pure mountains

On Women's Solidarity Day, I held an ecological quiz - an intellectual game about how we can help improve the world around us, especially in our beautiful mountains with small but important deeds. In what direction can we change our habits and consciousness, being a tourist, climber, skier or snowboarder.

Our team member Masha Feldman regularly collects trash on her daily dog ​​walks, often from the same places, picnic areas in the forests and lakes of the Elbrus region. Unfortunately, many of our fellow citizens understand "relaxing in nature" as something completely different from what we see when we walk and go to the mountains.

Traditionally, in honor of "tourism day", we set off along a new route to a viewpoint above the Baksan Valley with a view over an amazing system of almost unknown these days ancient agricultural terraces.

Shadkhurei Lakes is a unique ecosystem of indescribable beauty consisting of three interconnected karst lakes. Due to the careless attitude of people, this place has turned into a noisy picnic area and one of the lakes has become a real garbage dump for nearby settlements. We do not just want to "clean up the garbage", but to systematically approach the preservation of the nature of this place and draw the attention of a wide audience to its uniqueness for humanity.

Our team member Yulia Zaletilova has her own small, very useful and clever ecological project. She collects tin and aluminum cans on walks in the forest, on hikes in the mountains, and then she hands them over to a special collection point and saves money for the trek to Everest Base Camp.

For many years now, the "Clean Mountain" campaign has been held on Elbrus, during which local residents and businessmen, tourists, climbers, clubs and simply concerned nature lovers come to Elbrus and jointly take care of cleaning up the mountain. The guide community usually cleans up in the most inaccessible places, where you need to go with mountaineering equipment and with good knowledge of the area.

The story of our friendship and work with Suzanne Al Khubi, the famous Palestinian climber, the first Arab woman on Everest. How we are moving together towards the goal of protecting the ecosystem in the mountains of the world.

Congratulations to our friends from the Adventure Club of St. Petersburg on their ascent of Elbrus! Read the story of participant, Sofia Koneva (15 years old), about how she walked in the Elbrus region with her father and friends, watched rare birds and climbed to the top of Elbrus.

Yulia Akateva spent a whole month on the island of Valaam, volunteered in the monastery garden and vegetable garden, and gained new knowledge about how carefully we need to treat the earth in order to preserve its ecosystems. She came to the inner state of a person who not only understands what our planet needs for balance, but also how we should live so as not to harm it.

Our team member Denis Bogachev will tell you why trash cans and garbage bins in nature do not improve, but only worsen the situation with cleanliness on tourist trails. Denis regularly once a week on his own initiative cleans up garbage near trash bins in Terskol or simply on eco-trails during a walk in the forest.

During the sports quest on the territory of the "Elbrus National Park", employees of the Ministry of Labor and Social Development, under the guidance of a mountain guide and volunteers from our team, actively spent their vacation in untouched nature, walked through the mountainous terrain and even learned to be a little mountaineers.

On "tourism day" today we went on a beautiful, completely unfamiliar new route to the top of Mount Gizhgit with magnificent panoramic views and "weathered rocks"

This year 300 volunteers came to clean up Elbrus! The success of environmental campaigns is visible.

Together with Sultan Baidaev, we built with our own hands a very comfortable, cozy, warm mountain eco-hut from old Soviet ruins littered with garbage.

In October was taken annual scavenging in the Baksan Valley along the Terskol - Azau road. Our team was gathering rubbish for two days in the forest, where usually have a weekend barbecue people from nearby towns.

We gathered about 100 bags of garbage.

In september 2006 we have carried out an action of gathering garbage at altitude of 4100 meters, in the area around former "Priut-11" high-altitude hotel on mountain Elbrus.

10 mountain guides, who permanently work on the mountain took part in it. In few days we gathered and then descended with snowcats and cable-ways about 400 bags of garbage.