We closed the Kazbek season on the twenty-first — four clients, two ropes, summit at 08:40 in a wind that had read the forecast and decided, for once, to respect it. This is the report for the file. The celebration afterwards in Stepantsminda was modest and is not documented.
The walk-in is as it was: church, moraine, and the long grind to the crossing at 2,950 metres, where the horses drop the loads and honesty begins. The Gergeti Glacier has opened more than usual for late September. We roped earlier than the file suggests, at the first ice rather than the marker cairn, and I have moved the instruction accordingly.
Two nights at the Meteo Station at 3,653 metres. The building remains what it is — a Soviet weather station retired into a mountain hut, draughty, improbable, indispensable. Bring earplugs; the file says so twice now. The acclimatisation carry to 4,200 metres went slowly and correctly, which is the only way it should ever go.
Summit day: away at 03:10 under a hard sky, crampons from the door. The plateau crevasses are bridged but visible, exactly as you want them. The final slope carried thirty centimetres of settled snow over old ice — good steps, no wallowing — and the summit ridge was ours alone. Eight minutes on top. Minus fourteen with the wind. Nobody suggested lingering and nobody needed to.
For the record: all four clients summited, which is not the metric we keep but is the one they asked me to write down. The metric we keep is that everyone descended with margin — daylight, fuel, legs — and we did.
Conditions note for next year: the traverse beneath the summit slope is showing more bare ice each season, and by the 2027 departures I expect we will want a fixed line for the descent. Sofía will look at it during the early rotation. It goes in the file as a question, not yet an answer.
The grade is PD and stays PD, but altitude does not read grade tables. 5,054 metres is felt by everyone, including the guide typing this. Train for the walking, respect the schedule, and the mountain is generous. Rush it and it is not.