Korobeshko Luda

January 16. Chile, expedition to Ojos Del Salado. The team "Zorros Rojos y otros".

Yesterday we returned to civilization - to Bahia Inglesa on the Pacific coast. In the evening, we held a ceremonial awarding of medals for climbing the highest volcano in the world - Ojos del Salado. For some participants, this is already the 5th volcano. New seven-volcano climbers are on the way! Tomorrow we fly home with new mountain plans! And today we celebrate the birthday of the Captain of our 7 Summits Club - Alexander Abramov all day long.

From Chile - expedition leader Lyudmila Korobesho and assistant leader Alexander Spirin.

The 7 Summits Club guide Lyudmila Korobeshko reports from Chile:

Yesterday, January 14, in very harsh weather conditions, most of the Zorros Rojos y Otros team climbed to the top of Ojos del Salado. Halfway to the summit, we were caught in a snowstorm. But we decided to continue climbing. As a result, the Foxes fought the elements for about 17 hours, including the ascent and descent. During this time, about 30 cm of snow fell on the mountain. We descended in the dark. And we also had to drive down dangerous snow-covered roads. A real Snowstorm in the desert!

Now - for a well-deserved rest by the sea!

January 11-12. Chile, expedition to Ojos Del Salado. "Zorros Rojos y otros" team. On January 11th, we returned to our home (Laguna Verde camp) after a rest in Copiapo. We got there in 3.5 hours and climbed into our favorite tents, having had dinner in our huge and cozy tent beforehand.

On January 12, we went for the last acclimatization before the assault - to a height of 6000+. We walked up to 6200, it was somehow not easy. And cold. We walked parallel to Sasha Dorojukov's group. There were only young people there. We tried to keep up with them, but fell behind a little.

In the evening, at dinner, we gathered in two groups, listened to songs, drank wine and exchanged experiences.

Sasha's group is going down tomorrow, and we are resting and at night - for the assault. The forecast is not encouraging - snowfalls will start from tomorrow ... we will fight our way through!

From Chile - the leader of the expedition Lyudmila Korobeshko and assistant leader Alexander Spirin.

January 8. Chile, expedition to Ojos del Salado. Team "Zorros Rojos y otros". Today we devoted the day to rest before climbing to the summit of San Francisco (6018 m). After breakfast we went to the Atacama Desert, which has already become our home. 4 hours of travel (with mandatory stops for photos) and we arrived at the hot spring. It is really hot and, as the locals say, has healing properties. The bravest of the Red Foxes even washed their hair. The whole team enjoyed the already traditional barbecue masterpieces from our chefs. Tomorrow we have an acclimatization trip to San Francisco - wish us luck!

From Chile, expedition leader Lyudmila Korobeshko and assistant leader Alexander Spirin.

January 6. Greetings from the Atacama Desert, Chile, from the group “Zorros Rojos y otros”! Our morning at Laguna Rosa began with a run along the lake. And then Olya Moroz held a yoga class right in front of a flock of flamingos. Even the guanacas were curious about what we were doing, and they came closer.

After breakfast, we got ready and went to Laguna Verde. On the way, we stopped at a warm river called Lama. And a little later we saw Ojos in all its glory.

The camp at Laguna Verde amazed us with its beauty and comfort. A huge dining tent with electricity and internet, separate sleeping tents, super-stable toilets (which is extremely important in the strong Atacama winds).

Before dinner, we bathed in the hot springs. And celebrated Christmas.

Tomorrow we have acclimatization on the slopes of Ojos - we plan to walk at altitudes of 5500-5900.

Expedition leader Lyudmila Korobeshko and assistant leader Alexander Spirin. Hasta la vista!

January 5. Hello everyone from the Atacama Desert, Chile, from the group "Zorros Rojos y otros"! Today, the brave Red Foxes went to acclimatize for the assault on the summit of "7 Brothers" at an altitude of 4900. But before that, we did morning exercises under the guidance of Olga and Vlad Moroz. After breakfast, we put on gifts from Red Fox (personalized hats) and went up. And we successfully climbed to the top of “brothers” under a light morning breeze.

By lunchtime we went down to our camp, where Lena cooked us a great lunch - chicken soup and dolma. Soon our second group of the 7 Summits Club arrived under the leadership of Sasha Dorojukov. We found many acquaintances from other expeditions here. We will go with them almost in parallel. Tomorrow we move to the Laguna Verde camp at 4300. Expedition leader Lyudmila Korobeshko and assistant leader Alexander Spirin. Hasta la vista!

January 4. Chile, expedition to Ojos Del Salado. Long-awaited news from the "Zorros Rojos y otros" team. Finally, we are all here. All 13 of us. Our path lies in the Laguna Santa Rosa de los Flamengos and the refugio mas comodo de la Montaña en solar Maricunga. Our "Zorros Rojos y otros" team paved the way to the Laguna Rosa through the depths of blue caves, abandoned cities, resting in an oasis, crossing passes. And finally, we have reached the cherished goal. Now the whole team is enjoying dinner under the Milky Way at an altitude of 3800 m near Laguna Rosa. This is fantastic! In the shade of five six-thousanders, we praise the culinary masterpieces of our professional team of high-altitude chefs, and the flamingos quack in unison. Beauty!

Guides Lyudmila Korobeshko and Alexander Spirin.

We are chilling in Chile!

The 7 Summits Club guide Lyudmila Korobeshko reports from Chile:

News from Chile. The group led by Lyudmila Korobeshko almost in full force gathered in the town of Baye Inglesas. This is an amazing place - a village on the Pacific coast, a very picturesque and cozy bay located in the Atacama Desert. An incredible combination of desert and ocean. You definitely need to see it with your own eyes! The team is close-knit, with more than one joint ascent behind them, including Makalu, Everest and many other mountains. We counted - for the team of seven Everests! And now it was time to climb the highest volcano on our planet - Ojos del Salado. The team name was born, literally, in a couple of minutes - "Zorros Rojos y otros". The first person to guess why the team chose this name will win a souvenir from Chile.

Lyudmila Korobeshko, director and guide of the 7 Summits Club, reports from Mexico:

There is the summit of Orizaba! Today, on Christmas morning, December 25, at 9 a.m. Mexico time, our group "Feathered Serpents of Quetzalcoatli" climbed to the top of the highest volcano in North America. With this climb, our long-time friend and member of the 7 Summits Club, Yuri Lukyanov, closed the "Seven Volcanoes" project and became the first Kazakhstani to complete this project. By the way, his daughter Karolina, 19, climbed with him. She was the best. And now, together with her dad, she is going to Antarctica to two mountains at once - Sidley and Vinson.

The director and guide of the 7 Summits Club Lyudmila Korobeshko sends from Mexico:

Hola! Greetings to everyone from Mexico from the group "Feathered Serpents of Quetzalcoatl"! This morning, December 23, we woke up in tents at an altitude of 4200. And how did we end up here?

Yesterday we moved from Huamantla to the village of Zoapan (our base at the foot of the mountain). There we took technical equipment and went further - to the Base Camp (BC) of Orizaba at an altitude of 4200. Along the way we met groups descending. No one went down - they say it is very cold and windy.

At the BC we settled in large (full-length) comfortable tents. We walked up a bit, had delicious steaks for dinner and an unexpected dessert - cheesecake. And went to bed early to the howling wind.

Today is our day of walking and acclimatization. Tomorrow we will move to the upper camp and storm the summit.

Our motto is “venceremos!”

The director and a guide of the 7 Summits Club Lyudmila Korobeshko sends from Mexico:

Hola! Greetings to everyone from Mexico from the "Feathered Serpent Quetzalcoatli" group! Today we successfully climbed to the top of La Malinche (4440). This is also a volcano, like almost all the mountains in Mexico. A lot has changed here recently. So at the entrance, where the route begins, there is a queue and everyone is given a bracelet like "all inclusive". The paths have been widened and cleaned. The police are on duty everywhere. On weekends, a lot of people go to the mountain.

But all this did not stop us from enjoying the beautiful views of the pine forest and the surrounding mountains. We climbed to the summit in 5 hours, and descended in 2.5.

Tomorrow we are moving to the Orizaba Base Camp at an altitude of 4200.

Our motto is "venceremos!"

The director and guide of the 7 Summits Club Lyudmila Korobeshko sends from Mexiko:

Hola! Greetings to everyone from Mexico! From the group "Feathered Serpent Quetzalcoatl".

Today we visited the famous Pyramids of the Moon and the Sun, which in fact turned out to be the very ancient city of Teotihuacan, which arose in the 2nd century BC. More than 250,000 people lived here then. But in the 7th century, for an unknown reason, people disappeared, and the city was abandoned.

 After the excursion, we went to a very authentic restaurant in a cave, where we tried exotic Mexican dishes - ant eggs, fried grasshoppers, meat with cacti. We figured out the difference between mescal and tequila, tried to remember the many types of cacti. Tired, we went to the hacienda under our tomorrow's mountain La Malinche. Here we went to bed early - tomorrow early in the morning to the first mountain. Our motto: "venceremos!"

The director and a guide of the 7 Summits Club Lyudmila Korobeshko sends from Mexico:

Greetings to everyone from Mexico! From a partially arrived group. Participants were flying in all day, starting at 5 am. With some of those who successfully arrived, we took a walk around the historic center of Mexico City, drowning in garlands and New Year's decorations. We looked at the Orizaba House and the Palace of Fine Arts, walked past a skyscraper (once the tallest in Latin America), visited the largest square in Latin America, Zocalo. Late in the evening, we had dinner, which was joined by two more participants who arrived - Carolina and Yuri Lukyanov. Yuri has one volcano left before the completion of the 7 Volcanoes project. Now we are still waiting for one more participant by midnight - and we are all together. Tomorrow morning we are leaving for the famous pyramids of the Moon and the Sun!

Ama Dablam. Yesterday I returned from the acclimatization rotation. I spent one night in C1 at 5800. In the morning, my Sherpa and I reached C2 at 6050 in two hours, there were almost no people on the ropes. The climb is not easy - many uncomfortable traverses and walls, and on the Yellow Tower we even had to sweat a little and hang.

By lunchtime we had already descended to the BC to rest. There was just a group of familiar guys led by Denis Aleksenko. In the evening, Katya and Masha joined us, who had climbed the summit of Ama Dablam in the morning at an incredibly fast pace. And a little later, Vika Bonya from the neighboring Nims camp came to dinner, bringing lard as a gift to Denis's group. You can tell right away - an experienced climber! In the mountains, lard is the most important and useful product. This morning, we saw off Denis's group to the assault. And a little later, the sisters flew to Kathmandu. Today is my day of rest. Tomorrow - the move to C1, the day after tomorrow - C3 and the assault at night.

Director of the 7 Summits Club Lyudmila Korobeshko from Nepal:

Ama Dablam Base Camp, 4600. Got here yesterday and immediately had several interesting meetings. I go into the mess hall, and there are our Borya Egorov and Alexey (Sivkov), who just came down from the summit of Ama Dablam, resting. They ran at a good pace from C2 to the summit and after lunch they went down to BC. And right there - the twins Katya and Masha - the heroines of the film about our expedition to K2. They ran in 2 days to Lobuche from Kathmandu and tomorrow they are running to the summit. "Speedy Squirrels" - what can you say.

My plan is to spend two nights at the BC and then an acclimatization hike to C1 at 5700. Borya and Alexey flew to Kathmandu early this morning.

 Andrey Kravchenko spent some time counting between his projects "Seven Summits" and "Seven Volcanoes". And the score was 4:4. But then the volcanoes made a winning leap. In any case, Andrey turned out to be the winner. After yesterday's ascent of Mount Giluwe, the highest volcano on the Australian continent, as part of the Sun Shine 7 Summits Club group, the Seven Volcanoes program is completed! Andrey will be ranked 46th in the World and 14th in Russia in the list of heroes. We are the leaders! More than 30% are our compatriots. And we plan to increase this percentage. Two groups have already been formed for the upcoming season by the 7 Summits Club!

 Well, we wish Andrey to even the score!  We know that in his plans there are three missing Summits Carstensz, Everest and Denali. If there are no subjective (political) problems, we are sure that he will cope.

The guide of the 7 Summits Club, the head of the expedition Lyudmila Korobeshko reports from Nepal:

 May 11th. Greetings from the Dhaulagiri Base Camp! Yesterday, half of the camp went down. It was a fairly large Indian expedition (about 10 participants and the same number of Sherpas). They spent a month and a half on the mountain and after another unsuccessful attempt to hang the ropes (on May 8-9, the national team tried to do this, but only reached 7,400), they decided to curtail the expedition.

As a result, our team of 6 people remained at Dhaulagiri, and another international team of 7 people.

As of yesterday morning, the input data was as follows

  In fact, there are no fixed ropes. Those that the team re-(!) hung up to 7,400 a day ago are already under the snow. It needs to be re-hung, and from C1 - there are many cracks opened.

  The condition of the site from C2 to C3 is very avalanche-prone.

  The ropes are all used up, we need to bring new ones from Kathmandu.

  And the main thing is the weather. Snowfall is expected daily for the next 8-9 days…

After weighing all this, we decided to wind down. The members of the international team said they were waiting for our decision (they have almost no Sherpas for making the route). And they were very happy when they found out that we were winding down. They said that everything was correct. By the way, there are very interesting characters in the national team. Anna Tybor from Poland, who planned to ski down from the top of Dhaulagiri.  Arjun is a Hindu who became the youngest climber to descend Lhotse and Everest in 2010. He is making a 14X8000 project. He says that he has agreed on the possibility of entering Pakistan, and this is the main problem for Hindus. He hopes to become the first Indian to climb all 14 eight-tiers. Aiden is a climber from Turkey who has climbed 10 out of 14. This is his third time on Dhaulagiri. And some more interesting characters. We've become friends here.

After making a difficult decision, we had a farewell dinner.

We've been waiting for a helicopter to fly to Pokhara all morning.   By 13.00 he almost reached us, then everything was covered with clouds and heavy snow began to fall.

We hope to leave tomorrow morning now… Some participants have ideas to try to rush to Kangchenjunga and Lhotse. But first we need to get to Kathmandu.

The guide of the 7 Summits Club, the head of the expedition Lyudmila Korobeshko reports from Nepal:

 Greetings from the members of the expedition from BС Dhaulagiri! Today we had a double holiday - Victory Day and the Birthday of Igor Smirnov, a member of the expedition.

Our morning started with the song "Victory Day" and active holiday exercises.

At breakfast, we congratulated Igor with a cake, deciding that we would arrange a more serious celebration later in the evening. But then the participants of the neighboring expedition came to our dining room with congratulations and gifts for Igor. So we opened the champagne and started celebrating all at once. Then the male half of our exp went for a walk, and Ira and I had a bath day.

Before lunch, the fix-ropes team came down. They barely managed to climb from C2 to C3 in a strong wind and snowfall in 14 hours (usually 5-7 hours). Avalanches swept by several times, one even slightly touched them. At night, they even made an attempt to climb above Camp 3, but quickly turned around due to the avalanche-prone situation and bad weather.

Besides us, there is only one more expedition here near Dhaulagiri - a team of Indians with Pioneer company. But after these events, they decided to curtail the expedition.

In general, we are still looking at forecasts - but there will be snowfall in the next 8-10 days. Tomorrow we will gather a consultation and decide how to live on.

The weather in BC is average - either snowfall or wind. But sometimes the sun comes through. All the participants of our expedition are cheerful and hope for the best.

The guide of the 7 Summits Club, the head of the expedition Lyudmila Korobeshko reports from Nepal:

 Greetings to all from BC Dhaulagiri from our cheerful team!

Today we had a day of preparation for the summit assault. In the morning, we did exercises with elements of Turkish breathing exercises, which was conducted by our Turkish friend from the neighboring expedition. After breakfast, high-altitude meals were distributed by day and personal belongings were collected.

But by lunchtime, the advance fix-ropes team got in touch. They reported that the weather is bad (snow and wind) and the condition of the route is very difficult - deep dry snow. In 12 hours they did not manage to get from C2 to C3…

In such a situation, it was decided to postpone our exit for a few days. According to the forecast, the nearest window is probably May 14-15.

But we were very pleased with the video message from our friends from Transglobal Car. They even dedicated poems to us! So we try not to lose heart and wait for the weather to improve.

Lyudmila Korobeshko, head of the 8000 Club expedition on Dhaulagiri, reports from Nepal:

 If you suddenly lost us, know that everything is fine with us! From 4 to 6 May, the previously slightly ill head of the group, Lyudmila Korobeshko, went to catch up with acclimatization, for two nights in C1 (5700) and C2 (6300). The main part of the expedition to Dhaulagiri, which had previously completed the entire acclimatization program, also did not waste time. We explored the surroundings under the guidance of Igor Smirnov. We built stone towers under the leadership of Volodya Belkovich (although we expect something else from him).  Rocks and crashed helicopters were explored under the guidance of mountaineering geologist Vasily Kernitsky. We tried to lead a more sporty lifestyle under the guidance of the snow leopard Yuri Lukyanov. We spent a shock Easter with colored eggs and cakes, and also shot films under the guidance of the indefatigable Irina Zisman.

Today, immediately after my descent to the base camp, our sirdar and I made plans for the assault. So far they are very optimistic and look like this.  Early tomorrow morning on May 7, the fix-rope team and our sirdar with several Sherpas go up and will try to reach Camp 3 and hang ropes to the summit by May 9.

We are going out on May 9th with the expectation of being on top on May 12th. The forecasts are not the most rosy yet - from today it snows every day, but there is almost no wind. Let's hope for the best 🙏