Since ranking and competitions determined Russian climbers’ ability to keep climbing, the accepted climbing style was basically dictated by the judges. Their single most important criterion was safety. If a member of your team died, you were disqualified, no matter how impressive your climbing may have been up to that point. At the same time, competitors were not penalized for using fixed ropes. Since these made the climbs safer, everyone used them. Also, since good weather was not guaranteed during the championships, coaches insisted that even during training, climbers fix some rope every day, no matter what the conditions. Consequently, the Russians are famous for getting ropes established in weather that would keep most climbers pinned — as we saw firsthand on Great Trango. Far from feeling guilty about setting fixed rope, the Russians have long taken pride in what they call a “fully laid Russian route.”
You can now see how the modern Russian Big Wall Project gained its distinctive characteristics. Russian mountaineering, with its Soviet roots, was a creation of the military. There was a heavy emphasis on larger teams, establishing positions of strength in the mountains, attaining objectives, controlling the risks, and living to fight another day. Disciplined teamwork and perseverance took precedence over brilliant individual efforts. The rankings and competitions supported these same values: If you didn’t attain an objective and do so without incident, your climbing career was at risk of being terminated.
All of this created an intense spirit of competition. This intensity can be attributed to a simple fact: the Russians loved to climb, and if they wanted to keep doing it, they had to win.
When the Soviet Union dissolved in the early 1990s, the entire system of state-sponsored alpinism collapsed. The result was catastrophic. Without the money that previously flowed into the sport, everything —the climbing camps, the coaching, the championships — fell apart. Many climbers lost not only their climbing, but their jobs as well. “Most importantly,” explains Odintsov, “the motivation disappeared to perfect oneself as an athlete, to prove something to someone, to wear oneself out during workout. It became impossible to formulate a goal.”
Odintsov, a Master of Sport since 1983, had spent years teaching young aspiring alpinists, but after the collapse of the Soviet Union he did it entirely unpaid. One day, realizing how aimless his students had become without the old structure, Odintsov gathered his group and advised them to quit climbing.

Like many climbers of the Soviet days, Odintsov found work as a tall-building window washer; eventually he became a well-paid supervisor. Though he had money, he was still lacking direction. “I lived with the thought, like a splinter, of what to do next?” says Odintsov. In search of an answer in the summer of 1994, he headed to the Ak Su, where he and a friend became inspired by the unclimbed 1200-meter east face of Peak 4810, one of the most beautifully proportioned walls in the world. “Suddenly, it was as if my eyes opened: after all, there are quite a few walls that big around the world. What if one chose ten of them and completed Russian routes on all of them? Back then I was thinking neither of popularity, nor of fame, nor of sponsors; I simply needed a goal — preferably one difficult to attain, or unattainable at all.”
Odintsov had no problem putting together a crack team. At his disposal were other Masters of Sport like himself: highly trained athletes with talent, discipline, ambition, an understanding of the power of collective will — and a similar need for a mission. Younger, less established climbers fell by the wayside during this period, but Odintsov, and others who had connections and money, were now free to climb as they wished. Most notably, they finally were able to leave the Soviet Union to climb in the Himalaya.
Russian climbers looked at this vast range of mountains and badly wanted to leave their mark. While the rest of the world had been climbing these great peaks for decades, the Russians had been denied this opportunity. Yet in isolation in their demanding home ranges, they had been honing themselves into formidable climbing machines. They looked at last great problems like the north face of Jannu and realized that their years of training in the Russian style made them uniquely qualified to get the job done. It was time to show the world how good they were. And they did.