Words Robin Brown Photos and Captions Max Lowe I KICKED I took another step and looked behind us. I could no longer see our base camp, from which we’d skinned in the dark hours of the morning. I could see the end of our skin track some 500 feet below, where we’d put skis on our packs. It was steeper than I’d imagined, and I decided it was better to look up than down. I leaned my weight into the mountain and took another step. We still had another 500 feet to go. This wasn’t the first time any of us had been to the coun-try—all three of us are U.S. Army veterans who fought in the Iraq War. And while all three of us were crazy enough to return of our own volition this past April, I blamed Stacy for my current icy perch along the Iranian border. He had called me less than a month previous, inviting me to return as part of his project, Adventure Not War. The organization takes soldiers back to countries in which they fought to undertake humanitarian work and adventure travel. While Stacy was in the military, he traveled to numerous war-torn countries. After his time serving, he became deter-mined to have a different kind of experience in those places that had held so much darkness—a kind of a rewriting of the script. His first trip was in 2016, rock climbing in the African country of Angola with legendary alpinist Alex Honnold. One year and many expeditions later, he wanted to make a first ski descent from the summit of Halgurd. Along with our three-veteran team was filmmaker Max Lowe and cinematog-rapher Mack Fisher. Having carried the weight of the Iraq War on my shoulders for more than a decade, I wanted to meet the people for whom so many of my friends had died. I wanted to see what had become of the country I never thought I’d set foot in again. To me, nothing good had come from the Iraq War. I often wondered if we should have ever been there, or if our efforts had been in vain. This could be my chance to find out. I just never imagined the answer would involve a pair of skis, crampons and a fright-eningly steep slope deep in Iraq’s biggest mountains. with the toe of my crampon, swinging my ice axe into the hard-packed snow. It brought me one step closer to the summit of Halgurd Mountain, which, at 11,834 feet, is the second-tallest peak in Iraq. Above me, Stacy Bare moved his 6-foot, 7-inch frame a few feet higher; below followed the third member of our team, Matt Griffin. 01 • Tent Ed is an organization that helps build temporary education facilities in Iraqi refugee camps, which will provide schooling for children displaced by the fighting. 02 • A baker prepares dough for flatbread, a local staple. 03 • Our team shares a homemade meal with Omar Chomani and his family, in their home in Choman. 04 • Former Army Ranger Matt Griffin, taking in the view as we near Halgurd. 05 • Locals play a game of cards at a gas station between Erbil and Choman. 06 • Yazidi leaders relax street-side during a community meeting. Yazidi’s are one of the most persecuted ethnic groups in the region, and make up a major portion of the refugee population. 07 • In a refugee camp north of the city of Erbil, heavy tractors had been used to construct a school, where students like these two young boys will soon attend classes. 08 • Omar has been driving his Toyota Land Cruiser in the mountains around Choman since the war between Iran and Iraq in the late 1980s. 09 • Robin Brown, Stacy Bare, Mathew Griffin and our guide Jan Bakker celebrate on the summit of Halgurd with both the American and Kurdish flags. 10 • While the mountains behind this back-country hut near Choman dripped potential, they were also blocked by landmine fields and high avalanche danger. That didn’t stop the team from dreaming. 048 The Ski Journal
The Ski Journal Volume Eleven, Issue Two: Page 48
