Here's the paragraph from Page 255. However, the objective wasn't the mountain passes, it was the coastal road from Tuapse to Batumi.
A final effort in the western Caucasus had also been planned, but this never matured. For it Hitler had, very belatedly, decided to play the airborne trump card which he had so carefully preserved. The Parachute Division-still called the 7th Air Division as camouflage-had been assembled in an near the Crimea for a swoop onto the coastal road from Tuapse to Batumi, in conjunction with a renewed push by the 17th Army. But then the Russian counteroffensive at Stalingrad took place, and was followed by a new Russian attack near Rzhev-where Zhukov's armies had nearly broken through in their August attempt to give indirect relief to Stalingrad. Hitler was so alarmed at the dual threat that he cancelled his last bid for Batumi, and ordered the parachute forces to be rushed north by rail to Smolensk, as a reinforcement to the central front.