Now that I’m back in the swamp, Internet speeds are much faster, so I’ll start this post with another visit to the summit:

Stepping onto the summit of Mt. Elbrus:

At the summit:

We made it!

We reached the summit Tuesday morning, July 1, and spent Wednesday reversing our trajectory back down the mountain, via chair lift and gondola, having a celebratory lunch and returning the much maligned puffy jackets to the rental store.

Because we summited a day early, Thursday was what my family affectionately refers to as a wild card day – one of those days with no plans, no reservations, that stretches out before you like a vast plain of infinite opportunity. Well, maybe not always that poetic. We decided to go horseback riding and take a picnic lunch. We rode back up the observatory trail that we had hiked, enjoying the different perspective on the still beautifully in bloom fields of windflowers.

The ride wasn’t without its share of danger, though, as the horses now and then veered ever so closely to the steep precipices below. I just kept thinking – remember, the horse doesn’t want to fall any more than you do. I felt I had a particularly western swagger since I spent most of the ride with my bandana covering the lower half of my burned face for the masked bandit look.

That evening we celebrated at a restaurant by the Baksan River with its own trout pond. Ordering fish meant being handed a fishing pole. After I almost impaled our guide with a fish hook in my zeal to pull my first trout out of the water, I did manage to catch one. Fortunately others on our team were a bit more successful.

The next day we were supposed to drive the three hours back to the Minerale Vody airport, and arrive back in Moscow by noon. The best laid plains…..I can only sum up our 4 a.m. to 6 p.m. travel day in a series of bullet points:
– Board plane and wait for 45 minutes. Maintenance person goes in cockpit and doesn’t come out. Bad sign.
– Plane is broken.
– Get off plane and wait in terminal.
– Instructed to walk to another terminal to pick up luggage and recheck bags. Unclear why bags couldn’t be loaded directly onto another plane. Ours is not to reason why.
– Go through security again.
– Wait.
– Offered liter bottles of coke or sprite. But if you are a party of two or less you are given a paper cup with no lid instead of a bottle.
– Get in little bus to go to airplane on runway, together with open cup of coke or sprite with no lid if you are a party of two or less. Bus stops by plane; door opens. Instructed not to get out of bus. Bus door closes; continue tour of runway. Return to terminal. Unclear what purpose was except to distract restless passengers. Ours is not to reason why.
– Instructed to pick up bags again and recheck them.
– Go back through security.
– Riot almost breaks out among delayed passengers, who have lost patience with the interminable treks to pick up baggage, recheck and go through security. Multiple people filming confrontation of passenger vs Aeroflot rep vs Aeroflot rep on cell phones.
– Wait.
– Told to get back on little bus and finally onto a plane, six hours late.

It was July 4, and we clearly needed to celebrate. As we were all exhausted from a very long and frustrating day we did what any red blooded Americans in Moscow would do – we went to an Italian restaurant near the hotel. There, a number of our group drank to the 4th with a red, white and blue drink appropriately named a “Russian flag.” I decided to stick to white wine. Our waitress didn’t seem overly enthusiastic – think the Soup Nazi on Seinfeld. She apparently regarded it as a personal insult if something was ordered from the menu that the restaurant didn’t have. Nonetheless, we were all still on the high that comes from the summit, and a little bit of brusqueness was not going to rain on our parade.

July 5 we flew back to the swamp. But even though the Elbrus trip has ended – at least in real time – the lessons learned, friends made, and summits reached are still with me. And one other thing I have learned – I like writing this blog. So, neither it nor the trip is over. There are all sorts of summits – and I’m going to write about lots of them. And no sooner do you reach one summit then you need to be looking for the next, and that’s what I’m doing right now.

In fact, when I returned to work on Monday, I was already back climbing the stairs by Tuesday.