the summit, none of us would.