Mount Elbrus
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Coordinates:
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43° 21′ 18″ N 42° 26′ 21″ E
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Type:
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Stratovolcano (extinct)
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Age of rock:
<td style="border-top:1px solid #e7dcc3" width=220>Unknown
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Last eruption:
<td style="border-top:1px solid #e7dcc3" width=220>Unknown
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First ascent:
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1874 by a party led by F. Crauford Grove
<tr><td bgcolor=#e7dcc3 width=85>Easiest
route:
<td style="border-top:1px solid #e7dcc3" width=220>basic snow/ice climb
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- For the Soviet-era computer, see Elbrus (computer).
- For the R-300 Elbrus missile, see Scud.
Mount Elbrus is a peak located in the western
Caucasus mountains, in
Russia, near the border of
Georgia. It is the highest mountain in the Caucasus which, together with
Ural Mountains, is by historical convention only (rather than on any natural geographic basis) considered to be the border between
Europe and
Asia. The artificiality of the border in a geographic context was exemplified by the northern parts of the Caucasus often being considered to be in Europe, and the southern parts in Asia. Mt Elbrus at 5,642 m (18,506 ft) is considered to be the
highest mountain in Europe.
Elbrus stands 20 km (12 mi) north of the main range of the Greater Caucasus and 65 km (40 mi) south-southwest of the Russian town of
Kislovodsk. Its permanent icecap feeds 22
glaciers which in turn give rise to the Baksan,
Kuban, and Malka Rivers.
The ancients knew the mountain as
Strobilus and believed that
Prometheus was chained here. The lower of the two summits was first ascended in
1868 by Douglas Freshfield, A. W. Moore, and C. C. Tucker, and the higher (by about 40 m) in
1874 by a British expedition led by F. Crauford Grove. During the early years of the Soviet Union,
mountaineering became a popular sport of the masses, and there was tremendous traffic on the mountain. In the winter of
1936, a very large group of inexperienced
Komsomol members attempted the mountain, and ended up suffering many fatalities when they slipped on the ice and fell to their deaths. The
Germans briefly occupied the mountain during
World War II with 10,000 mountaineer soldiers; a possibly apocryphal story tells of a Soviet pilot being given a medal for bombing the main mountaineering hut, Pruit 11, while it was occupied. He was then later nominated for a medal for not hitting the hut, but instead the fuel supply, leaving the hut standing for future generations.
The
Soviet Union encouraged ascents of Elbrus, and in
1956 it was climbed
en masse by 400
mountaineers to mark the 400th anniversary of the annexation of
Kabardino-Balkaria, the
Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in which Elbrus was located.
From 1959 through 1976, a
cable car system was built in stages which can take visitors as high as 3,800 meters. There are a wide variety of routes up the mountain, but the normal route, which is free of
crevasses, continues more or less straight up the slope from the end of the cable car system. During the summer, it is not uncommon for 100 people to be attempting the summit via this route each day. The climb is not technically difficult, but it is physically arduous because of the elevations and the frequent strong winds.
The Caucasus Mountains are the result of a
tectonic plate collision between the
Arabian plate moving northward with respect to the
Eurasian plate. They form a continuation of the
Himalaya, which are being pressed upwards by a similar collison zone with the Eurasian and Indian plates. The entire region is regularly subjected to strong
earthquakes from this activity, especially as the fault structure is complex with the Anatolia/Turkey and Iranian Blocks flowing sidewise, which prevents subduction of the advancing plate edge and hence the lack of volcanoes (though some minor dome structures, such as Elbrus' peaks, do exist).
Mount Elbrus should not be confused with the
Alborz (also called Elburz) mountains in
Iran.
Parts of this article are from the NASA Earth Observatory; [1]
Reference
- Anthony Huxley, Standard Encyclopedia of the World's Mountains (New York: Putnam, 1962)
External links
See also: Mount Elbrus, 12 September, 1868, 1874
