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The news from Pakistan has been grim — terrorists exploding bombs in public places and Al-Qaida, and the Taliban at war with government forces in the regions next to Afghanistan. The U.S. State Department warns U.S. citizens against non-essential travel to Pakistan.
So how is it, I asked Matt Hepp, that he was willing to travel to Pakistan this summer.
He was slipping into rock climbing harness and shoes at the base of a towering rock cliff just south of Ouray, Colo., where Gretchen and I were visiting our family. Matt and my son, Jeff, were going to do the difficult climbs up the red-tinted rock while I was along to watch and do a novice route.
As we had approached the base of the climb, Matt joked with three young men who were lounging on a sun-drenched ledge about a pitch above the bottom of the cliff. They were resting from attempts on a particularly difficult route. Jeff explained later that Matt had coached a climbing team at the local high school and knew many of the young climbers in the area.
Matt explained while Jeff prepared the rope that he and his partner, Clint Estes, another Ouray rock climber, would travel to an earthquake-prone region in the area next to India to teach local people how to use simple local materials to construct substantial shelters to use after an earthquake.
It’s the same region where alpinist Greg Mortenson pioneered aid work. He wrote about his work in the best-selling book “Three Cups of Tea.”
Matt and Clint have received a grant from the American Alpine Club for the project. The AAC awards one such grant each year to a team that combines humanitarian and climbing objectives, with the humanitarian work taking precedence, according to the AAC Web site.
Matt, an engineer who operates Alpine Edge Engineering in Ridgway, explained that tent shelters often erected following an earthquake are inadequate and dangerous because they are flammable. He and Clint will use affordable local materials to demonstrate how to make the shelters and provide building plans so the local people will be able to construct their own in an emergency.
For their mountaineering objective, Matt and Clint will attempt one or more new alpine rock routes in the Kondus Valley in the eastern Karakoram. “The rock towers of the Kondus Valley are impressive monoliths that stand among peaks rising to more than 6,500 meters (19,685 feet),” according to a news release I found on the AAC Web site. The area has been closed to outsiders in the past.
Matt, 34, said he was particularly interested in doing aid work in a Muslim nation. He has had previous aid experience with the Peace Corps for two years in Ecuador.
Having met these two congenial young men on this and previous visits to Ouray, I believe that the impression they will leave of Americans will be in sharp contrast to bitter feelings of Pakistanis who blame us for the civilian deaths from drone attacks.
There is a tradition in this area of the San Juan Mountains of alpinists engaging in humanitarian aid to people of the Himalyas. The dZi Foundation, based in Ridgway, for example, supports 22 health, education and community development programs throughout the Himalyan region of India and Nepal. Theirs is the helping face of America that is so urgently needed even in the remote valleys of high mountains.
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