Bezengi Arena of Death: Tragedy on Dykh-Tau

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In the shadow of the tragedy on the Mizhirgi Glacier, news of yet another serious accident — the fifth this season in the Bezengi area — passed almost unnoticed.

On September 20, a two-man climbing team disappeared on the classic Grade 4 route on Dykhtau. One of them, Vladislav Chernyshov, was later found dead inside their tent, buried under snow and ice. The second climber, Pavel Marusov, has still not been found at the time of writing. Given the time that has passed and the circumstances of the accident, there is practically no hope left of finding him alive. The story briefly appeared in the news and then almost vanished from public attention, adding yet another dark episode to the already grim statistics of this season.

There is little information about the Dykhtau accident, and much of it is contradictory. Although the published reports leave many uncomfortable questions unanswered, the overall picture is gradually beginning to emerge.

Judging by the information currently available, the accident occurred somewhere on the ascent from around 3,600 metres — the so-called “Russian Bivouacs” — towards the Misses–Dykh saddle. Their bivouac was discovered buried under snow and ice; Chernyshov was found dead inside the tent.

The lower part of the line towards the Misses–Dykh saddle lies within the runout zone of seracs hanging above the western side of Dykhtau’s North Ridge. Given that there is an alternative approach along the slopes of Misses-Tau, the choice of bivouac site looks particularly strange within the overall chain of events.

If further information confirms that the climbers were indeed killed by an ice collapse followed by a large mass of snow and ice sweeping down the slope, then the immediate cause of the tragedy can be described as a serac collapse.

But the immediate cause of a group’s death and the actual cause of an accident are not always the same thing.

To me, the key question is not what killed them, but why their bivouac was established in an area of high objective hazard in the first place. Especially when a safer alternative exists along the slopes of Misses-Tau. Did they know about this alternative? And did they know about the current level of danger on the line they had chosen?

There is a grim parallel here with a much older accident in the Ushba Icefall. In 2000, an entire team of climbers from Pyatigorsk and the UK was killed after being forced to spend the night inside the icefall. Seven people died in an ice collapse. But the disaster itself had begun earlier — at the point when the chain of events forced them to establish a bivouac in a place where spending the night was absolutely unacceptable.

I am not going to attempt a full analysis of the Dykhtau accident here. That is not the purpose of this text. Nothing we say now will bring these guys back, and any final conclusions — including questions of responsibility, whether individual or institutional — should only be drawn once the full information is available.

I want to talk about something else.

Mountains are changing faster than our understanding of their routes. Lines that for decades were considered familiar and well understood are becoming significantly more dangerous.

This is particularly noticeable in Bezengi — an area that has never been considered either safe or easy for mountaineering in the first place.

I have stood on the summit of Dykhtau more than ten times. And roughly the same number of times, I have turned around without reaching the summit.

I know this mountain well — its character and its peculiarities. One thing is certain: this is not a mountain you can climb “whenever you want”, “in any conditions”, or “safely with an experienced guide”. In recent years, Dykhtau has, in my view, become one of the most dangerous major peaks in the Caucasus. I am not saying that Dykhtau has become so dangerous that its routes should immediately be closed, restricted or somehow prohibited.

The point is something else: today, Dykhtau — like the other mountains of Bezengi — demands a much deeper understanding of risk and personal responsibility.

Because as the objective conditions on the routes change, so do the rules of this “game of mountaineering”.

The stakes are getting higher. The price of negligence, lack of information or a tactical mistake is increasingly paid with human life.

And that makes the most important result not:

“I reached the summit.”

But:

“I prepared for this climb for a long time. I wanted to continue. But I turned around in time — and came down alive.”

I have more than ten successful ascents of Dykhtau behind me. But all of those successes put together are not worth a single human life lost on this mountain.

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Text and photographs by Alex Trubachev

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