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Woke up at 7:30, sunlight hit me in the eye. So I woke up Damian and we decided it to be a perfect day for hitting the east summit. The east summit is 20 meters lower than the west (this is all Elbrus). We were on the gondola at 9:00. 10:00, and we were starting up the glacier. Today, we decided on a full on speed ascent attack. No stops, no goofing around. Well, it's hard not to goof around with us, but we tried. We stopped once to put on gloves, and once to give a guy water to make it down. About a quarter of the way across the traverse, we cut up a ridge breaking trail for the summit. Damian put on his skis and skinned up- well tried. The snow was being difficult. I took a different approach and scrambled/postholed my way through rocks on the ridge. I thought it was pretty fun, though it probably drained my energy a bit. We hit the summit 4 hours after we left the barrels, so a half hour better than last time, even with breaking trail up the last face. The summit was cold. So much colder than the west one. By the time we left, we both were jumping up and down. The skiing down was awesome. The first chute we dropped was windblown soft snow, crossing the headwall was a bit sketchy ice, then dropping down the headwall all the way to the huts was like corn skiing in the Wasatch. Cruising down everyone was watching us, wishing they were skiing down. The sun was up, throwing our shadows in front of us, like a ghost just barely out of reach. Everything was orange, but an afternoon sort of orange, a hot orange. All the surrounding peaks were wreathed in clouds, yet the clouds weren’t on our mountain, they were only decoratives on the other ones. Back to the hotel by 4:00, so about 7 hours, hotel to hotel. And both of us feel good enough to do it again tomorrow!
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