Local transport - Sherapi's ambulance Photo: Dr K Henderson

After days of travel it feels good to get our skis on. For about two minutes, then it feels terrible.

Although we had six days to prepare, we were all keen to get started, so we began our acclimatisation climbs the day after our arrival, with an easy tour to Tcheget peak (3,400m) from the top of the nearby Tcheget lift (2,750m). For these tours we were joined by a second guide, Valera (later to be called V1 to distinguish him from our high-mountain guide, also called Valera).

One thing I will say about Russian chairlifts - they're fast. Especially when you have to get on holding your skis and poles as well as your backpack because there's no snow. Chairs bear down on you, swaying from side to side like cobras. Pick one and step in front of it - if you are lucky, it knocks you down and scoops you up. Within seconds your fingers are screaming from holding you and all your equipment on the chair. The top approaches as inevitably as death but twice as fast. What to do? Watch the experts lunge forwards and let the chair past with a neat side-step, graceful as matadors. We novices feel the earth under our feet and sprint like rabbits, long curving runs that take us gasping into the vodka-smelling embrace of the lift attendants.

Finally, adrenaline subsiding, we put our skis and skins on and began to climb.

If you have never been ski-touring, you probably don't realise how tedious and unpleasant it is. Or maybe that's why you've never bothered to try it. One foot after the other, you climb at a snail's pace. You pant. You chafe. You get blisters. You sweat. Your fingers and toes freeze. The vista hardly changes from one second to the next. There is nothing to occupy your mind except recriminations for embarking on this idiocy and thoughts of your friends enjoying themselves in Verbier.

Then something strange happens. You fall into a rhythm. You realise that you haven't had a thought for a few hundred yards. The view has changed, become spectacular, you are now far away from the lifts. You feel warm and comfortable. You're in the Zone. Karma. Ommmmmm.

All of which is very pleasant. Except for one thing: kick-turns. No matter how close you approach to a state of higher consciousness, kick-turns always bring you back to reality. Downhill kick-turns with alpine skis are tricky enough. You have to learn not to step on your poles and to transfer your weight quickly so you don't wrench your knees. Uphill kick-turns on touring skis require all this and more. Your heels are unattached, so your skis have a mind of their own. Just placing the uphill ski in the right position involves as much negotiation as an arms control treaty. Bringing the other one around requires muscles in places you don't have places. And if you fall, oh woe, oh woe - you lose precious metres of height, a human counter in a real-life game of snakes and ladders.

Peter doing ballet on the slopes - the only way to acclimatise Photo: Dr K Henderson

Grunting and cursing our kick-turns we climbed steadily to 3000m, where we stopped for some tea at a nearly-abandoned meteorological station. Each hour on the hour our hostess, Natasha, had to radio in a weather report, a stream of numbers probably uninterrupted since the 1930's. At no point in the coming days did we receive a weather forecast, or any indication that one might exist. There was probably no money left to have someone at the other end write down the numbers Natasha was sending through on her ancient radio.

From the meteorological station we climbed towards Tcheget Peak (3,400m) in deteriorating weather. Reaching the top, we quickly stripped off our skins and began the long ski down to Tcheget.

It was a relief to be moving freely, after all the days of travel. The group was coming together, and everyone was coping well. Alan was calm and unflappable; the local guides were clearly excellent climbers, though lacking in basic English and apt to disappear up the mountain alone; Peter was strong and self-sufficient, always ready to help out. Jimmy's sense of humour was living up to its early promise (except if forced to ski slush, when it spectacularly disappeared). The Doc and I felt fit and fine.

Even the weather was cooperating and the decision was made that if all went well the next day, we would complete only two acclimatisation climbs before moving to base camp on Elbrus itself. Four days ahead of schedule!