What does the name Elbrus mean?

Elbrus most likely shares its name with the Alborz range in Iran. Both come from Harā Bərəzaitī, a mountain of old Iranian legend whose name is usually read as "the high watch". Over the centuries the name travelled north, changed its sounds, and reached the maps as Elbrus.

The local names

The Karachay and Balkar people, who live at its foot, call it Mingi Taw, usually translated as "the eternal mountain". The Kabardian name, Uashkhamakhua, is often given as "mountain of happiness", though translations of it differ.

Prometheus and the Greeks

Around AD 130 the Greek writer Arrian, sailing along the Black Sea coast, was shown a Caucasus peak called Strobilos, where Zeus was said to have had Prometheus chained for giving fire to mankind. In 1896 the explorer Douglas Freshfield argued that Strobilos was Elbrus.

The mountain

Elbrus is a dormant volcano in the Caucasus with two summits. The higher, western one, at 5,642 m (18,510 ft)18,510 ft, is the highest point in Europe and the one on both 7 summits lists; the eastern one is 5,621 m (18,442 ft)18,442 ft. It last erupted around AD 50, and gas vents and hot springs on its flanks still show it is not dead. More in our guide: the mountain: a twin volcano. Why Europe, and why not Mont Blanc, is its own question: Is Elbrus really in Europe?

The peoples around it

Elbrus stands where two Russian republics meet: Kabardino-Balkaria on the south and east, Karachay-Cherkessia on the north and west. The valleys at its foot belong to the Balkars and the Karachay, Turkic-speaking mountain peoples so closely related that they are often called one people split by a map, and to the Kabardians, a Circassian people with a language of their own. The Russian Empire took the North Caucasus in the long Caucasian War, which ended in 1864 and sent hundreds of thousands of Circassians into exile in the Ottoman Empire.

The 20th century was harder still. In 1943 and 1944 Stalin deported the entire Karachay and Balkar peoples to Central Asia, accusing them of helping the German occupiers. Their land was handed to neighbours, and from 1944 to 1956 Elbrus itself was counted as part of Soviet Georgia. They were allowed home only in 1957. The Baksan valley on the south side, where most climbers stay, is Balkar country: the peoples of the Caucasus has more.

The first ascents

The lower East summit was climbed first, on 10 July 1829, by Khillar Khashirov, a Karachay guide with a Russian scientific and military expedition under General Georgi Emmanuel. He reached the top alone after the rest of the party turned back. A British party with Douglas Freshfield reached the East summit again in 1868, and the higher West summit followed in 1874, climbed by a British team led by F. Crauford Grove with Frederick Gardiner, Horace Walker and the Swiss guide Peter Knubel; the Balkar guide Akhia Sottaev is often credited with them too. Our guide tells it in full: history and first ascents.

A Soviet mountain

In 1929 eleven scientists built a small hut at 4,160 m13.648 ft and called it Priyut 11, the Refuge of the Eleven. Mountaineering became a mass sport under the Soviet Union and groups of hundreds climbed Elbrus together. It had its cost: in March 1936 four of a group of 33 inexperienced Komsomol (Young Communist) climbers slipped on the ice and fell to their deaths. In 1939 the state travel agency Intourist built a hotel near the old hut, clad in aluminium, to bring in foreign climbers and their currency. It kept the name Priyut 11 until it burned down in August 1998, when a cooking stove fell over; the Diesel hut was built just below its ruins in 2001.

The war

In the summer of 1942 German mountain troops of the 1st Mountain Division occupied the Elbrus area, and on 21 August a detachment raised the swastika flag on the summit. Hitler reportedly called it a stunt. Soviet army climbers took the flags down in February 1943 as the front turned. What today's war means for anyone who wants to climb there is on its own page: Elbrus and the war.

Cable cars, a national park, a Land Rover and horses

Cable cars were built up the south side in stages from 1959 to 1976, and they are why that side is the busy one. Since 1986 the mountain has been part of Prielbrusye National Park. People have taken strange things up it: a Land Rover Defender, winched to the East summit in 1997 and wrecked on the rocks on the way down; Karachay horses, to the East summit in 1998 and the West summit in 1999; and quad bikes in 2016.

Where this comes from

• Elbrus, Wiktionary, etymology

• Mount Elbrus, Wikipedia, names, history, huts and special ascents

• History and first ascents, our Elbrus guide