Scott Kress, Oakville’s resident mountaineer, recently returned from Russia this summer reaching the summit of Mount Elbrus, an inactive volcano and the tallest mountain in Europe.
Kress has now reached the summit of six of the seven tallest summits in the world, which includes Mount Everest located in Tibet, and Mount Kilimanjaro of Tanzania.
“What makes this climb different is just being in Russia, and the whole Russian cultural experience,” Kress said.
What was once a career for Kress has now turned into a hobby – picking up 22 years of climbing experience, and the drive to climb the highest summit of every continent.
He now works as a leadership instructor with businesses, focusing on leadership development and team building.
Mount Elbrus stands at 5,642 meters tall and its summit is the highest point in all of Europe.
Kress and his team of climbers encountered 35-40 km winds throughout the climb, and once they moved closer to the summit heavy snow reduced their visibility.
“When we got to the summit you couldn’t see anything,” Kress said.
“We took pictures but it was all just white behind us. So we didn’t get the view of the mountain range, which would have been nice. It was kind of a traumatic summit in that winds were driving the snow and we had very little visibility.”
Kress and his team later experienced a terrorist hijacking during their flight in Moscow.
Kress noticed that the Russian military and media had surrounded the plane and he began to think that something might be wrong.
“All of this was transpiring up in first class and it was really quite amazing it didn’t filter back to where we were sitting.”
Moscow had been experiencing a heat wave at the time, and the terrorist who had taken over the plane allowed doctors aboard to tend to those who fell ill due to heat stroke.
The doctors were actually Russian Special Forces and they soon ended the hijacking.
“Life is fragile,” Kress said. “For my kids I’m demonstrating to them you can do whatever you want, you just have to set a goal and figure out how to make it happen.”
“If there is something you want to do you just have to do it, because you might not be around tomorrow,” he said.
Kress plans on climbing Mount Vinson Massif located in Antarctica in 2011. He will be a part of a small group of Canadian climbers who have reached the tallest summit of every continent.
You can learn more about Scott at scottkress.com.
Tags: Mount Elbrus, Russia, Scott Kress
About the author: Michael Burton
Michael is journalist with experience in publishing, news writing and the magazine industry. He graduated from Sheridan College and is the former editor of TRAVIS magazine.
Follow
Subscribe
It is NOT correct that “Kress has now reached the summit of six of the seven tallest summits in the world,”
It is correct that Kress has now reached the summit of thee highest summits in six different continents…not the same thing as what you report.
Thanks for your comment. Can you please elaborate?
When Michael wrote this story he did make bit of a slip in his wording. What Michael meant to say was that I have climbed 6 of the 7 Summits (the highest point on each of the 7 continents). It is correct that I have not climbed 6 of the highest mountains in the world.