Mount Elbrus

• 1. Geological Origins And Structure

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  Mount Elbrus rose from the earth more than 2.5 million years ago as a dormant stratovolcano. It stands 5,642 metres above sea level in the southern Russian republic of Kabardino-Balkaria. The mountain consists of two main summits separated by a pass at 5,416 metres. The western summit reaches 5,642 metres while the eastern peak rises to 5,621 metres. Geologists date the formation of the main caldera to approximately 700,000 years ago using uranium-lead dating on rhyolite and ignimbrite fragments. Ejecta from ancient eruptions covers an area of 260 square kilometres. Fumaroles still occasionally escape from the eastern flank near an ancient lava flow stretching 24 kilometres north-northeast from the crater. Hot springs originate on the slopes indicating residual geothermal activity. The volcano is currently considered dormant though evidence suggests recent activity occurred around AD 50. Some lava flows look fresh and roughly one cubic kilometre of volcanic debris remains scattered across the terrain. The longest flow extends down the northeast summit suggesting a massive eruption event. Solfataric activity continues alongside these thermal features. The western summit holds a well-preserved volcanic crater about 200 metres in diameter.

• 2. Etymological Roots And Names

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  The name Elbrus connects linguistically to Alborz or Elburz, a long mountain range in northern Iran. Ancient Avestan Harā Bərəzaitī describes this legendary mountain in Iranian mythology. Proto-Iranian Harā Břzatī evolved into Middle Persian Harborz before becoming Modern Persian Alborz. The root Břzatī represents the feminine form of břzant meaning high. This ancestor word generated Modern Ossetian bærzond for peak and Modern Persian bārez for high. It also produced Kurdish barez meaning tall. Harā may translate as watch or guard derived from Indo-European *ser protecting. Circassians call the mountain Uash-ha Makhua which means The mountain of happiness. Karachays and Balkars refer to it as Mingi Taw translating to Eternal Mountain in Turkic languages. Douglas Freshfield identified Arrian's Strobilos with Elbrus in his 1896 book The Exploration of the Caucasus. He described the peak as pinecone-shaped because the Greek word strobilos denotes rotating objects like spinning tops or pinecones. Arrian wrote about this summit in his Periplus of the Euxine Sea around 130 AD.

• 3. Historical Ascents And Exploration

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  The lower eastern summit received its first recorded ascent on the 10th of July 1829 by Khillar Khashirov. He was a Circassian man guiding an Imperial Russian army scientific expedition led by General Georgi Emmanuel. The higher western summit remained unclimbed until 1874 when a British expedition reached it. F. Crauford Grove led that group alongside Frederick Gardiner and Horace Walker. They were joined by Swiss guide Peter Knubel from the Valais canton and local guide Ahiya Sottaiev. Mountaineering became popular among Soviet citizens during the early years of the Union. On the 17th of March 1936 thirty-three inexperienced Komsomol members attempted the climb. Four died after slipping on ice and falling to their deaths. In 1956 four hundred mountaineers climbed the mountain en masse to mark the 400th anniversary of Kabardino-Balkaria's incorporation into the Soviet Union. The normal route allows about one hundred people to attempt the summit daily during summer months. Winter ascents remain rare due to brutal weather conditions. The average annual death toll ranges between fifteen and thirty fatalities mostly caused by poorly equipped attempts.

• 4. World War II Military Operations

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  German Gebirgsjäger from the 1st Mountain Division occupied the area surrounding Elbrus from August 1942 to February 1943. Hubert Lanz commanded the German division and sent a detachment to plant a swastika flag on the summit. They accomplished this feat on the 21st of August 1942. Adolf Hitler reportedly flew into a rage upon hearing the news calling it a stunt. He threatened to court martial the general responsible for the operation. USSR army mountaineers removed the flags on 13 and the 17th of February 1943. Abwehr agents and Caucasian Germans remained active in the region until November 1943. A possibly apocryphal story describes a Soviet pilot receiving a medal for bombing Priyut 11 refuge while it was occupied. He later received another nomination for not hitting the hut but instead destroying German fuel supplies. The hut survived for future generations. Mount Elbrus briefly became part of the Georgian SSR from 1944 to 1956. The mountain served as a strategic point during the Battle of the Caucasus campaign.

• 5. Modern Tourism And Infrastructure

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  Prielbrusye National Park protects the southeastern flank of the mountain since 1986. Visitors access the park via the A158 road out of Baksan requiring permits south of that village due to border controls. Four hundred twenty-four thousand people visited the area in 2020 making it an important domestic Russian tourism destination. Three ski lifts take visitors up to 3,847 metres altitude. Construction began in 1959 on the first section of the Elbrouz-1 cable car system. It runs from 2,180 metres at the valley floor to 2,970 metres at Stari Krougozor viewpoint. The second section built in 1976 reaches Mir station at 3,470 metres. A chairlift single-seater added in the late 1970s extends to Garabachi huts at 3,847 metres. Modernization efforts included new parallel cables installed in December 2006 and August 2009. A gondola for the third section opened on the 27th of December 2015 reaching 3,883 metres height. This makes it the second-highest gondola in Europe after Zermatt in Switzerland with a capacity of 750 people per hour. Eleven cylindrical cabins called barrels provide accommodation near the end of the short chairlift above the second cableway section.

• 6. Extreme Sports And Records

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  Alexander Abramov led a team that drove a Land Rover Defender to the East Peak summit in 1997. They entered the Guinness Book of Records after taking forty-five days total to complete the project. The vehicle reached mountain huts at 4,160 metres before they used a pulley system for the final ascent. A driver lost control descending and jumped out while the vehicle crashed onto rocks below the summit. Artyom Kuimov and Sergey Baranov reached the summit on ATVs in 2016 entering another Guinness record. Karachai horsemen Imbir Daur and Khurzuk climbed with special horseshoes fitted with removable steel spikes in August 1998. Six people including three riders and three mountaineers reached the eastern summit. Klych-Gery Urusov organized this historic equestrian climb. Aslan Khubiev led a third ascent in 2019 using horses Boz and Damly. Ramazan Alchakov and Abrek Ediev reached the western summit on the 4th of September 2020 with horses Almaz and Dzhigit. Taulan Achabaev and cousin Rustam Achabaev completed a fifth ascent on the 23rd of September 2020 with stallion Bahr. Anatoli Boukreev set a speed record climbing from refuge to eastern summit in one hour and 47 minutes during 1990. Denis Urubko won the long ascent in 2006 taking three hours fifty-five minutes and 58 seconds. Karl Egloff broke the full race record on the 7th of May 2017 completing it in four hours twenty minutes and forty-five seconds.