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Mount Elbrus
Europe's highest summit, a dormant volcano in the Caucasus
Mount Elbrus lifts its twin snow-domed summits to 5,642 metres in the western Caucasus of southern Russia, the highest point in Europe and one of the Seven Summits. Higher than any peak in the Alps and crowned by permanent glaciers, it is a dormant volcano whose gentle upper slopes belie the cold, altitude, and sudden storms that have claimed many climbers. Its status as Europe's roof rests on placing the continental boundary along the Caucasus watershed.
Elbrus is a stratovolcano with two summits, the western slightly higher than the eastern, built up over hundreds of thousands of years and last erupting roughly two thousand years ago. Some 22 glaciers mantle its flanks, feeding rivers that drain toward the Black and Caspian seas, and its great isolation and height generate severe weather even in summer. The mountain's position at the meeting of Europe and Asia has long made its continental allegiance a matter of definition rather than geology.
The eastern summit was first reached in 1829 by a Russian expedition guided by the Karachay hunter Khillar Khachirov, the western - the true top - in 1874 by a British-led party. In the Soviet era Elbrus became a centre of mass mountaineering, served by cable cars on its southern side that still carry climbers and skiers high onto the mountain. It saw fighting during the Second World War, when German and Soviet troops clashed on its slopes, and today it draws Seven Summits aspirants from around the world.