One traveler, who in 1886 climbed Elboroy to a height of 16 thousand feet, expressed it in a public lecture in Kielovodsk as follows: “Whoever has been in the mountains at high altitudes at least once is then constantly drawn to worship these shrines” - the thought is fair. Thanks to this gravity
*) The name “Black Mountains” in the northern Caucasus is often given to mountains covered with black forest forests and located near the steppes.
mountain to the mountains, in the states of Western Europe there are, as a matter of fact, numerous al! There are also clubs whose members, if not annually, then at least once in their lives, undertake long trips through the mountains. In Russia there is only one - and that was opened only in 1890 - the Crimean Mountaineering Club. As for the Caucasus, annual ascents to its heights are also made by various people, Russians and foreigners. So, for example, in 1887 Markov climbed to the top of Ararat. Two Englishmen, Donkin and Fox, died in 1888 while climbing to Kashtan-Tau. In the same 1888, one of the Vladikavkaz residents, and a company of officers from the Cossack Uman regiment, climbed the 19th field to Ararat for the second time ascent to Kazbek, where they found a pitite thermometer, left there by Mr. Markov and indicating that the cold on the tops of the mountain reached 50 ° C. Similarly, in the same year, for the second time in 1890, an Englishman unsuccessfully tried to climb to the top of Uzhba, and in 1890, the tonographer Mr. Nastukhov climbed to the western peak of Elborus, etc., etc. It’s remarkable that not only intelligent and idle people are drawn to worship these “shrines”; everyone comes here equally willingly, not interested in either scientific benefits or material benefits, but only those who have only once been to the heights of the mountains and have the opportunity to satisfy their ego a second time. We are familiar with the following information: n%Ъкт N. BRakumenko from Kislovodsk once got to serve as a guide for people who crossed the glacier pass from the north of the North Caucasus to the south of the Caucasus Mountains. After a few years we see him already as a guide at the town of Markov and then almost at Vefkh tfkh, who in the next years went to the mountains from Kislovodek, so that now this man has developed into a completely horionic alshish guide, knowing not only the fetality in the pre-flats of the Kuban-Terekato divide, but also Narfia of the local highlanders. When we invited him to come with us to Elboruey in 1889, he was apparently glad to have the opportunity to once again visit the “foreign”, as he said, places, because he even abandoned the construction of a house and expressed considerable insistence regarding the payment. But this is not enough: it was necessary to see this man at a time when we, having risen to a height of 11 thousand feet, were very close to Elborus. He was bursting with delight and couldn’t help but velukh
I would like to rebuke him for not planning a trip to the glaciers themselves.
“Eh! Damn it!” he said sadly, looking at the brightly blazing peaks of the two-headed king of the Caucasus, who, in a straight line, seemed to have left us half a mile away.
- “Why are you grumbling there, Nikolai?” - I begged him.
“Like what?” he said in a dissatisfied tone. “If they didn’t listen to me, the shadows would have been out in the snow a long time ago; otherwise they would have been on the rocks!”
- Yes, you understand, dear man, that we, as has been told to you more than once, do not need glaciers: they don’t grow anything, but we need the vegetation of high mountains.
- That’s how it is! This is one thing, and then another!... and without taking his eyes off Elborus, he continued, apparently little convinced by my arguments and thinking, of course, not about that insignificant piece of grass that he was kicking, but about that brilliant, amazing throne on which the king of kings sits, as everyone involuntarily imagines at the sight of such a picture.
My young companions, students of the Kharkiv University—there were three of them—were also intently contemplating a picture of nature that they had never seen before, and, it seemed, they were only waiting for a signal to set off across the abysses and rocks, just to be as close as possible to what was so irresistibly beckoning to them.
“Well, go,” I say to the company, whoever wants to go with Nikolai, and I’ll stay here, because it will be too difficult for me in a short time to climb that high ridge behind which Elborue already stands.
Bolfa did not have to repeat his words. N. Bakumenko in one minute handed over the horses to the former Tatar here, and after 10-5 million minutes he was already far from the crust, like a chamois, climbing the steep slopes, dragging two snowmen with him.