1868 Douglas Freshfield and François Devouassoud Mount Kazbek Historic First Ascent Expedition

Official Expedition Narrative & Archival Record

In early summer 1868, twenty-three-year-old British alpinist Douglas William Freshfield led an ambitious expedition to explore the mysterious, unmapped glaciated peaks of the Greater Caucasus. Freshfield was joined by experienced Alpine Club companions Adolphus Warburton Moore and Charles Comyns Tucker, as well as legendary Chamonix guide François Devouassoud, who became the first Swiss/French alpine guide to operate in the Russian Empire. Arriving via the historic Georgian Military Highway, the expedition established its base in the mountain village of Kazbegi (now Stepantsminda). Looming 3,300 vertical metres directly overhead was the icy volcanic pyramid of Mount Kazbek (5,054 m), known to Georgians as Mqinvartsveri ('Glacier Peak') and revered in ancient legend as the mountain where the Titan Prometheus was chained. Accompanied by local Gveleti hunters, the party ascended steep birch-covered slopes past the fourteenth-century Gergeti Trinity Church before stepping onto the heavily crevassed ice of the Gergeti Glacier. After bivouacking on cold moraine rocks at 3,500 metres beneath the ancient Betlemi cave hermitage, the climbers set out before dawn on July 1, 1868. Devouassoud cut hundreds of steps with his Chamonix ice axe up a 40-degree firn headwall to gain the saddle between the twin volcanic domes. Fighting gusting icy gales, Freshfield, Moore, Tucker, and Devouassoud attained the pristine 5,054-metre summit, gazing out upon an endless sea of jagged Caucasian peaks spanning from the Black Sea to the Caspian. The conquest of Kazbek shattered the myth that the Caucasus was unclimbable, inaugurating the Golden Age of Caucasian mountaineering.