Ushba

This is a twin granite mountain in Georgia, in Svaneti, in the Greater Caucasus. The nearest large village is Mestia, ten kilometers away. Two peaks: the northern 4694 m and the southern 4710 m, connected by a bridging ridge.

Ushba is translated from Georgian as something like "mountain of witches" or "witches' coven". The name, as you will see later, is not in an empty place.

Ushba is considered one of the heaviest four-thousanders in the world. On all sides - steep walls 1000-1500 meters high, so you can't call it a walk. There are about fifty routes, but all of them are of varying degrees of suffering.

June-July - then it is most convenient to overcome the icefall on the approach. In the off-season, the mountain becomes even less hospitable than usual.

The northern peak was taken for the first time in 1888, the southern peak - as far back as 1903, by a team of climbers from Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Ukrainian mountaineer Ihor Chaplinsky climbed here five times between 1993 and 2011.