Angie did most of the blogging on her blog about the trip to Russia and the attempt on Elbrus. Long story short, I made some bad choices on summit day and ended up freezing on the cat ride to P-Rocks. When I got my parka and mittens out at the rocks, I managed to almost lose my parka in the wind, and froze 3 fingers hard enough that I couldn't bend them.
Vladimir was very patient and attentive, and tried hard to thaw them, but at that point I was pretty discouraged and decided to quit and ride the next cat down with Angie. Good thing too, because I had a weird blood sugar reaction at the barrels and needed to curl up and equalize my metabolism some. Can't promise it would have happened if I climbed, since it never has, but it was probably a lot safer this way. Hindsight. Alas...
One of the climbers was dragged kicking and screaming up and down (only mild exaggeration), which made Angie feel good in bailing, since she really only wanted to go to the saddle to do an altitude PR, and they had "promised" she could turn around at any point.
That was Elbrus then, and I might go back and post some stuff, and I'll get my pics together in a Picasa album down the road.
For Elbrus now, I'll do the official announcement next week, but I'm preparing to make another go of it yet this summer.
Stay tuned..
