The team. From l to r: Alan, yours truly, the Doc, Jimmy, Peter Photo: some passing tourist

Mineralny Vody (or Min-Vody, as we learnt to call it) is the gateway to the Caucasus. An industrial town with no attractions for the tourist, the challenge is to get in and out as quickly as possible with all your possessions. Kirill, our local head guide met us at the airport, and within minutes we were on a minibus, headed for Terskol, a small village under the shadow of Elbrus.

The Caucasus. Look on a map and you will find Europe's highest mountain range nestled between the Caspian and the Black Sea. It's a seriously wild place - wild by nature, bristling with 4000m mountains, and wild by association. Look at the surrounding names: Georgia (civil war 1992, ongoing unrest), Azerbaidjan & Armenia (practically constantly at war), Chechnya (50,000 killed in 1995 uprising against Moscow), South Ossetia (ongoing guerilla campaign against Georgia).

Even missing out a host of smaller conflicts, that's a lot of wars.

We approached Elbrus along the huge and dramatic Baksan valley, which leads up into the Autonomous Republic of Balkaria and Karbadia. Just twelve years ago, the valley had been home to 60,000 people drawn in by the huge molybdenum and tungsten mines which disfigure much of the valley floor. Now only 10,000 people remain, as the mine is shut. Moscow doesn't want to interfere in local affairs in case it gets drawn into another Chechnya. But the price the locals pay to be left alone is a complete absence of investment. The main town of Nalchyk shows the wear and tear of a population who have lost the main source of their wealth.

Our base for the acclimatisation part of the trip would be the Hotel Wolfram. It has a games room and a sauna with freezing-cold plunge pools. It has a TV in the reception, on which surly locals watched the latest footage of Nato bombing Serbia. They glowered at us. The hotel is allegedly run by the Balkarian mafia, which was fine by me: it was clean and safe.

Someone should teach these mafia guys to cook though.

"Lamb, lamb, lamb…" goes the Balkarian version of the famous Monty Python sketch. Lamb goulash for breakfast is bad enough once, by day five it can make you really angry. Pete was the only one who could eat, which I am sure he did just to annoy us. Or maybe because he lost his taste-buds somewhere between Tajikistan and the Tien Shan during his year-long climbing trip.