Mount Elbrus – Russia and Europe’s High Point

When it comes to mountains, Europe is nearly synonymous with the Alps. Those majestic, stark crags might be the world’s most beautiful and they include the planet’s most recognizable peak, the Matterhorn.

Despite its robustness, Mont Blanc, the tallest mountain in the Alps, is not the highest point in Europe. To reach the continent’s ceiling, we must first ask ourselves a philosophical question: what is Europe?

The answer is a tangle of history, geography, culture, and politics, but when the definitional dust settles, today, the High Point of Europe resides in Russia!

Many geographers consider Eurasia to be a single landmass. Traditionally, the globe’s massive blocks tended to receive the “continent” designation, but thousands of years of cultural and political differences between the peoples of Europe and Asia led to the geographic practice of creating two continents from one landmass.

Where does Europe end and Asia begin? The traditional answer lies along the Ural Mountains, labeled A on the map above. The Urals were formed hundreds of millions of years ago by the collision between two pre-Pangea plates, so, at one point, this chain made sense as a natural border. The Urals do not create a southern border between Europe and Asia, though, so we require more cartographic gymnastics. As you can see by the alphabet soup on that portion of the map, many designations have arisen over the centuries. The cleanest lies along line F, which is the watershed of the Caucasus Mountains.

This range arrived thanks to a crash between the Arabian plate to the south and the Eurasian plate to the north.

The Caucasus forms a land bridge between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea and is comprised of two subranges. The Greater Caucasus stretches from southern Russia to the border with Georgia and Azerbaijan. The Lesser resides in Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and a tiny portion of Iran.

The High Point of Europe grows in Russia, just north of the border with Georgia, barely within the strained definition of Europe.

The apex of the continent is Mount Elbrus.

Despite its current snowy disposition, Elbrus is a dormant stratovolcano. The peak reaches 18,510 feet (5,642 meters) above sea level, nearly 3,000 feet higher than Mont Blanc. Its height and the relative isolation of the Caucasus Mountains combine to give Elbrus some serious prominence: its 15,554 feet are good for 10th in the worldwide rankings.

The mountain’s etymology is a bit strange. Some linguistic historians believe the word “Elbrus” comes from the name of a different range in northern Iran, called Alborz (sometimes spelled Elburz or Elborz). This range was named for a legendary mountain in Iranian mythology, Harā Bərəzaitī. Through various evolutions over the ages in several languages, one translation of Harā Bərəzaitī to emerge is “high watch” or “high guard.” How this nomenclature drifted into what is now Russia seems to be lost to antiquity. The Circassian people of the area call the mountain “Uash-ha Makhua,” meaning “the mountain of happiness.” The Karachays and the Balkars employ “Mingi Taw,” which translates to “Eternal Mountain.”

Elbrus has an interesting connection to Greek mythology, too. Circa 130 AD/CD, Greek historian Arrian wrote of encountering a peak named Strobilos. This mountain was the spot where Zeus had Prometheus chained for giving human beings access to fire. Many historians believe Stroblios is Elbrus.

The volcano sports two main peaks. Humans first reached the shorter, eastern summit in 1829, the result of an Imperial Russian scientific expedition. A group of English, Swiss, and Russian mountaineers stood atop Elbrus and Europe for the first time in 1874.

Scientists believe the most recent eruption transpired sometime around 50 AD/CE. Today, the area is stable enough for tourists to flock to the Caucasus for skiing and mountaineering. Elbrus is relatively “easy” to scale for a continental High Point – people have taken horses with special spiked shoes to the top – though it does not come without difficulties. Low temperatures, high winds, 22 glaciers, and high altitude can combine to become fatal for the sojourner. The Soviets often employed Elbrus as a training ground for the Himalayas.

For the enterprising American hoping to step foot on top of the Seven Summits, the highest peaks on each continent, the hardest part about Elbrus could be political. Since the late 2010s, the US government has warned citizens not to travel to Elbrus or the Caucasus due to an elevated threat of kidnapping, civil unrest, and terrorism.

If Prometheus stayed atop Elbrus night after night to have his ever-regenerating liver eaten by an eagle, how bad could it be?