The author: Igor Turchaninov, Moscow

The Khibiny - the point of view of a climber

At first sight, the mountains seem absolutely simple. Small, flat, and their altitude - only a kilometer with a "cap" (it means hardly more on Russian). Absolutely domestic, I can even tell. However every year people perish in them. Freeze or get in avalanches. It is difficult to tell whether it is happens due to their bad shape and equipment, or with suddenly worsening weather conditions. Probably, we have to allow for both: that and another. But most of all underestimation of the dangers concealed in any, even the lowest mountains afflicts.

Mountains Hibinskie (The Khibiny) are insignificant and have the form of a circle in radius about 30 km. It is a very old massif, strongly undergone to influence of a glacier and processes of erosion. Almost all mountain tops represent extensive plateaus and have the sloping rounded forms, breaking with steep granite walls in places. There are no glaciers and eternal snows, as for short summer all collected for a winter has time to melt. Only occasionally there are slices of old snow on passes and in cracks where the sun does not look.

As the Khibiny are located beyond the Arctic Circle and nine months in a year are covered with snow, I want to tell about winter. Weather conditions are very severe in the winter. Strong frosts and winds make ascents extreme. Because of rounded forms of the relief it is practically impossible to hide from a wind. Its speed quite often achieves 30m/c. At a weak frost in negative 10C this pleasure is lower than average. And if it is colder than twenty five degrees -it will be better for you to put your best foot forward the wood zone or to dig a snow cave.

In calm the frost up to negative twenty degrees is perceived easily, probably because of low humidity. But if the thermometer comes nearer to three tens, I do not know why, but I would like to cuddle up to a stove. If the temperature is about zero you feel disgusting as in slushy weather in Moscow. In silent frosty days frequently above it happens more warmly, than below. It is so called temperature inversion - cold air flows down.

The most suitable time for winter ascents is March. First, the duration of daylight is already about ten hours that it is important upon termination of polar night. Second, the average temperature changes in area of negative ten degrees. Thirdly - it frequently happens sunny and clearly weather.

But, even, if you have luck with the weather, you should remember all the time that the weather the Khibiny is exclusively unstable. A snow charge, a heavy wind or a fog can suddenly change the sun. The fog, by the way, can be very dense, with visibility no more than fifty meters. It is easy to lose the way without a compass.

Climbers have started to ascend in the Khibiny in 1992 when disorder of the Soviet Union and interethnic conflicts made inaccessible the most part of traditional mountain areas. Efforts of Murmansk regional federation of mountaineering have not gone to waste and now eleven routes from 1B up to 3B categories of difficulty are included in the Classification table of routes on the mountain summits.

The small rocks of gloomy colour little bit strewn lightly with snow or covered with hoarfrost present the object of interest of climbers. Seen them for the first time, they cause an involuntary question - and where is to climb here?

However, the impression of them is deceptive, and even having wide experience, it is difficult to estimate their walls's scale and altitude approximately. Basically because of the fact that they represent the monolithic granite blocks (characteristic size: about five on five and ten on ten meters) combined together. The big walls in the Khibiny have mainly northern exposition, it means, that the sun on them does not look. The average steepness of Fersman’s, Yudychvumchorra, Vudyavrchorra walls in the top part is close to seventy degrees at the common difference of altitude of six hundred - seven hundred meters.

It is not easily to climb them. It is complicated the presence of lichens which are bringing to nothing a word meaning "friction". You have to use all the set of equipment: bolts, friends, chocks. It takes a long time to bolt, but if you successfully have bolted, you can feel like at home there…

Frequently you can meet "khibinsky hoarfrost" on rocks of any steepness - it is small sites of dense needle snow, growing under the pressure of an incessant wind on the rocks. Only the leader can accurately pass it: this fragile thing does not maintain any more the second.

Physical processes do not stop on “khibinsky hoarfrost” and you can be surprised by a lot of spots of bluish ice scattered on walls. Ice -climbers can come in ecstasy from an abundance abrupt mixed first ascent lines.

If you travel below you have to have the skis such as "Beskids" as a very deep fluffy snow on approaches, especially in woods can swallow up the person with a backpack up to “the neck”. And the snow above is replaced by firn of such rigidity that it is impossible to thrust the shaft of an ice axe and you have to sweat over to screw it more deeply. So crampons are necessary things there.

Of course avalanche danger presents here but if to observe the standard rules: to not cut a slope, not to go right away after plentiful snowfalls, not to push in abrupt avalanche couloirs, everything will be in the order there. Climbers in general feel there better than tourists, because above avalanches are not present and cannot be for that simple reason, that the fresh snow either is blown off at all, or quickly condensed by winds.

I advise you to register your group at rescuers of The Ministry of Emergency Measures of the city of Kirovsk just in case. It will be cost nothing. They meet you affably, and you will give the people much less efforts.