The World's Happiest Family: Climbing the Ghar

At the end of Ramadan, there is a three-day festival called Eid-al-Fitr. It is like new-years, Christmas, Fourth of July and Thanksgiving all rolled into a three day feast and celebration. Of course during my time away it meant that no work was getting done. So instead we decided to climb a mountain. It is about 9-10K feet high, but the base elevation is about 6K so we didn't have to climb too high.

In this first pic - you can make out our trucks down as little specks on the bottom of the trail.

It was steep, but gorgeous - we slowly made it above the late summer haze.

This is looking up toward one of the ridge lines - if you look closely you can make out some old Mujaheddin fighting positions that were used when the Russians had invaded Afghanistan - back in the 1980s. They do blend in very well.

Another great pic of the view. I am mildly nervous of heights. This hike got kind of hairy in a few places.

So this is me standing in a Mujaheddin fighting position.

And the view from this fighting spot.

This is not the summit, but it is the crest a bit down from the summit. Good place for a picture. I am wearing my goofy pilots gloves because the rocks are pretty sharp and there are lots of thorns.

A close up of the same picture.

So that was only part way up - to get to the summit we had to cross along the top of a cliff for about 30 yards. The cliff dropped off at a 70-80 degree angle. It was a clear 2000 feet to the bottom - i was really freaked out - i am the one in the black with the tan hat (who is clutching on to the top of the ridge).

And me at the top- you can see that razor edge behind my left shoulder - the rock formation off in the distance behind my right shoulder is just above where i took the other pic of me at the crest.