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#elbrus #mountaineering #traveler Andrey's Instagram - @chudov_man This was the beginning of my new hobby. I spent many hours studying materials about Elbrus. According to experienced climbers, Elbrus is considered an easy mountain to climb, for example, skyrunners can reach its summit from the launch site in Azau in just a few hours. On the other hand, Elbrus is a ruthless and unpredictable mountain that does not spare the lives of those who decide to experience its challenge. Their stories are preserved only in tragic stories and on memorial plaques. For me, Elbrus and the entire Caucasus became the starting point, the first step on a huge and unique journey of self-knowledge. I had never visited the Caucasus Mountains before, so for me every moment of this journey was new and exciting. Mountains have a special ability to store emotions and accumulate them. So I set off to meet Elbrus. The path to the top became a symbol of my own aspirations and search. In every step, in every glance, I found not only physical overcoming, but also spiritual insight. And even if all my knowledge of the mountain was limited to what I found on the Internet and saw in photographs, this did not diminish my determination to conquer Elbrus. This year, Volodya and I decided to try to climb the western summit of Elbrus, the highest point in Europe, at 5,642 meters. We know that we have a difficult task ahead of us. The western summit of Elbrus is known for its complexity and unpredictability. The appearance of this mountain resembles a huge snow-covered pyramid and evokes in us mixed feelings of admiration and humility before the power of nature. Our journey from Astrakhan brought us to the city of Terskol, located at the foot of Elbrus. I cannot even describe the scale of the impressions that overwhelmed me as we approached this place. As we drove up, we saw the peaks of the mountains with their ice caps. We were trying to see with surprise where exactly Elbrus was rising, and each new peak that opened up before us seemed higher than the previous one. The mountains enveloped us with their grandeur and beauty. We arrived here at the beginning of May, during the spring period. However, here, spring was felt only in the lower parts of the mountains. Above, at the heights, the unchanging winter reigned. Contemplating Elbrus, I realized that this ascent would be difficult and demanding. We faced not only a physical test, but also overcoming ourselves. Time codes: