Afghanistan 2021

 Kabul fell to the Taliban less than a week ago.  I’ve had friends here and in Pakistan as what I thought about it.  I’ve been trying to draft this blog post ever since.  It’s difficult because there is so much that floods my mind when I think of Afghanistan.  I’ve been following developments in Afghanistan since just before the USSR entered in force in 1979.  I decided that rather than focus on Bush’s stupid decision to rebuild the Afghan Govt in 2002, or on Trump’s selling out the Afghan Govt to the Taliban during talks in Doha, I’d just concentrate on what I know from first-hand experience.

 

I spent 2 deployments supporting Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF).  The first was in 2009 at Bagram, Afghanistan.  I was stationed at Bagram but traveled to Kabul, Jalalabad, Hairatan, Sharana and the Panjir Valley.  Most of this travel was in civilian vehicles with contractors whose petroleum distribution sites I was inspecting.  I was there for over 6 months.  Then in 2013/14 I spend 15 months working at the embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan providing logistics support for the Pakistani military.  Before traveling to Pakistan I was told by Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer that I was nuts to go there.  He was of the opinion the Pakistanis and Taliban were inseparable.  I understand why he thought so.  But, I also see the complexities in much greater detail than he does. 

 

I still have a number of Pakistani friends.  In Afghanistan, I was largely prevented from having much contact with Afghans.  My experience, with the Afghans I did come into contact with, was mostly positive.  It was a strange place to be.  It’s a beautiful, country.  The people are like people everywhere, they want life to be a bit better.  They want their children to have things a bit better than they do.  But when I arrived, they had been involved in either civil war or armed occupation for 31 years.  Farming families in parts of the country had lost the knowledge of properly farming.  It’s a strange thing to visit a place so ravaged repeatedly by conflict.  If things calm down I will go back.  There is so much I still want to see there. 

 

I was not surprised by how quickly the Taliban rolled up the country.  Afghanistan is famous for being tribal.  If you want to understand what that actually means please read “The Secret History of the Mongols”.  It is a biography of Genghis Kahn written shortly after his death.  It illustrates, how in tribal societies, tribes and villages with shift allegiances based on their best interests, rather than some abstract construct like nationalism or ethnicity.  The military largely saw that the government didn’t have US support.  The government had been cut out of the peace talks between the USA and the Taliban.  When the Taliban began taking over border crossings, I am certain the Afghan military saw the writing on the wall, and decided to switch sides.  The same thing happened in 2001/2 when the US entered the country.    

 

Am I concerned?  Yes.  But I am also cautiously optimistic.  The Taliban who ran the country from 1996 to 2001 lost scores of leaders in the 20 years the US was there.  They are not the same organization.  The country has had quite a bit of foreign influence over those same 20 years.  So, the population, their expectations and experiences, have also changed.  But ultimately it is, and has always been, up to the Afghan people to decide their own method of governance.  The USA had a very heavy hand in the formation of the Afghan Govt that replaced the Taliban.  It was terribly corrupt and inefficient.  Now governance is squarely back in the hands of the Afghan people.  If the majority of Afghan’s decide the Taliban do not represent them well, another civil war will erupt.  If though, the Taliban moderate their approach, perhaps Afghanistan will finally be on a path toward peace.

 

I have a great deal of criticism for the way the situation was handled by Western powers.  But I don’t think the deaths and casualties we suffered were in vain.  Time will tell.  If the violence on Afghanistan abates, then those losses will have helped the people of Afghanistan.  I’ll be paying attention, as I always have.  It’s a beautiful place full of proud people.  I with Afghanistan the best of luck in their movement forward.      

       

Visit to a Past Life

Mt Baldy (San Antonio) and West Baldy from the North                                     

The other day I climbed up a ridge I had only been on once before.

Looking down at North Fork Lytle Creek

Back 17 years ago I decided to climb a mountain for my birthday.  This despite the forecast of a storm.  I was thinking that if conditions got too bad I would turn around and return without bagging the summit.  Most of my friends and family know this story well so I won't recount here... though I may add it in the future.  Long story short: I made it to the summit of Mount San Antonio (Mt Baldy).  Then after a quick 15 minute stay walked off the north side in the near whiteout conditions.  I thought I was walking off the south side.  oops.  I worked my way down the steep snowy slope expecting to cross the Manker Flat trail, but never found it.  Instead I eventually reached a 2 meter drop off I could easily drop down but could not have come back up.  Not knowing what was past that drop I opted to begin climbing back up the slope in the direction I thought would get me closer to the trail-head.  Of course I still believed I was on the other side of the mountain.  I worked my way to the summit of Dawson Peak and spent the night on the steep slope in an emergency bivy sack.  The next day I worked my way down a long ridge to the wash below.  Once I got to the wide wash I finally recognized that I was in Lytle Creek and not above Baldy Village.  It was a rude awakening.  6 miles later I got to a house and asked to borrow the phone.  A very long ordeal was over.
 

Ever since that long ago birthday I struggled to understand the mistakes I made, the route I took.  It was a few years before I realized the cairn I kept to my left when walking off the summit was not what it seemed.  That cairn had been repurposed into a windbreak.  In the poor visibility what I mistook for the cairn was a windbreak next to the North Backbone trail.


My memories of the event and compressed, fragmented and a bit fuzzy.  I was quite fatigued by exhaustion and stress when I reached the drop off and decided to climb back up.  I found some game trails and saw trees cut by chain saws.  Both convinced me I was heading the right way.  When I reached the summit of Dawson, not realizing where I was, I saw human footprints before the snow covered them.  I was following those thinking I was on the right track.  Near the summit it was getting late in the day.  The temperature had dropped.  I decided I had to layer up.  Pulling off my Gore-Tex and donning my heavy fleece I had real trouble zipping my jacked.  My fingers were very numb and I was on the verge of panic.  I realized I had waited too long to put on more layers and that if I couldn't zip my jacked my chances of survival were not good.  I hiked until about 20:30 when it was far too dark to continue and after slipping I had snapped one of my trekking poles.  That's when I found a small tree to curl up under the  shiver the night away.

Mt Harwood and Mt San Antonio from Dawson ridgeline

Visibility had been severely restricted the day I got lost, as well the day I hiked out.  I was never clear where I was at any stage in this adventure.


A few years ago I hike the North Backbone trail.  This took me to the summit of Dawson but nothing looked familiar.  Not surprising as I probably didn't cross anywhere I went on my long ago birthday.


Back to the present:  The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a number of trail closures.  Since most of the areas I usually hike in are closed my hiking partner and I decided to go up Dawson from the North Fork of Lytle Creek.  We didn't take the same route I hiked out 17 years ago.  Instead we found a gully off the north slope with large patches on snow.  It's so much easier to ascend steep snow in crampons than to bushwhack up a slope.  Once we reached the upper ridge-line I continued to the summit.  It's an unusually beautiful area.  All the while I was thinking of the night I spent there and wondering what route I'd taken.


Some of my observations: The ridge I hiked down was much longer and more daunting than I recall.  The edge of that ridge is extremely dangerous with a crumbly cliff of dirt and rock that would result in a fatal fall.  I had hiked down that ridge without food or water, beginning in the very dim light of predawn.

On our way back out the 4x4 road from the North Fork it occurred to me that I feel like a cat.  More precisely, I feel like I burned through one of many lives that day and night 17 years ago.  If this were someone else's story.  And if they offered to take me on a trip to recreate the event, I'd scoff at them.  Looking over the terrain I'd call them out and refuse to believe the story.  So it goes.            

The summit of Dawson Peak

White Powder Sand and Pale Blue Waters

I've been in Zanzibar for 4 days now.  The first 2 nights were spent in Stone Town bumming around.  Stone Town in OK: Some cool shops, some good eats... the night market has great food.  Watching the local boys jump into the ocean form the quay wall was amusing.  But it is very built up, in poor condition overall and, a city.  It was not why I came to Zanzibar.  OK, let's be honest: I didn't really kow why I wanted to see Zanzibar.  It's been somewhere I decided long ago I should visit.  So I arrived with no real plans.  Well after 2 days in town I headed across to paje.  It's on the SE coast of the main island.  The beaches are made up of an incredibly fine white powder.  The tide moves in and out hundreds of yards in an hour.  The water is bathtub warm.  It is the typical tropical paradise I suppose, a wonderful place to just kick it.

I managed to get a bit sunburned today.  I wore sunscreen but was out longer than planned.  Wandering around at low tide.  The sand is teeming with critters.  Far off in the distance waves crash against the reef.  Closer to shore boats sit marooned, women collect seaweed from gardens, kid play.  And while there is at least foot of water the kite boarders struggle to learn their new hobby.  The combination of warm shallow waters and a fair wind make this quite the place to learn kite boarding.  I thought about giving it a whirl but decided that can come with my next trip. 

The sand here is different than anyplace I have been.  There are shells everywhere an occasionally coral mixed in.  So it may be generally soft but yu do need to use some caution, especially around the sea urchins.  I am used to seeing them on rocks but here they are randomly strewn across the sandy bottom.  The other curious hazard was the baby sea snake I saw... just a few feet from my ankles.  And twice as I wandered about something large squiggled under my foot and as I stepped away quickly vanished.  I've no idea what it was.  It did feel pretty funny though.               

Tomorrow afternoon I'll need to head back to Stone Town to catch y flight the following day.  I'll be coming back hee though.  I need to see the national forest, go skin diving and possibly learn to kite board.  Zanzibar is a pretty cool place.

My Letter to the Uganda Wildlife Authority

Hello,

I wanted to provide you some direct feedback on my recent climb in the Rwenzori Mountains.  I am copying my outfitter as well, in case this is not the correct e-mail address to submit concerns to.

I climbed Margherita Peak on 10 Jan with Rwenzori Trekking Services.  Our two lead guides on summit day were Enoc and Robert.  If I recall correctly we were the 3rd of five groups to arrive at the second glacier, the steep one.  Our guides were world class professionals.  They knew what they were doing and were vary safe.  I have experience on both glacier climbs as well as winter mountaineering so I am not a novice to the alpine environment.

The reason I have chosen to contact you has to do with the other trekking services on the peak that day.  I don"t know specifically who they were except that they were not from RTS.  My first complaint was not a safety issue but speaks to the lack of professionalism I observed from the other services.  While waiting on our guides to place fixed ropes the next group arrived.  Their lead guide kept looking all about at both us as well as his own clients.  Being that we arrived in the dark and all were wearing headlamps this guide was blinding us each time he looked in our direction.  Headlamp discipline is a basic hiking skill, and this fellow lacked it completely.  By this point several groups were waiting to scale the glacier.  One of the earlier groups had a panicked client and were not handling it well.  We ended up being delayed nearly an hour while the situation was resolved.  Once our guides had a fixed rope in place we began up.  At this point several groups were all waiting to scale the glacier.  As I am sure you are aware climbing this glacier in the dry season creates something of a bottle neck where groups can access the glacier safley.  One of the guides from another service stepped between myself and the other 2 climbers I was to be roped with and began faking out his rope.  I mentioned that I was going to have to step around him and he ignored me.  This is significant because I was wearing crampons on bare rock which is precarious enough.  Additionally they seemed unconcerned who they leapfrogged or how so long as they were on the glacier.  A woman in our first climbing party (we were broken into 2 groups for this glacier) was just starting up and nervous, when a guide from a different service, began changing up her belay rope.  She panicked and I heard her scream for him to stop touching her rope.  She was a novice and was doing her best to follow the directions of our guide Robert who was well up on the glacier at the ice screw securing the fixed rope.  The most concerning things I noticed were other groups crossing over our fixed line in their rush to climb.  Walking across a fixed safety line with crampons is not only poor form but dangerous business for anyone who will be using that line.  Crampons can easily slice a line making it useless.  We finally made the summit but on the return I noticed several clients from other services were using our fixed line while we were descending on it as well.  Again this is a sloppy and dangerous practice that was ignored by their guides. 

As I stated I do not know who the other guiding services were that happened to be on the mountain that day.  I am hoping you can contact them and take some form of corrective action.  They were dangerous and unprofessional and appeared to not have much understanding of alpine skills.  As for myself I will only venture into the Rwenzori"s with Rwenzori Trekking Services as they are he only safe group in the range.

All the best,

Kampala Impressions

Yesterday and today were slow.  The internet is not overly reliable so as I was trying to arrange follow on flights to Zanzibar and Moshi it became an all day affair.  So, if you plan to visit Uganda - and I highly recommend that you do - here are a few things to make the trip smother:

*  Decide on your itinerary and purchase your flights before arrival. I was dithering on my plans up to the last minute and was rather curious to see how well I could wing it.  Not a bad thing but it does waste some time.
*  Buy a SIM card for the local system when you arrive. It is possible to use WeChat and WhatsApp as well as e-mail using free WiFi services but when WiFi is out so is your ability to contact others and research next steps.
*  Make local friends.  Luckily I am pretty good at this step.  It will be your best source for info/where to go/what to pay/how to get around, etc.
*  If you decide to trek in the Rwenzori Mountains only use Rwenzori Trekking Services.  Normally I don"t endorse specific businesses but I have seen their guides as well as the cpompetition in action on a 65 degree slope of glacial ice.  Only RTS has a clue how to move folks safely in that environment.  I sent a scathing e-mail to the Ugandan Wildlife Authority about the lack of professionalism displayed by the other services.

OK, enough for travel tips.  By last night I had my tickets and this morning I booked 2 nights at an Air BnB in Stone Town, Zanzibar so I was wondering what else to do. I ended up visiting a small house where 2 gents bring in homeless kids for a few months to get them ready to travel back home and get back into school.  They were surprised to learn we also have homeless in the good old USA.  After that I had to walk to an ATM for travel funds and to pay my hostel bill tomorrow.  I could have taken a bodeboda but wanted to walk.  Not because bodabodas are dangerous (they absolutely are) but because I wanted to look around a bit.  I walked all they way to the city center about 2 miles away I think.  The air quality is pretty bad during the dry season.  There is excessive exhaust smoke, its hot and a bit humid, it's very dusty.  This is not a pretty city.  Mind you I was not in the nicer areas.  I wanted to see how the average resident lives and shops.  In that regard it is not much different than other 3rd world countries.  it is crowded.  Shops are small but numerous.  Lots of fruit is for sale along the sidewalks.  Not too may folks were smiling but I suppose that is as much a universal city issue.  Waling through traffic is a challenge I suppose.  It requires a great deal of situational awareness.  There are other, cars, trucks and bodsbodas all vying for the same space.  Bodabodas are frequently on the sidewalks as well so you really have to pay attention.  It is also helpful to learn how to pay attention to what is in your pockets and what it feels like.  Reaching for your wallet to make sure it is OK is a fantastic way to alert pick pockets what pocket to target.  I specifically left my daypack behind at the hostel to look slightly less like a backpacker.  Mind you I still stick out.  In my little jaunt I was one of only 5 mzungu (foreigners).  I saw three Chinese and 2 Indians... and then me.  So yup I kind of stood out a bit!             
 

I watched a bodaboda rider die the other day

Bodabodas are the main means of transport for much of Uganda.  They are mostly small Chinese motorbikes.  I`d guess they are 80cc as they're much slower than the 125cc dirt bikes from my youth.  I have seen them carry groups of people, lumber, coffins, all manner of stuff.  Unfortunately the riders are generally poorly trained.  On the way from Kilembe to Kampala there was a small bongo truck and a car in front of us.  As we watched a bodaboda cut directly across the highway and in front of the bongo truck.  The truck lifted as if it had hit a large speed bump at speed.  Because of road work part of the highway was dirt.  This resulted in a a huge cloud of red dust.  The car before us swerved around the truck.  Through the dust cloud, we saw bits of shattered plastic spinning to the ground.  Our driver was quick to brake to avoid the accident.  We drove past in time to see the bongo come to rest on it's side after rolling.  The three occupants climbed out seemingly without serious injury.  There was no sign of the bodaboda or it's rider.  I doubt the guy ever knew what happened.  One moment he was cruising across the highway.  The next moment reality ended for him.  Our driver was pissed that the bodaoda riders do such dangerous and stupid things. It was all over in a matter of seconds.  We continued on our journey.  The following day, a friend and I hired bodabodas to take us across town to the taxi yard, for a lift to Jinja.  Such is life in Uganda.     

Day 7: The Luxury of Dry Clothing

We did a long trek today, 8 miles.  It took about 8 hours.  Distance here in the Rwenzoi's s different from distance elsewhere. For reference here are the flavors of trail in these mountains: steep muddy uphill; steep muddy downhill, rocky scrambles either up or down; flat muddy bog.  It makes for slow hiking.  But this place is magically beautiful.

After leaving camp this morning we climbed a 4500m pass on a new trail.  It was new to us but also only recently built.  We had lunch at the highlands not long after cresting the pass.  It was stark but lovely.  White quartz everywhere, deep and lush yellow moss I lay down in after eating.  The moss was soft and warm.  We transited areas that look so different: rocky highlands, bogs, forested areas that had burned, a bit of everything.  At one point it began sprinkling.  I placed my camera bag into my day pack and donned my rain shell.  Our guide asked if we wanted to put on rain pants.  silly us, we declined thinking it would not last.  Plus it had turned to small hail.  The precipitation alternated between rain and hail for several hours as our pants got quite wet.  Luckily it was cool but much warmer than it has been.  So it was tolerable. 

Now we are at our last camp.  We've changed into dry clothes which seems such a luxury.  Tomorrow we hike out to the hostle.  I don't know how long we'll be hiking but I do know a warm shower and clean hair after 8 days will be most welcome!