Mountain travel is linked with passing through areas of complex mountain relief, such as mountainsides, ice shelves, passes, and rivers: to put the description short – it is travelling with a rucksack from the point A to point B, and often over mountain peaks. In this way mountain tourism is different from alpinism – climbing mountain tops with no luggage. For many travellers mountain tourism has become a way of life, and they even have joke that this kind of tourism means carrying weights on mountain heights in their spare time and for their own money. Standard tours are walking along mountain paths – this is for people with no experience as here one is not supposed to overpass any difficult natural steeps.
As a rule, most of the tours take place on a height not exceeding 2000 metres (sometimes tourists reach 3000 metres for a short period). Tourists stay in camping or tourist bases at night. Mountain ascension tourist firms refer to special programmes for physically strong and healthy people who usually already have climbing experience. Preliminarily the participants usually have a number of trainings and a period of acclimatization and adaptation to height. The height’s effect usually starts at 2000 metres; at 2500-3000 metres an untrained person may encounter mountain disease which is caused by the changes of the air structure and the decreasing oxygen level.
The geography of mountain walking tours is pretty wide in Russia: they are organized in the areas with big (Caucasus, Altai) and small (Kamchatka, the Sayans, etc) mountains. However, the biggest number of walking mountain tours in Russia one will find in the Caucasus. First of all, it is trekking programmes in the near Elbrus areas famous for their snow peaks, ice shelves, rapid rivers, crystal-clear lakes and waterfalls, and natural springs. Apart from the territories located close to Elbrus, the following Caucasus regions can be attractive for mountain travel: Arkhyz, Dombai, Krasnaya Polyana, and some other. Trekking in the foothills of the eastern Sayans gives tourists an opportunity to get acquainted with a unique phenomenon of nature – Shumaksky thermal springs. This resort is preserved almost untouched by human hand due to its remoteness and the hard-to-reach location: one can get there only on foot or by riding a horse. For mountain ascension the most popular mountains in Russia are Mount Elbrus and Belukha.
Before starting a trip to the Elbrus peak travellers usually go through acclimatization in the Adyl-Su clove: tourists under the guides` control commit ascensions up to 3000 metres during 2-3 days. Gradually by increasing and decreasing heights, spending nights in camping, they adapt to the new conditions and on the 7th day they start ascension to the western peak of Mount Elbrus. However, not all people who start ascending to the mountain reach its peaks – some come to understanding that from the very beginning they simply overestimated their strength, but in most cases mountain travel is one of the best ways to know one`s own personality.
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Source:
www.adrenalinetour.ru
Lavrentyeva Natalya