Debabrata and Swarupa with Dorchi (left), a guide, at the Barrels base camp after summiting the peak. (Picture sourced by correspondent)

The climbers from Bengal and others head towards the West summit of Elbrus. Elbrus West (5,642m) and Elbrus East (5,621m) are seen in the background. (Picture sourced by correspondent)

The climbers spent about 20 minutes at the peak and started descending. “With good speed we came down to a little less windy and warmer saddle to have some dry fruits and biscuits with water. Finally, we came down to Barrels and later in the afternoon to Azau (the road head) by cable car,” said Swarupa.

“For Elbrus, the main difficulty is the weather — high wind, whiteout, and wind-chill. The traversing part after the saddle needs care as a fall could be fatal. Just before the summit a short open ridge (arete) is very dangerous to keep balance in high wind of 70km per hour,” she said.

The 22-year-old had done most of the mountaineering courses, including the basic and advanced ones, at the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute in Darjeeling. She has also done a course in search and rescue from the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering in Uttarkashi, Uttarakhand.

Swarupa has summited quite a few training course peaks such as Kabru Dome, BMC Renok and the shoulder of Radhanath Parbat.

Swarupa’s father Prohlad Mondal is a generator mechanic and had to work hard to arrange Rs 1,80,000 for his younger daughter’s expedition with Rs 40,000 more yet to be paid. An elated Mondal said: “She is always confident about fulfilling her dream that she would scale the Seven Summits. May God be with her.”

“Before Swarupa, only one woman climber from Bengal, Susmita Mukhopadhyay, had tried to scale Elbrus, in 2017. But she had to abort the climb and return from near the saddle because of bad weather,” said Mukherjee, who is also project implementation committee member of the West Bengal Mountaineering and Adventure Sports Foundation.

“With a dream to conquer Seven Summits, Swarupa had approached me last year. She wanted to scale Europe’s highest peak first. In a way it’s a good decision as you can judge your endurance, snow craft, acclimatisation, cold condition adaptability as well as your mental and physical strength during blizzard and whiteout conditions on a moderately high altitude peak of 5,642m,” said Mukherjee, for whom it was the third Elbrus climb.

The team of two was supposed to go for the “final push” at the midnight of July 1. But the wind that had been blowing since that evening did not die down. They had to stay up till 4am when the wind speed dropped to approximately 40kmph.

As they were already late, the mountaineers, along with climbers from other countries, decided to take snowcat vehicles till the height they had walked up the day before.

With the rising sun and high wind snow drift, the duo reached the place within half an hour and started their summit march after putting on their crampons.

“It was 17 degrees below zero. We moved with good speed and overtook most of the climbers ahead of us and reached the saddle (the flat area between the West and East summits) within one hour and 40 minutes. After a brief stop, we continued again and started traversing upwards the east face of the main (West summit) peak. We reached the final summit base in another hour. The last long walk and the 20m-long final summit ridge took us another 45 minutes to scale the main summit at 8.25am,” said Mukherjee.

“There were fixed ropes to negotiate the last traverse. But we avoided that as the slow climbers were a hindrance. We overtook them on the way up and down relying on our expertise of moving on the snow and ice,” he said.

At the top, it was “terribly” windy (about 70km per hour). Besides, it was too cold to take off the gloves and click snaps. The peak was crowded as it was the only weather window in a span of four days.

A 22-year-old woman from Howrah’s Domjur, who dreams of climbing the Seven Summits, set her feet on Mount Elbrus (5,642m) in Russia on July 1.

According to veteran mountaineers from Bengal, Swarupa Mondal, who is a disaster management group’s civic volunteer at the Kolkata Police Training School, is the first woman from the state to scale Europe’s highest peak.

“I’m elated to have accomplished the mission. At the same time, I’m indebted to Everester Debabrata Mukherjee for his guidance during the climb. I hope I will be able to fulfil my dream of climbing the Seven Summits (the highest peak of the seven continents) as well,” an overjoyed Swarupa said over the phone from Mineralnye Vody in Russia.