Elbrus took five – Incidents – Kommersant

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While descending from the top of Elbrus in Kabardino-Balkaria, five tourists were killed. They were part of a 23-person group that climbed from the Elbrus guide on 23 September. The rescue operation continued throughout the night. 14 climbers survived. A criminal case was opened on the provision of services of inadequate quality. President of the Federation of Mountaineering, Rock Climbing and Sports Tourism of the KBR Abdulkhalim Elmezov is sure that the tragedy is a consequence of the commercialization of the ascents of Elbrus.

The group that climbed Elbrus on September 23 asked for help from the rescuers when the tourists had already started their descent from the summit and were at an altitude of 5400 m. the ascent passed. According to him, 16 people and “four professionals” reached the top: Ilya Chuikov, Anton Nikiforov, Taulan Kipkeev and Igor Dankov.

The group climbed to the plateau of the summit at about 10 o’clock in the morning, where one of the participants, Irina Galchuk from Yekaterinburg, became ill. It was decided to lower it to the saddle.

«Igor Dankov began to let the girl down. After 10-15 minutes, the pressure dropped sharply, the wind began to blow from the bottom up and an unprecedented storm broke out, the visibility due to dense snow was no more than half a meter, ”wrote Mr. Alimov.

But this did not save the girl, an hour after the descent she died in the arms of the guide. Until 15:00 Igor was waiting for the group, “tried to contact the Ministry of Emergency Situations and the snowcat in the assault camp,” and then decided to go down on his own and “was the first to inform the coordinator of the tragedy.” The coordinator notified the Ministry of Emergency Situations, and from that moment the rescue operation began.

During the descent, “the remaining three guides divided the group into” fast “and” slow “” to avoid massive freezing and began the descent. In one of the groups, when descending to the saddle, “a ligament breakdown occurred, one of the participants broke his leg, the downward movement slowed down even more.” Two more participants in the climb died of hypothermia on the trail. Two more fainted during the descent and were transported to the Garabashi station at an altitude of 3900 m, “where they died without regaining consciousness.”

One of the participants in the ascent from Yekaterinburg Dmitry Parakhin – quoted by the news channel E1.ru – said that during the descent the group got lost.

«We’re lost. They fell off, flew about a hundred meters on the bottle ice, could not stick an ice ax in any way. Our guy broke his leg. We immediately threw an SOS message and coordinates to the Emergencies Ministry. We waited two hours and carried the guy downstairs. The rescuers arrived only at 23 o’clock, when all the groups called each other through the blizzard, ”said Mr. Parakhin.

According to the Ministry of Emergency Situations, the rescuers who set out in search of people had to climb to a height above 5000 m, where the group was. They had to work in conditions of poor visibility, strong snowstorms and gusts of wind up to 70 km / h. The temperature at the same time dropped to minus 20 degrees. The rescue operation was fully completed only by 11 o’clock on 24 September. The head of the KBR Kazbek Kokov wrote about this on his Instagram. He expressed condolences to the families and friends of the victims and thanked the rescuers.

The head also said that the rescuers of the Ministry of Emergency Situations are currently continuing to lower the bodies of three people, and the bodies of two tourists who died on Elbrus have already been transferred to the investigating authorities.

In the management of the Investigative Committee of Russia (TFR) in Kabardino-Balkaria on the fact of the tragedy that happened on Elbrus, a criminal case has already been opened under Part 3 of Art. 238 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (provision of services that do not meet the requirements of the safety of life and health of the consumer, resulting in the death of two or more persons by negligence). According to the investigation, initially there were 23 people in the group. But even at the first stage of the ascent, four tourists abandoned the ascent and began to descend. The remaining 19 people, “despite the complicating weather conditions”, continued their ascent. “At about 2 pm strong winds and a blizzard began, the group found itself in poor visibility, up to one meter, and temperatures below –20 ° C.”

On the descent, according to the decision of the guides, the group split up. The living rescuers managed to remove only 14 participants of the ascent from the mountain, most of whom are in the hospital. Two of them are in intensive care, including one of the guides. As the Department of the ICR for the KBR clarified, an investigation group was created for the prompt conduct of investigative and other measures, the course of the investigation was taken under special control by the leadership of the department.

Abdulkhalim Elmezov, President of the Federation of Mountaineering, Rock Climbing and Sports Tourism of the KBR, an international-class rescuer who has twice ascended Mount Everest from the south and north, told Kommersant that the tragedy with the death of tourists that occurred on September 23 could be repeated more than once.

«Now in the Elbrus region there is still a large number of tourists who are currently undergoing acclimatization and preparing for the ascent, and this is despite the fact that there are practically no conditions for the ascent, ”said Mr. Elmezov.

According to him, in the group that climbed on September 23, in fact, there was not a single professional guide who would realistically assess the difficulties of climbing people up the mountain and descending in especially difficult conditions. “Leading people up the mountain in bad weather is in any case to expose them to danger. Earlier, the Ministry of Emergency Situations had the right to close the mountain in case of worsening weather conditions. Now the rescue service does not have such leverage, and there are more and more commercial firms that sell tours to Elbrus. ” He also added that for such a large number of participants in the ascent, many of whom do not have much climbing experience, there were also critically few guides, which also contributed to this tragedy.

Alexandra Larintseva, Pyatigorsk

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