Greg Mortenson

In a dulcet tone, Greg Mortenson quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson: “When it’s dark, you can see the stars.”

Those words seem to apply frequently to Mortenson’s life. In 1993, Mortenson was turned back after 72 days on K2, having failed to reach the summit of the world’s second-highest peak. The expedition left him “emaciated and emotionally wasted, with spirit sagging.” On day 78, during the trek out, he and partner Scott Darsney had run out of food when “divine luck” brought two porters from the village of Korphe to their aid. The porters welcomed Mortenson and Darsney into the village and nourished them with what little they had to offer.

While convalescing with the Balti villagers, Mortenson watched as the children sat in fields of dirt doing their lessons, the older children helping the younger ones. Mortenson also learned that infant mortality in the region is over 35%, and the literacy rate stands at a dismal 3% to 5%. The experience changed his life. “The Balti inspire me,” he says. “They are happy people, despite all their hardships. Their spirits soar.”

Mortenson returned home determined to raise the money to build the Balti people a school. “My first attempts to fund-raise were writing appeals to celebrities. Only one person responded, Tom Brokaw, with a check.”

A year of work brought only about 15% of the capital he needed, so he sold his car and mountaineering gear. Days before Mortenson was to leave for Pakistan, still well short of his financial goal, Dr. Jean Hoerni, a prolific Swill explorer and pioneer in the computer industry, telephoned him and asked, “What the hell are you doing, working all alone near a war area, trying to raise funds to support a project in an Islamic region?”

Hoerni was a great admirer of the Karakoram mountains and its people. He offered to donate the funds necessary for the school project. “He liked the idea that, even though I didn’t have the money, I was going to get started,” Mortenson says.

Since 1994, thanks to the good will of Dr. Hoerni, Mortenson has built four schools, and two water systems, set up two women’s vocational-training systems and a comprehensive eye-care programs, and developed the first porter-training program in Pakistan.

Hoerni died in 1996 and left $1 million in a private foundation that Mortenson, now 40, could use to build one or two new schools a year. Hoerni also set up Central Asia Institute, which Mortenson now runs, so the public could donate to the projects. The institute is planning projects in other Central Asian countries as well as in Pakistan. “This journey has been far more challenging and also rewarding than any mountain climb,” Mortenson says.

For information on Central Asia Institute, write to PO Box 7209, Bozeman, MT. 59771 Phone: 1-866-585-1766 or email to cai@ikat.org
Copyright (c) 1997 Rock & Ice