Bezengi region
North of the Central Range and east of the immense Bezengi glacier, is the no less impressive mountain system of the Lateral Range, with several peaks over 5,000 meters high: the Koshtan massif (5,151 m), the towers of Mt. Dykhtau (5,204 m), Mt. Pushkin (5,100 m) and Mt. Mizhirghi (5,Q25 m). From Mineral'nye Vody, via the city of Nalchik and the Cherek Bezengiskiy river valley, a practicable road leads to the Bezengi refuge at the beginning of the Bezengi glacier. From here, alpinists who want to tackle the Bezengi Wall should head south towards the so-called Austrians' Bivouac, which is a six or seven hours' walk over the glacier. The mountains in the Lateral Range, on the other hand, can be reached from two different camps. The Mizhirghi camp is on the orographic left of the Mizhirghi glacier and can be reached in two or three hours from the Bezengi camp; the "3,900 Meters" bivouac is a ten to thirteen hours' walk from the Mizhirghi camp. Though it is relatively near as the crow flies, in order to get there you must cross over the Mizhirghi and Kundyurn-Mizhirghi glaciers, which call for a roped-party climb, with all the necessary ice gear and rucksacks with bivouac material. The two sides of the Bezengi mountain barrier are quite different: to the south the faces, which are mostly rocky, are often in the form of impressive vertical walls 2.000 meters high; the northern faces consist of steep ice and snow inclines thousands of meters long with overhanging rock bastions and large icefalls that literally thunder because of the snowslides that occur day and night. The ascents of both sides are long and extremely laborious due to the high altitude, the difficulty of getting over the rock and ice, and the very variable weather conditions.
All mountain faces have two stractures strictly divided on their orientation. North routes are basically comes by snow and ice slopes with steep rock bastions inside. There are a lot of danger ice-falls and snow cornices, which time by time are falling down all day long with a terrible din and crash, adding sorrounded mountains with dramatically majestic dinamic action of "bewitched" 1000 meters slope high lighting up in white and blue, because of avalanch' friction over it in thunder storm time, specially in the night together with "St. Elm" fire (corona discharge) over your tent, ski stick and even fingers and hairs.
South faces are basically composed of steep rock. The most amazing are Dikhtau, Pushkin and Mizhirgi ones 1500 high rising up over Bezengi glacier near to "Austrian bivouac", which is a six or seven hours walk over the spectacular Bezengi glacier - a huge river of ice, the longest in the Caucasus, extends for 12 km.