Inside the First Afghan Women's Ascent of Mount Noshaq

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

In July, a group of Afghan women set out to climb 24,580-foot Mount Noshaq, their country’s highest mountain. No Afghan woman had ever reached the summit, and many challenges stood in their way, from hostile Afghan men who think that women shouldn’t exercise, to the terrorist attack in a district near the peak two days before the climb began. This is their story.

"Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.”

Hanifa Yousoufi speaks only a little English, but the words she knows she repeats over and over again. She’s a member of an all-woman Afghan mountaineering group called Ascend: Leadership Through Athletics, and along with three of her teammates, she is attempting to climb 24,580-foot Mount Noshaq, the country’s highest peak. So far, Hanifa’s journey has consisted of a four-day trek to base camp, at about 15,000 feet. This is her first test climbing higher on the mountain, and her eyes are filled with terror. She’s gripping a large rock band, looking down 800 feet at the steep, icy slope beneath her.

Emilie Drinkwater, the 41-year-old American mountain guide leading the expedition, is a few feet ahead, hacking steps into the ice to create a path so that Hanifa and her teammate, Shogufa Bayat, can reach steady ground on a small rock terrace. A few moments earlier, they watched as I fell and then slid down this slope, which consists of densely packed ice broken only by jagged rocks. I was tethered to the expedition’s medic, Rob Gray, by a short rope. Had I not rammed my crampons and ax into the ice at his order, I wouldn’t have been able to regain my balance before he lost his, and we both could have fallen to our deaths.

Carefully, Hanifa begins to climb, stumbling as she follows Emilie, who she is roped to. She pants and moans, less from exhaustion than fear.

Hanifa is anything but frail. She has thick, black hair and long eyelashes. When she tilts up her chin, she looks proud and taller than her five-foot-two frame. But at times she appears tired, vacant—with a sense of hopelessness in her expression. She can look you in the eye from a distance that can never really be crossed.

Her family lives in poverty in Kabul, Afghanistan’s chaotic capital, where in 2018 alone, hundreds of people died in bombings and suicide attacks. She’s the youngest of six sisters and two brothers, and like 80 percent of women in Afghanistan, she is illiterate. Her family has never celebrated her birthday, and she doesn’t know how old she is. She assumes about 23. Before the climb, when I asked her through a translator at Ascend’s office in Kabul if she had any happy childhood memories, she fell silent for a moment before mumbling, “very little.”

-more-

https://www.outsideonline.com/2393332/noshaq-afghanistan-first-women-ascent?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Dispatch-04092019&utm_content=Dispatch-04092019+Version+A+CID_ed97824d01639e3a4646a2927334d8c5&utm_source=campaignmonitor%20outsidemagazine&utm_term=READ%20MORE

[leftynyc]

1. What an awesome story

One I have forwarded to just about everyone in my address book. My heart sings for these brave women - all of them.

[backtoblue]

2. K&R

[brer cat]

3. Awesome!

K&R