Album 11
August - October 1956

Summary

Euphrosinia was an enthusiastic and skilled traveller but her first encounter with the Caucasus was special. After years in prison camps and work at the mine in the North she felt the wind of freedom and revelled in pristine beauty of the southern landscapes. Wherever possible she preferred to walk and drew. Her album The Caucasus survived.

Her route ran from Kislovodsk along the Georgian Military Road by bus, over the Cross Pass, along the River Terek, through the Daryal Gorge to the capital of Georgia, Tbilisi. From there by train - to the city of Kirovakan, over the Semyonov Pass, through the city of Dilijan, over the Lake Sevan to the capital of Armenia, Yerevan.

Being in Georgia Euphrosinia noticed the tension in the society. People told her about the events in Tbilisi (in March 1956, the Red Army broke up pro-Stalinist rallies there) but the authorities still did not dare to remove statues of Stalin. In Yerevan too, a roughly hewn figure of the "father of people" stood at the entrance to the city. The previous masters grabbed the best plots including the shores of the Ritza Lake to build their dachas there but the new state leaders did the same turning recreational areas into their estates, and Euphrosinia saw that when travelling and running into dead walls with razor wire in places she had passed freely not long before.

After getting a general idea about the Caucasus and sightseeing in big cities she slowly went back to the Georgian Military Road in a truck basket and after the Cross Pass walked drawing the Kazbek and other mountains, caves, cliffs, the Terek, the Daryal Gorge. She wanted to share this beauty with someone kindred and she imagined her cousin Ira beside her. After making sketches of eagle nests on white stones near Vladikavkaz she took a truck and returned to Yessentuki.

Euphrosinia fell in love with mountains and wished to make another trip - to go to the Teberdinsky Reserve and to reach the Black Sea over the Great Caucasian Ridge. By bus she got to Cherkessk, then walked or hitch-hiked to Karachaevsk and from there to Teberda. Euphrosinia had neither a voucher to a climber camp nor a permission to enter the Reserve but she managed to slip through security behind a car and found herself in Dombai. Being a wild tourist she couldn't get a place in a tent camp. It was mid-August, and she chilled without a blanket at the height of 2,500 meters near the base of great glaciers. In Dombai she climbed the glacier of Alibek where she made friends with a family of climbers from Moscow. She also went to the Turiye Lake and climbed the mount of Semenov-Bashi.

That year only groups accompanied by police were allowed going over the Kluhorsky Pass because the authorities feared of attacks of mountaineers who were restored to their rights and returned from the exile in the Central Asia and Kazakhstan where they were deported in 1944. Euphrosinia rejected the idea of going "under police escort" and walked alone saving herself from the heat by immersions in icy water of the mountain river Ganachkhir. At the starting point of the serpentine road leading to the Klukhorsky Pass she passed the tourist tent camp "Northern Haven" and found a path along the mountain stream Northern Klukhor. Then, over packed slippery snow she climbed down the glacier turning into a steep slope near the Kluhorsky Lake.

Abkhazia lied ahead. Euphrosinia raced down leaping from rock to rock and rushed over the snow tongues sitting astride a stick. The small river South Kluhor showed the direction. She crossed a tributary of the river Klych over a snow "bridge" formed after the outburst of winter avalanches. The tent camp "Southern Haven" charmed her with its beeches and stuck in memory with a conversation to Svani guides. In the Kodori Gorge she went over the "ledge" on the Bagat Cliff and got to the city of Sukhum at the Black Sea.

In the New Athos she visited Anakopia Fortress on the Iberian Mountain. The fortress and a monastery were built in the 7th through the 9th centuries, and in 1930, when the monks were driven out those millennial structures were blasted with dynamite. She was taken aback with that vandalism. She spent a night on the mountain so that to finish a sketch in the morning and was astounded to see an old monk left there as a watchman wandering among the graves at night fuming them with incense and whispering prayers. That prompted her to leave the monastery so that not to violate claustral rule prohibiting women to spend a night in a friary. At dawn she gave the monk money for incense.

Euphrosinia went on over the Black Sea coast. She took the fancy of relict salt tolerant pine trees in Pitsunda, from the city of Gagra she went to the high-mountain Ritsa Lake and drew dawn there. The highway only continued to the "Stalinist Narzan"; when she tried to find out how to get to the Krasnaya Polyana through a mountain pass alert university students from a tourist group almost took her for a spy, at that time a single tourist making drawings evoked suspicions. But she met a hundred-year old mountaineer who proved to be a guide and showed her the way. She went over the Svaneti Ridge seeing the Great Caucasus and the mount of Elbrus to the right of her and the Gagry Ridge to the left. Along the valley of the river Mzymta Euphrosinia came to the Krasnaya Polyana and from here to the cities of Adler and Sochi.

She spent the remaining vacation days visiting Leningrad she liked a lot. She saw the city sights and monuments and its suburb Peterhoff.