Mount Elbrus

Mount Elbrus is a very tall mountain in Russia.

It has two round tops covered with snow and ice. It is the tallest mountain in a long line of mountains called the Caucasus. Long ago it was a volcano.

Mount Elbrus rises in the Greater Caucasus, the mountain range that stretches between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Britannica calls it the highest peak of the Caucasus. It is in southwestern Russia.

Elbrus has two summits about 1 kilometer apart, separated by a low dip called a saddle. The higher one is 5,642 meters and the lower one 5,595 meters. Twenty-two glaciers cover 138 square kilometers of the mountain, and their meltwater feeds the Kuban River and the headwaters of the Terek. Mineral springs bubble up along the streams that run down its sides.

Britannica describes the Greater Caucasus as running about 1,200 km from the Taman Peninsula to the Abşeron Peninsula, with Elbrus (5,642 m) its highest peak, followed along the main axis by Dombay-Ulgen in the west and Shkhara, Dykhtau and Kazbek, all over 4,800 m, in the center. Elbrus lies in southwestern Russia.

The Smithsonian's Global Volcanism Program describes a large glaciated stratovolcano whose summit area has two distinct peaks about 1 km apart; the eastern cone holds a crater about 250 m wide and is separated by a low saddle from the western peak. Britannica gives the twin cones as 5,642 m and 5,595 m, with 22 glaciers covering 138 km² that feed the Kuban River and some headwaters of the Terek, sulfurous gases still emitted on the eastern slopes, and many mineral springs along its streams.

Low on the mountains grow forests.

Higher up there are mountain meadows. At the very top there is only snow and ice. Wild mountain goats, bears and lynx live in the Caucasus.

In the Caucasus, plants change with height. Britannica describes forests of oak, hornbeam and beech up to about 2,000 meters, with fir and Caucasian elm higher still in some places. Above 2,000 meters come mountain meadows, and at about 3,000 meters begins the zone of glaciers and snow that never melts. The upper slopes of Elbrus are streaked with glaciers.

The Caucasus has animals found nowhere else, such as the tur, a wild mountain goat, and the Caucasian black grouse. Chamois, red deer, bears, lynx and foxes live there too. About 70 percent of the Greater Caucasus's more than 2,000 glaciers are on its cooler northern side.

Britannica's vegetation zones for the Caucasus: at lower mountain elevations, brushwood and broad-leaved forest; up to about 2,000 m, oak, hornbeam and beech on brown soils, giving way in the west and southwest to Caucasian elm and Nordmann fir and occasionally to pine farther east; above 2,000 m, mountain meadows in subalpine, alpine and subnivean belts; and from about 3,000 m, glaciers and perpetual snow. The Greater Caucasus holds more than 2,000 glaciers covering about 1 percent of its area, some 70 percent on the cooler northern face; Elbrus's 'desolate flanks', in Britannica's words, are streaked by many glaciers.

The fauna includes endemic species, the West Caucasian and Dagestanian tur (mountain goats), the Caucasian black grouse and the Caucasian mountain turkey, or ular, and even endemic genera such as the long-clawed mole vole; chamois, red deer, bear, lynx and fox are common. Snowmelt from these mountains drives spring flood cycles on Caucasus rivers that can last six months.

People first climbed to the top of Elbrus a long time ago.

Now lots of climbers and visitors come. A big base with sports places was built for them. Some people think Elbrus is the tallest mountain in Europe.

A British expedition led by the Swiss guide Peter Knubel first climbed Elbrus's higher summit in 1874, Britannica says. Today Elbrus is a major center for mountaineering and tourism in the Caucasus. In 1964 a large tourist and climbing base opened there, with big sports facilities.

Elbrus is on the most popular lists of the Seven Summits, the highest peak on each continent. But Britannica explains that people disagree about where Europe ends and Asia begins. On some maps the line follows the crest of the Caucasus, which would make Elbrus Europe's highest mountain. On others, Mont Blanc in the Alps takes that title.

Britannica dates the first ascent of the taller cone to 1874, by a British expedition led by Swiss guide Peter Knubel, and the opening of an extensive tourist and mountaineering base with large-scale sports facilities to 1964; Elbrus remains a major center for mountaineering and tourism in the Caucasus.

Its continental rank is a matter of definition. Britannica's Caucasus article notes that Europe's eastern boundary has been much debated: one widely accepted scheme follows the crest of the Greater Caucasus, placing the north side in Europe; another places the eastern Caucasus in Asia; another uses the Aras River and the Turkish border. Britannica's Seven Summits feature asks whether Europe's highest point should be Mont Blanc, 'irrefutably wholly in Europe', or Elbrus, which 'depending on interpretation, only barely manages to escape classification as an Asian feature'; the popular Bass and Messner lists both include Elbrus.