People ask me how the Alpine Fund started, it was all quite simple really…..

Back in the fall of 2000 I was asking my friends that I climbed with why the youth did not still seem to go into the mountains. We would go climbing each weekend and the mountains were practically empty of people enjoying nature, even though the mountains rise directly above the city. They talked of the Soviet days, how then there were youth programs and each weekend people would go hiking into the mountains. One friend mentioned he recently saw a video of a group of youth from an orphanage that had gone hiking the previous spring. I managed to find a copy of the video and watched it, I was amazed - it was exactly what I wanted to do. 

Here is the video…… 

 I saw that the video was sponsored by UNICEF, so I called the director of UNICEF in Bishkek and asked him about the movie. They had made the movie as part of a one-time idea to take kids to the mountains - and that after that the kids from the orphange kept calling him asking when they were going to go again! The girls at the orphanage were especially anxious to go to the mountains as on the first trip only boys were allowed to go.  This one trip had taken weeks to organize, to find the equipment and the hike leaders,  and the director of UNICEF did not know how to go about organizing another trip.

I told him I could do it, so UNICEF provided me with some start up money, I opened the Alpine Fund, and now seven years later the kids are still hiking, but now we go to the mountains every month. The youth pictured in the movie are older and have moved on, but I know that they will never forget the days they spent in the mountains. And each year the younger kids wait until they are old enough to go to the mountains with the Alpine Fund.

Now we have a van, mountaineering equipment ready to go, a mountain cabin to use as a base, and a small office in Bishkek to organize the trips. We can go on long hikes, or just to the cabin for the weekend; it is a chance for the youth to see nature, to challenge themselves, to be given a chance to achive a summit they never dreamed they could climb, and to create memories that will last a lifetime. 

There are a lot of amazing stories over these seven years, nights by the fire after a long day hiking, days of hiking not believing they could reach the summit - and then success. And stories of how the kids would come back to the orphanage, then rest of the kids that did not go would gather by their bedsides and make them describe what they saw over and over into the late hours of the night. We also added education programs, and now we hire youth that excel in our programs to work in the office. It has been a team effort, my own work and the work of a dedicated staff, volunteers, ambitious youth, and support from generous donors that have kept the programs going.

Thanks everybody for all your great work!

Garth

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