Greg Mortenson

Pakistan’s Karakoram mountains form the greatest consolidation of high peaks on the planet. In a central one-hundred-mile radius there are sixty peaks above 23,000 feet. Fosco Mariani, the great Italian climber, described the fluted peaks, granite walls, and areas of massive tectonic upheaval as “the world’s greatest museum of shape and form.” K2 (28,250 feet/8,611 meters), the world’s second highest peak, is the crown jewel of the Karakorams. Its granite mass could fill over eighty Matterhorns.

For climbers, the Karakorams are particularly rich in history and lore. British explorer Godwin Austen mapped the region in the 1860′s. Fellow Brit Sir Francis Younghusband, entered the Karakorams in 1887 via the Baltoro in only sheepskin boots, shocking the Balti villagers he met in Askole. Since then, the Karakoram story has been filled with a kaleidoscope of climbing names: Martin Conway, the Duke of Abruzzi, Vitoria Sella, Charles Huston, Shipton, Desio, Lacedelli, Compagnoni, Bonatti, Kaufman, Shoening, Hablar, Messner, Reichert, Wickwire. Quite a few high-mountaineering firsts have occurred here; by 1999, K2 itself had been summitted at least 150 times.

Underlying this climbing history is another story. The backbone of most climbing expeditions into the Karakoram are the Balti porters. There agile, tireless, hardworking people ferry massive loads of gear on their backs. Like the more familiar Sherpa people of the Himalaya, the Baltis are the unsung heroes of high-altitude mountaineering. Without their labor, many a basecamp would never have been established, many a summit would never have been won.

Like their counterparts, the Sherpas, the Balti people originated in Tibet. Over six hundred years ago they migrated to the Karakorams. Originally Buddhist like the Sherpas, the Balti converted to Islam during the Moghul insurgence of the sixteenth century. Another difference — while many of the Sherpas adapted to a trading economy, the Balti are still largely pastoralists. I first met the Baltis during a climbing expedition, and that meeting changed my life.

I came to the Karakorams in 1993 to climb K2. It was the culmination of a climbing career that began with an 1969 ascent of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania where I grew up. I was part of an multinational team attempting to summit K2 in an exceptionally difficult and dangerous year. The hike to basecamp brought every kind of weather imaginable — scorching sun, blinding sandstorms, white-out blizzards. Then came K2′s arduous west ridge. To make a long story short, after seventy-eight exhausting days, our expedition put two members on the summit. We were the only team to summit K2 that season without a death.

Although I was not one of the summiters, the climb left me physically emaciated and emotionally wasted. I had lost 40 pounds and came off the mountain in a dangerously weakened condition. With great good fortune, my climbing partner Scott Darsney and I were befriended by two porters, Mouzafer and Yakoub, who took us to their village to recuperate. We were nursed back to health with a combination of goat’s milk and warm hospitality.

While in the village, my eyes opened to the realities of the Bali way of life. Living conditions are harsh. The Baltis live in isolated, remote valleys subsisting on pastoral grazing and marginal crops of barley and wheat. The climate is severe due to the high latitude, and there is little rainfall and no monsoon. Villagers rely on their ingenuity to bring glacier melt water to their fields and homes. Medical care is almost nonexistent. Broken bones and burns often go untreated, and diseases due to malnutrition are a common fact of village life. Chronic infections often lead to blindness and deafness. Most staggering of all is the 35% infant mortality rate under age one, caused primarily by diarrhea-induced dehydration. In winter, villagers crawl into tiny basement dugouts and spend six months huddled together, barely kept warm by smoky yak dung fires.

Despite this abject poverty, I saw that the Baltis not only accepted their destiny, but embraced the hardship as well as the beauty of their lives, keeping their humanity undimmed and even enhancing it. Facing an existence of privation and adversity, they generously took in two sick strangers and cared for us like their own. I saw that the Baltis could teach me.

When we were better, Scott and I were asked to visit the local school. On an open hillside, we was eighty children sitting on the ground diligently doing their lessons. Some, deprived of even a slate, were scratching their letters in the dirt with a twig. There was no teacher that day — the community could afford a teacher’s daily pay only part of the time. But despite the primitive conditions, the children’s spirits were high; they seemed happy and determined to apply themselves. They prompted memories of my sister Christa Eliana, who had died the previous year after a life-long struggle with epilepsy. Everyday tasks were a struggle for Christa, but she never complained and inspired everyone who know her. When those students asked for help with their education that day, I knew I would have to do something.

When I returned to the United States, I wrote 580 personal letters to corporations, climbers, and celebrities. Only one person, Tom Brokaw, responded. Several more appeals, grant proposals, and slide shows yielded only $2,500. I sold everything, including my car and climbing gear. Then my luck turned. Dr. Jean Hoerni, a climber and microchip pioneer was impressed with my resolve and offered funding. With Doctor Hoerni’s seed money, Central Asia Institute was born.

Our first project was the construction of a 282-ft. suspension bridge to get supplies to the Korphe village. We helped obtain plans and materials, and the enthusiastic community did the rest — they rallied to build the bridge in only eight weeks. Then, with the building of a schoolhouse in 1996, three years after K2, I fulfilled my promise to the Korphe schoolchildren.

Through hard work, luck, and the constant dedication of the Balti communities involved, other successful projects followed. As of the summer of 1999, with the Balti’s initiative and help, 92 projects have been completed. These include: eleven schools, five potable water systems, thousands of tree plantings, two women’s vocational training centers, a comprehensive, locally run eye clinic, and a environmental education workshop for teachers. All these projects were initiated and are managed and sustained entirely by local village committees.

In projects relating to the climbing community, my brother-in-law Brent Bishop and I initiated Pakistan’s first porter training program which teaches conservation, hygiene and sanitation, first aid, and crevasse rescue. To date, 520 porters have attended the program. We also began a Karakoram basecamp cleanup that is entirely managed and supervised my local Baltis. This is done at a fraction of the cost of foreign “cleanup” expeditions. To date, the Baltis have removed a staggering 15,800 pounds of garbage over two years.

Compared to Nepal’s popular trekking routes, the Karakorams remain relatively untrampled. But travel to the region is growing rapidly with the influx of increasing troops of climbers and trekkers. The traditional Balti way of life will no doubt change.

Large numbers of men leave villages for months at a time to seek elusive jobs as porters, leaving the already overburdened women with additional farm and domestic chores. Centuries old self-sustainable methodologies are being lost in the pursuit of the cash that expedition and trekking jobs bring. The inflow of money, material goods, and growing numbers of foreign travelers are impacting the Balti culture. In return for sharing their spectacular mountain surroundings with us and for providing the strong back on which many an expedition reached its goals and many a westerner realized their adventures, these Balti people deserve our help in working for a decent future in which they have a voice.

I’m often asked why I spend over six months away from my with and daughter, fighting physical hardships in a conservative Islamic region faced with political uncertainty and war to continue this work. The answer is simple: the Baltis inspire me. They remain a proud and happy people despite all their hardships. Their initial invitation to share their lives has ended up giving me a spiritual home in the Karakorams.

Copyright (c) 2001 Mountain Hardwear

For more information on Greg Mortenson’s projects for the Balti people, contact:

Central Asia Institute
PO Box 7209
Bozeman, MT 59771

Phone: 1-877-585-7841 (tollfree)
E-mail: cai@ikat.org
Website: www.ikat.org