There was that time in a restaurent in the small Caucasian town of Kidslovodsk when language issues took the most hilarious form! Now, a lot of Russians don't speak very much English, or any at all for that matter, but in the more rural regions of the Caucasus mountains, the word "English" (or anything but "Russian") is pretty much a swear word. Unfortunately my Russian skills were pretty much limited to "njet", "da", and "nastrovia" (the latter would hardly come in useful as my alchohol consumption habits are close to zero), and so, much creativity was needed when ordering food. With no English menu either, of course, my strategy became to partly draw my dish of preference and partly act it out. Fortunately for me, the waitress thought it was as hilarious as I did when I drew a bowl of spaghetti, a tomato, and then put two fingers to my forehead simulating horns and went "muuuhhh, muuuhhhh!!! (how else are you supposed to suggest "spaghetti bolognaise" to someone who didn't speak a word of English?). Little did I know that spaghetti bolognaise, my go-to food in case of emergency, is not a thing in the Caucasus, so hilarious as it was, my performance was also puzzling to the otherwise greatly entertained waitress. Pasta was a thing, sure, and I am confident I had her on the tomato as well, pointing to the badly drawn circle I had made and then to my red wallet and the red vase on the table. But the "muuuhhh", although understandable, was not usually served in combination with the other two things, and so I eventually decided to give up on the "muuuhhh", and was instead served a mediocre combination of creamy pasta with a dry piece of salmon. But still, I had food, and that's really all you need, isn't it?

Our group at high camp. From the left: Vasili, me, Dimitri, Phil, and Phils dad. Misha taking the picture.

There was that time I went on an expedition to the highest mountain in Europe. Having wanted to participate in a proper mountaineering expedition for years, I had come to the Caucasus mountains excited but alas, all too sure of my chances of success. To be honest, even though I had heard it said so many times over the years, I had never really considered that I might not make the summit. I had decided I was going to be successful way before I had even entered the country. This rather arrogant approach sent my mood dropping full speed when two days into the expedition, our guide casually annonced that actually, no group of climbers had been able to get anwhere near the summit in way over a week due to hurrican strong winds on the higher slopes of the mountain. The climbing season only covered July and August and with September coming dangerously close, the situation was likely to only get worse. With an expedition with a tight schedual, only leaving one spare day for making the summit attempt in case of bad weather, this was not at all what I wanted to hear (partly also because the guide was exceptionally rude and snappy about it!).
This ment I spent the next few days of the expedition trying to mentally accept the possibility of failure, something which I really should have taken more seriously from the beginning.

My team mates were less pessimistic about our chances (or at least two of them were - one was not speaking of the issue and the other two didn't speak a word of English). Our team consisted of two Swiss guys; a father who had climed several mountains in his youth, including an expedition to Denali which was abandonned when the expedition leader fell into a 50 meter deep crevasse and was never seen again - yicks! - and his son, Phil, a 23 year old former professional snowboader who had spent his years at a Swiss sports college that had birthed several professional athletes (not at all intimidating, no!). Phil in particular seemed annoyed with me pessimism toward our chances of making the summit. Then there was the three Russian guys; Misha, the one that spoke English and thus was our key to interacting with the other two guys, Dimitri, the tall quite one, and Vasili, the short and muscular crazy guy, who was also a perfect gentleman (safe for when he was drunk - then he just wouldn't shut up all through the night and I shared a tent with that guy!). Vasili had an issue with all things American (as a proper Russian does, apparently), and when I offered him a sip of my Coke, he firmly declined on the basis that it was American. Now this made for a funny joke as our lunch packages always included a Snickers bar, and it only took me pointing at the chocolate bar jokingly going "Hey, Vasili - American!" before I found his Snickers bars placed on top of my backpack before our every meal. Who would have though getting chocolate from a Russian could be so easy?

Crossing cravasses on Elbrus.

There was that time on Mount Elbrus when our two weeks expedition lead to an exhausting 15 hours summit attempt! Now, at this point we were actually quite surprised that we got to try for the summit at all - y'know, since no group had been able to do that in almost two weeks. We had been fortunate though, as the bad weather had cleared about two days before our schedualed summit attempt. This ment that another group got to try for the summit the day before us. Since the weather was behaving we hoped for succes on their behalf. Unfortunately, only two people in their group made the East summit (the lower one), and no one made the West summit. This was about the time when I really started to wonder what I had gotten myself into - if a strong group of climbers couldn't make the West summit on a day with great weather, I started to think our group would stand little chance too.

Our summit attempt started at 1 o'clock at night. Getting into our gear, with layer upon layer of clothing and boots seemingly made for giants, we all agreed we felt more like we were heading to the moon than up a mere mountain! We made our way through the darkness, roped up and ready for action! The ascent felt excruciatingly slow (although I later learned that we were one of the fastes groups), but it took us a mere four hours to make it to Lenz Rock, a land mark on our route, where we had our first rest. I was panting the entire way, the altitude already getting the best of me. Because I was the weakest member of the remaining group (Misha did not join us for summit day, as his struggles with the altitude had been too extreme on other days), I was roped up right behind our guide so he could keep an eye on me. I felt like stopping and almost collapsing from lack of air almost the entire time, and this became gradually worse as we passed Lenz Rock and ascended further.

Shortly after passing Lenz Rock, we reached an open plain from where we could see the Saddle (the lowest point between the two summits). Now the Saddle turned out to be quite a deceptive little brat (that's my interpretation of the optical illusion it offered!), because right from the beginning it looked like it was about an hour away - and it ended up taking seven hours, because damn, that Saddle just didn't come any closer no matter how much walked and wlaked and walked! On the way up, my guide asked my several times if I wanted to quit (I couldn't really blame him for that, as I was stopping more and more often just to catch my breath), but the prospect of giving up to me was more challenging than keeping on, so I kept getting up to go on. Eventually though, I had to start considering throwing in the towel, since I believed I was slowing down the rest of the group, thus perhaps costing them their chance of the summit

Once we finally made the Saddle and rested to have lunch, I was devistated - was I really going to have to give up to let the others have a chance at the summit?! Funny thing was though, I had misunderstood our itinerary a bit. I had been under the impression that once we reached the saddle, it was another six hours to the summit. When we sat down for lunch, I asked our guide about my chances of going on - to which he replied that I would be fine making the last 45 minutes to the summit from the saddle! Say WHAT?! 45 MINUTES?! Yeah, that was a nice little misunderstanding to get cleared up - apparently the summit was only another 45 minutes away! Heck, we were actually looking right at it! At this point I couldn't help but to burst out laughing. I got some looks for that, but I guess I can only imagine how crazy I must have sounded at the time. All sorts of emotions were racing through my body (and I'm sure that the by now hours long exposion to low oxygen levels had somethig to do with my outburst as well!).

This was also the point where I started to look around at my team mates, only to realise that about half of them were just lying on the mountain floor panting. Then I talked to Phil who told me that every time I had stopped to catch my breath on the way up, several of the people behind me had collapsed into the snow from exhaustion - apparently I wasn't slowing down the rest of the group as much as I had thought!

After lunch we left our backpacks at the Saddle and prepared ourselves for the last 45 minutes push for the summit (which in reality was more like an hour and a half - guides tend to exaggerate a bit!). We had gone up about 10-15 metres when suddently, I couldn't move forward anymore. Something was pulling the rope and prevented me from moving. The guide and I turned around to find Vasili collapsed in the snow. The guide yelled at him in Russian to try to get him to get up. He didn't. But Vasili yelled back in frustration and eventually, he freed himself from the rope and crawled angrily down the mountain. The guide went after him to try to get him to come back but without luck. He was too exhausted to continue. This was a bit of a setback for our expedition, since we had already left Misha at high camp before starting the summit attempt. Eventually though we had to go on while the second guide took Vasili back down the mountain.

The rest of us continued (and I continued to collaps from lack of air like very fine minutes or so!), but eventually we made the plateau just below the summit and walked the rest of the way to the little hill on top of the plateau that made the final distance to the highest summit of the mountain. That hill was about ten steps high - and this was the fun part! I was right behind the guide, preparing myself for the final push (yes, at an altitude of over 5600 metres, ten steps of almost vertical trekking can require much mental preparation!). Then I found myself yelling at the guide; "Faster! FASTER!" and then we almost ran up the final bit and collapsed into the summit snow painting for a good 30 seconds before I was able to stand up and and yell out a victorious "I. AM. SPARTAAAAAAAA!!!!" (don't ask, it wasn't planned!). This was the most exhilarating feeling ever, and I became so overwhelmed with emotions that I started crying (yes, I stand by that, even though the guide kept teasing me about it once we got down, suggesting that I was now a weeping ironwoman rather than just the ironwoman he had first though me to be!).

From the summit it was only three hours back down to high camp (we really were a fast group!), and once we finally made it there, it took me about half an hour just to gather the strenght to take off my boots. I also got a chance to "admire" the massive windburn I had aquired, which made me look like I had some mysterious skin disease (unfortunately I hadn't had the mental energy to focus on covering the skin on my face, so this was the charming result). The day ended in celebration, and with me buying Phil a beer - y'know since it turned out he was right about my pessimism about our chances of making the summit being completely wasted in the first place!

There was that time when my trip to the Russian capital got defined by the wacky chraracters that inhabited the hostel I had made my home for the days in the city - and I loved it! Funny thing was that I didn't manage to connect with many locals in the city, mainly because it was hard to find any that spoke English, and since I didn't speak Russian (gave it a go - pretty sure my tongue managed to tie itself up inside my mouth in the process, but alas, no success), my communication was pretty much limited to other tourists. But this was no disappointment! There was the Australian turned English, but looking like a Finnish metal head, who could immitate just about any accent in the English language with striking presicion (who was also really paranoid that I had pulled an ice axe out of my bag in the dorm, wondering whether that would later end up in his skull!). There was the South African traveller who had actually travelled more countries than me (how did that happen?!). Then there was the Canadian guy who lived in Germany, but spoke Russian, and was paranoid that Russian police might step out of nowhere to arrest anyone they heard speaking English, and oh, for sure the police were also closely monitoring our hostel, so watch what you say! Now I'm not quite sure where the line between his paranoia and reality should be placed, to be honest, but I do hope he was overstating it! Then of course there was also the French guy who was doing an internship in Moscow and learning Russian, the American guy who really liked cheese and salami, and the girls who went out to party all night, keeping the rest of the dorm awake for what seemed like hours when they got back. The people really are what makes a trip the most memorable! Except for those party girls.