Greg Mortenson

Outside magazine has selected humanitarian Greg Mortenson, of Bozeman, and the story of his work promoting education in remote mountain areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan as the “Top Adventure Story of the Decade.”

“Never has the failure to climb a mountain led to such success,” Joe Spring wrote on the magazine’s Web posting of the top 10 stories of the decade.

Spring was referring to Mortenson’s failed attempt to climb K2 in 1993 and his subsequent recuperation in a tiny village in northern Pakistan, which led to his promise that he would return to build the villagers a school.

Mortenson had to overcome numerous financial and logistical hurdles later chronicled in his book, “Three Cups of Tea” to get that first school built. But he got it done, and went on to establish 131 schools in that increasingly volatile part of the world through his Bozeman-based nonprofit Central Asia Institute.

Spring also pointed out that, despite the tremendous technological advances of the past 10 years, from Twitter to online videos, “the best adventure story of the decade involved face-to-face contact, cash, pencils and paper.”

Outside’s Top 10 list also included Tour de France champion cyclist Lance Armstrong, legless South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius, Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, downhill skier Lindsey Vonn and climber Aron Ralston, who had to cut his arm off with a pocketknife to escape after being trapped underneath a boulder

Mortenson, who was in Tampa, Fla., Tuesday, briefing U.S. Special Forces troops deploying to Afghanistan, said in an e-mail that he was honored Outside had selected his adventure.

But, he added, he would have given the honor to “the dedicated soldiers of the U.S. military who have spent the last decade deployed overseas in multiple deployments” and who routinely face “situations that were previously once-in-a-lifetime firefights, like the Blackhawk Down incident in Mogadishu, Somalia.

“The quiet and patient dedication of our men and women in uniform,” he wrote, “puts them in an entirely different category than the athletes and adventure seekers of the world.”

Mortenson said he is going back on the road this month to continue promoting his second book, “Stones Into Schools.”

But his recent bout with viral pericarditis, an inflammation of the heart, has prompted some “life-changing decisions,” he said, including a promise to his wife, Tara Bishop, to spend more time at home with this family.

(c) Bozeman Daily Chronicle 2010

http://bozemandailychronicle.com/articles/2010/01/06/news/500mortenson.txt