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Alexey Lonchinsky, guide of the 7 Summits Club from Georgia:    August 11.  Today, in the first half of the day, we held training sessions in the snow, walked around in roped team and with helmets.  Now we are preparing for an early exit to storm Kazbek and are watching the weather...

Alexey Lonchinsky, guide of the 7 Summits Club from Georgia: Good afternoon! The “Kazbek-IronMan” group is in touch.  On August 8, at 10 o'clock in the morning, my colleague Guram and I picked up the members of group at the Marriott Hotel in Tbilisi. We got acquainted with the group and went on a short journey - 2.5 hours to Stepansminda (altitude 1700 m), from where we will start our ascent on Kazbek. We stayed in an excellent hotel, which stands above the center of the village.  It offers stunning views of the surrounding mountains! Here we met another of our guides - George. Everything is going fine so far, the weather and the mood are on top!

Today, on August 9, we moved out of the hotel on two Trucks, passed the PCR and immediately went up to the Sameba Church. We loaded the horses on a large platform and started the track to the AltiHut shelter (3014m).  We reached it at a good pace! Everything is fine, we were lucky with the weather, it was windless, without precipitation and cloudy (not so hot).

Alexey Lonchinsky, coach, guide of the 7 Summits Club from the Elbrus region: Good afternoon! Our team successfully spent last night at the refuge, and Igor Kamynin spent that night in a comfortable snow cave made by us day before! In the morning, we continued training on snow, and mastered the skills of building wind protection snow walls. In the afternoon we went down to the Azau Glade. At this point, all the tasks of the preparation courses for climbing Mount Everest, Denali and Antarctica can be considered successfully completed!!!

Alexey Lonchinsky, coach, guide of the 7 Summits Club from the Elbrus region: The 7 Summits Club is completing the second group of training courses for climbing Mount Everest, Denali and  in Antarctica. All the days on Elbrus, the weather conditions were difficult. A lot of snow fell, avalanche danger appeared. However, the entire program was executed.

The course participants practiced on technical snow climbing skills and belay on snow slopes, basic skills of climbing on ice in crampons, organization of belay on ice screw, climbing with fixed lines. The participants learned how to set up a tent camp in the snow, build protective wind walls from firn blocks, tear off and equip snow caves.

Alexey Lonchinsky, guide of the 7 Summits Club from the Elbrus region: Yesterday, the second group of training  preparation courses for climbing Mount Everest, Denali and Antarctica arrived. Yesterday I checked the equipment, today we had a lecture on the use of public equipment (sledges, kitchen, tents). Then we went for a walk on snowshoes, set up a tent camp, and studied the operation of a gasoline burner. Then we repeated the movement on fixed lines and other techniques of working with the rope.