Elbrouz

The Elbrouz , located in the the Caucasus is the culminating point of this assembly line; higher than the Mont Blanc, it is thus more the high summit of Europe (5 642 m) if it is considered that the Caucasus is included in Europe.

Historical conventions regard the Caucasus as an assembly line marking the border between the Asia and Europe (just like the the Ural). The mountain is located at 20 kilometers in the north of the principal peak of the Caucasus and at 65 kilometers in the south-south-west of the town of Kislovodsk. Its eternal snow feeds 22 Glacier S which give rise to the rivers Baksan, Koubane and Malka.

The name would come from the crowned texts of the zoroastriens, the Avesta which indicated the top under the term harā barazaitī meaning “raised mountain”, and which, after the Islamization of the Iran, would have taken the “arabized” name of Alburz . The Old ones called this mountain Strobilus and thought that Prométhée was connected there.

During the first years of the Soviet Union, the Alpinisme becomes a popular sport and an important traffic of mountaineers, tested or not, takes place on the mountain. During the winter 1936, an important group Komsomol tries a rise and loses many members who slip on the ice. The Germany briefly occupies the mountain at the time of the Second world war with a quota of approximately 10.000 men.

In 1956, a rise in mass of 400 Alpiniste S is organized to mark the 400e birthday of the annexation of Kabardino-Balkarie, the autonomous socialist republic where is, at the time, located the mount.

From 1959 to 1976, a Téléphérique is in place making it possible to take along the visitors until an altitude of 3.800 meters. There exist many ways and roads traversing the mountain. The usual, free road of cracks, stops at the end of the cable car. The summer, it is not rare to see a hundred people to carry out the rise towards the top. The course is not difficult technically but is physically difficult from the strong slope and the strong winds.

Rises

  • July 22nd 1829 - Khilal Khachirov, resulting from the people climbing for the first time the top.
  • 1868 - Douglas Freshfield, A.W. Moore and D.C. Tucker becomes the first foreigners to be climbed low of the two tops.
  • 1874 - highest of the tops (of 40 meters) is climbed by a British forwarding led by Florence Crauford Grove.

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