Chapter 1. Goal and Meaning
All the names are real, all the coincidences are not accidental. Don’t go to Kazbek for a walk, children. Children should go to… nursery, school, a children’s creativity club (delete as appropriate).
Don’t go to Kazbek, it is very dangerous there!
Its ice cap is melting and it is becoming more cone-shaped. Now there are places where mountaineers, with ice axe and crampons, are forced to descend on a top rope, facing the slope.
And there are also dizzying expanses: if, of course, you have the strength to tear your gaze from the boots of the person ahead, you may see them. There are fields of bilberries there! If you take the upper road, you will find out how countless and how big they can be. Picking them to the sound of waterfalls, you will smear your mouth and fingers with them, and for another ten kilometres you will advertise the bilberry fields with your own self.
There is a monastery there, floating framed by mists, and if you are lucky you will find transparent “pencils” of purest rock crystal in the roadside dust of the monastery roads (our group found about ten of them).
There the sweet scents of alpine meadows remind you that the Great Perfumer has still not been surpassed.
There is the Red Glacier and the Blue Ice, and under its melting edge pyrite druses right under your feet wink with their flat cubic faces – “hello, traveller!”.
There – retina-burning, dazzlingly white snows and thundering rockfalls that plant Rock Gardens on the fresh snow. They will remind you why a helmet was on the equipment list.
There the clouds often “walk” below the trail, right under your feet. They can be so obedient that you can lay them down as a backdrop, to pick out the silhouette of something less eternal than the mountains, and take phantasmagorical photographs. And sometimes they – the clouds – descend from the heavens as mists and, quite like dogs, creeping up to your feet, fawn on you, wagging their “tails” around the tents.
Don’t go to Kazbek, take care of yourselves!
Better to read more, eat well, go to bed on time, do your exercises in the morning… and perhaps nothing in your life will ever happen.
“– Don’t go into the forest, don’t leave the house, – they said.
– Why!? – she wondered.
– There is a wolf there, he eats people like you. We are telling you seriously.
Of course, she went and met the wolf…
– You see! – they screeched.
– This is my life, and not a fairy tale, you silly people, – she said. – I have to go into the forest, I have to meet the wolf, otherwise my life will never begin…”
(from “The Wolf’s Eyelash”, Clarissa Pinkola Estés)
In August 2016 an international team of eight people gathered in the village of Stepantsminda at the foot of Mount Kazbek to climb to the summit. That was the official version of this journey.
What happened to them? Read on and see for yourselves.
And for those who don’t like many words, I will briefly report the official results of the expedition, and sketch briefly the psychological mood of the participants.
The expedition included: Ukrainians, Russians, a Belarusian and a Greek woman on the climb. For lack of other flags, only the Ukrainian one was brought to the summit. The result was automatic Ukrainian patriotism. Of the eight participants in the expedition, 4 people reached the summit.
At the very beginning of the journey nobody, probably, except our guide, had a mad desire to climb to the summit. He came to Kazbegi (the second official name of the village of Stepantsminda) by status. That is, in order to take us up. So for this desire he had, besides the personal one, a professional right as well.
We came here to say hello to the mountain. To explore our own constellation with the summit: whom the mountain will let in, and what it will tell each one about himself along the way.
I, Natalia Valitskaya, hereafter Sahis, gathered these people here so that a mystery could take place that would make clear to each one who he is and where he is living. Everyone here accomplished their own feat. I am not afraid of the word – a Spiritual feat. First of all for themselves and before themselves, opening up to them their meanings, which determine their further movement along the track of life towards their personal peaks.
A person can bear a lot, a very great deal. So much that often, in order not to list it all, he is ready to call it by the word “everything”. But no. One thing he certainly cannot bear – the absence of meaning. That is why everything he does in life, everything he thinks about or stirs for, and of course what he sleeps and breathes for – contains meaning at its cause. Often a very, very simple one. And so, to clear their simple meaning of the layers of the “box of upbringing”, some appear on the trail – for the first time or once again.
I am Ergin. This is my energy name. It came to me several years ago, and on the journey to the Summit I asked my companions to call me that. I am grateful to them for taking part in its activation.
How did this climb begin for me? With an idea born in Sahis and Wolverine – what if we climbed Kazbek? It was pushed through FB and a mailing, a group came together, and I was the first to buy tickets to Georgia. Although I had NEVER dreamed of finding myself on a five-thousander, I had never made such plans.
So why did I want to go? Because I am twice 25, and there is no time to put life off. Besides, I wanted to see the Caucasus (not very clearly wanted to, but I had long been impressed by the tales of travellers in those places and had put it off in the “well, maybe someday” style). That “maybe” had come.
Sometimes I admire people who have everything to a plan, everything built and laid out on shelves in their inner and outer world. I am not like that at all, I have – Chaos, and I love it. That means that I don’t particularly plan and don’t achieve in the global sense. However, if some idea suddenly catches fire in me, I can strain myself over a short distance and then from the outside I look like a real fighter. And so, Kazbek set me on fire.
What climbing a five-thousander is, I had no idea, and I deliberately did not try to find out. I didn’t read reports and impressions, I didn’t try to prepare myself morally, my Chaos was in charge of me. “It will somehow work out!” – no matter how. Any result will suit me. At the same time (knowing absolutely nothing about the difficulties I would have to face), I did not even allow the thought that I would not reach the summit. Not out of pride, but rather for lack of information.
I saw Kazbek on the morning of the Second day, soaring above the trees of the park where we had pitched our tents. It shone above the surrounding mountains, above the clouds. With snow, unexpected steepness, distance, cold, grandeur and unattainability. I gasped with delight, and tried not to notice the unattainability.
It worked. After all, I am here! So I will be There! I have no reason not to be there, since I am already here, so close. The adventure drew me forward sweetly, breathing on me with its fresh breath, winking, teasing and promising I don’t know what. And how can you strive for the known – for what you know? What is the point of that? The unknown – now that is the real sweet, what will its taste be?
No, I’m lying, I did have a goal – to understand myself once again. To find out what I would be like in this trial, which facets of me would show, how I could surprise myself once again. In short, the most selfish goals. Which I announced to my fellow travellers at the first Circle of getting acquainted .
Getting ready for such a trek, for a total newbie (a beginner), is quite a task! **The rucksack must not be heavy!**This is the main commandment. After all, you will be walking uphill with it, and for quite a long time. But however hard you try, however much you take out the unnecessary, it will still be heavy. Down below, in the guide’s car, we left everything that would not be needed in the mountains. That is – documents, money, personal hygiene items (except a toothbrush and toothpaste). We even left the soap. Even the combs! For a company of 6 women we had two combs and one mirror. Such wonders are impossible on the plains. So as not to worry about our hair, we braided it into little spikelet plaits (Sahis took care of this in the morning before the climb); they could be left undone for many days, which meant not combing and not washing our hair.
We also left all the clothes in which we had travelled (jeans and T-shirts), the extra tent pegs, our city shoes and even the extra warm clothes that we had brought as insurance. Because when the food, the cooking gas, helmets, ice axes, crampons and other climbing gear had been loaded into the rucksacks, there was no room left to squeeze in even a spare match.
When I was still at home finding out by phone what was needed for the trek, the question of crampons and an ice axe left me stumped.
– You’ll also need crampons.
– What?
– And an ice axe.
– What does it look like?
– I see… The guide will take care of it, he’ll hire everything that’s needed for people like you.
Since for several days I had been fussing over finding the right boots, buying trekking poles, thermal underwear, a light and warm sleeping bag, a windproof jacket, goggles, a head torch, a raincoat and gaiters against the snow, I gladly handed over to the guide the responsibility for what I did not know at all. But in the end it turned out that my boots were not suitable for the crampons he had taken anyway, and I had to hire them from a local rental.
It was very strange, by the way, to think about snow and frost in the 30-degree August heat. For me it was surrealism to imagine that I would need a balaclava to protect my face from the frost, 3 pairs of warm gloves and a lot of such things that for a normal city dweller either lie in the far-off stashes in summer or are absent altogether. So it was hard to “switch on”, and I could not feel in advance the seriousness of the “packing” option.
In a word, I am a newbie. A beginner who has not yet smelled gunpowder.
For those who are just such a newbie and are not familiar with mountain adventures, I will explain right away: an ice axe is a rather specific little axe. To my mind it resembles an Indian tomahawk. It is needed to anchor yourself on ice or in dense snow. Crampons are not fluffy purring kittens at all, they are spikes that are fastened to the soles of your boots and keep you from slipping if you walk on ice or snow. All this is needed only right at the top – on the glacier and in the last stage, the ascent to the summit, and until then it waits for its hour in the rucksack and drags at your shoulders.
How utterly green I am can also be shown by this dialogue, for example, on the phone (with Wolverine, the organiser of this event).
– Should I take ski trousers? – (me)
– Mm… yes, take them, – doubt in her voice. She is a newbie too.
– But they take up a lot of room! Maybe they won’t be needed?
– Wait, I’ll call the guide now…
Is everything clear? Without ski trousers, without a down jacket there is nothing to do on the ascent, because the wind is piercing and the temperature is below zero. I took a down jacket, but “managed” to leave it in Stepantsminda, in the guide’s car. Later I borrowed one from Wolverine, but more about that later…
My carelessness was dazzling. But I understood this only after the fact – in hindsight. And how am I still alive? I am amazed at this fact myself. But my Controller was stood against the wall long ago, he is practically dead, so I abide in sweet trust in Life. At least on the plains. Later, up above, other emotions came.
But I did not regret my carelessness and did not intend to somehow correct it, because everything worked out. Fools (and silly girls) are lucky. So are beginners. And I was – two in one bottle – both a silly girl and a beginner. So I was doubly lucky. I could have broken both legs, and I did not break one, only a trekking pole.
If you set off on a trek and buy everything from scratch (I had in fact bought the trekking poles), it is quite expensive, so I tried scrounging from friends, and I already had a few things. Running ahead, I will say that the question of equipment is a very important one, it can save your life, and that is not a metaphor at all.
I can, of course, claim that while packing I kept an Olympic calm, because outwardly that is how it looked. But inside I was uneasy. Not enough to give up, not even enough to seriously sort myself out. But enough to understand that I was on the threshold of the fairy tale “go I know not where, find I know not what”. The unknown frightens, you must agree… To calm down and pretend to myself that I was, after all, somehow preparing, I knitted socks. Woollen ones. So that my feet wouldn’t freeze. I knitted two pairs. In 3 days. They weren’t needed.
SCARE STORIES and BOGEYMEN
The scare stories and bogeymen began almost at once and continued right to the end… We had not yet taken the first step up when our guide Alexei began explaining to us that what we had got ourselves into was very dangerous. Up there awaited us: mountain sickness (hereafter “mountain-bug”), crevasses, rockfalls, raging rivers, and other terrible dangers – dreadful adventures. We had to be a single team and approach what awaited us responsibly.
We must on no account unclip from the rope on our own initiative, and at the slightest indisposition report at once to the guide, because it might be that very mountain-bug. We faced hypothermia and possibly frostbite. We had to treat our own strength realistically. And not take on what we couldn’t carry (in every sense).
It should be said that all these warnings were given not in a package but little by little. That is, nobody set out to frighten us, these were perfectly real dangers. This was confirmed (many times) by Sahis, who had been on such journeys. And by Maria – one of the members of our newly formed team. She is a mountaineer and had seen a lot, though she was setting out for a five-thousander for the first time.
I tried to find out what the mountain-bug is and how it shows itself, but understood nothing but the theory. It came out that as a result of climbing to altitude a person starts to show symptoms of various illnesses, because oxygen starvation creates the preconditions for this.
Your head may spin, your heart may ache, you may feel sick. If a cough begins, that is very dangerous, because at altitude pulmonary oedema can come on very quickly, literally within a few hours. Sometimes a person starts behaving inappropriately – either falling into aggression, or into depression, or starting to laugh as if they were stoned. And that is totally baffling!
If I have known people for a couple of days, how am I to guess what is appropriate for them and what is not? Maybe that is just their character – to be depressed or to laugh for no reason? But I did not worry much about that, to be honest, I was rather curious.
We got to know each other in the evening by the light of the campfire. There we talked about which paths had brought us to this place, and what each hoped to find along the way. And the morning began with sorting through the rucksacks and checking the equipment the guide had brought. As I have already mentioned, my boots did not suit the crampons, and those had to be hired from a local rental.
There was also no helmet left for me, and the climbing harness (to which the rope was later to be attached) Alexei gave me was probably the oldest, perhaps from Soviet times (hinting at my age – ha-ha, joke!).
He generally looked at me sceptically. I didn’t fret, thinking, maybe it just seems so? However, it turned out later that it was so. After a couple of days on the trail, after getting to know each other better, when all the participants had passed their test drive, he repeated several times, glancing at me: “the first impression is deceptive”. From which I concluded that I had looked not only like a newbie, but also like a weakling.
To be continued. Part II – read here (10 parts in all)
