2021 Summer Travel: Summiting Denali
Sam Sidiqi reaches the top of Denali, the highest mountain in North America.
This summer I had the joy of summiting Denali, the highest mountain in North America at 20,310 feet. It has been an unlikely journey for a kid who was born in Afghanistan and grew up in Swarthmore. The climb taught me some good lessons and it helps support the development of the country where I was born. I want to share that story with the readers of the Swarthmorean. That’s how this write-in started a month ago, and then the Afghan government fell, and my perspective on what I had been through changed. It is hard to feel proud of an accomplishment when it is flanked by such tragedy. It’s hard to feel proud of enduring a tough ordeal when you watch thousands of refugees deal with a much tougher set of problems. Even if the importance of my climb has reduced, maybe it’s still worthwhile to share my story, and with it some thoughts on what is going on in Afghanistan today.
I was born in Afghanistan, but moved to the U.S. when I was very young. I was lucky that my family eventually settled in the Wallingford-Swarthmore School District. I went to the Swarthmore-Rutledge School from kindergarten until 8th grade, and then Strath Haven High School. As a scrawny 5-year-old I went through the rites of T-ball on Rutgers Ave., and getting my Swarthmore Swim Club thousand lap T-shirt in the leafy pool. In high school I did cross country, wrestling and track, and had a bunch of great teachers who challenged me academically. At the same time, I was able to spend many of my summers in Alaska visiting my aunt. I went fishing, hiking, and had some views of Denali, then known as McKinley.
SRS and Strath Haven were a great launching pad for me. My father had never finished college, and my parents struggled financially in my early years when I was growing up, but I was lucky enough to be in a great school district. I was able to go to MIT for college and later Wharton for business school. That education allowed me to have a successful international career in the U.S., Kuwait, Switzerland, India, the UAE, and even Afghanistan. When I compare the opportunities I had with the opportunities available to my equally smart cousins who grew up in Afghanistan, I can only be thankful.
Struggling With Altitude
After some years abroad, the interest in hiking I had as a child was rekindled, and I started climbing in the alps. I had a chance to climb Mont Blanc, Matterhorn, and other peaks in the mountains of Europe. Along the way, I discovered that I struggled with altitude. During some of my attempts, I felt a bit sick, and while attempting Kilimanjaro, I had to turn around early because of altitude sickness. I believe that my problems with altitude are part of the reason I never got past the JV team in cross country—that my thalassemia minor limits the build up of hemoglobin in my blood, which hurts my cardiovascular endurance.
Creating Opportunities for the Afghan People
My thoughts about doing more in Afghanistan led me to think about philanthropy, an extension of the lessons of community service I learned in Swarthmore. My first foray was to donate and raise money from friends and family to build a school in Afghanistan. Later, as I focused more on the mountains I started to fund avalanche safety initiatives, and supported Afghan skiers who were trying to qualify (unsuccessfully) for the Olympics. Ultimately, I decided to launch a foundation, the Afghan Peaks Charitable Trust, which aims to develop the mountains of Afghanistan by promoting mountain sport, safety, and nature preservation. I was really happy to find alignment in my goal of helping create opportunities for kids in Afghanistan, along with my passion for the mountains. This year Afghan Peaks supported Afghanistan’s only ski competition, and also funded the first female ascent of Shah Fuladi mountain, the tallest in Bamiyan at 16,244 feet.
Training
In 2019, I decided that I wanted to make an attempt on Denali in May of 2020. The tie between my summers in Alaska and my joy of climbing made this an important lifetime target, and I figured I should get to it while still in my 40s. At this time I was living in the UAE, and a lot of my training involved running or hiking through the sand dunes. It felt strange preparing to climb a mountain with weather of 20 below, while training in temperatures of over 100. That said, my training was on course. Then, COVID hit. Not only was Denali closed for the year, but my family and I were unable to even move back to the U.S. in April as we had planned. We finally moved in June, and I had to restart the training cycle all over with a new target of May 2021. My year in Swarthmore involved lots of hiking up and down Plush Mill Road with a heavy pack of up to 80 pounds. I also know the Swarthmore woods much more now after my one year of Denali training than I ever did as a kid.
The other piece of my Denali summit attempt was to use it to promote my foundation, Afghan Peaks. If successful, I would become the first Afghan to summit Denali. I felt that was newsworthy enough to raise some outside funds for my foundation, and that encouraged me more in my efforts. In preparation for the climb, we built up the website and Facebook page for the foundation (www.afghanpeaks.org).
The Climb
Hikers skiing on 2x4s.
Finally, after all the preparation, came the climb. Denali is known for being a slog. There are no Sherpas, so you have to be able to carry everything you need for 21 days including food, a tent, and lots of cold weather gear which comes to about 135 pounds. Denali is also known for its extremely cold and severe weather. Our guide said that his clients who had climbed Everest usually felt Denali was the harder mountain because you have to carry your own gear. I went up with a guided team of six climbers and three guides. Planning the logistics, navigating the rough weather, and managing the risks of the climb were beyond my level of expertise, and I was happy to be led by world class guides who knew the mountain.
Aside from carrying heavy weights for long periods, there are a few technical bits to the climb. The crux of the climb is called the headwall which is the top of a steep wall coming out of the camp at 14,000 feet. The top of this section is a very steep climb that requires fixed ropes and careful climbing as a group. This year we had the added challenge that the surface was not snow in which footprints could be made, rather it was hard ice with a glassy surface that required careful management of crampons.
After getting over the headwall, and then working through more technical terrain on the ridge to 17,000 foot camp, the highest camp, I was tired. By now the altitude also started to get to me. I could barely eat dinner that night, and I convinced myself that I would not go the next day because of my response to altitude. But, in the morning, my climbing partners were excited to climb and it was infectious. I still could barely eat, but I felt good enough to walk. Summit day was long and arduous, but I guess the grit that got 5 year-old Sam his 1,000 lap shirt was the grit needed to finish summit day and overcome my challenges with altitude. Thanks Swarthmore Swim Club! Summiting felt great.
Sam Sidiqi celebrates at the top of Denali.
The World Changed
I got back down from Denali and felt a lot of support from family and friends. Channel 2 news in Anchorage covered the climb, and lots of friends and people I didn’t even know were kind enough to support Afghan Peaks. Ultimately the climb raised more than $3,000. I was looking forward to planning which races and events we could sponsor in the winter ski season. Then, later in the summer, everything changed. The government of Ashraf Ghani was no more; replaced by a new Taliban government. In tandem we watched thousands of residents of Kabul, including my brother and his family, scrambling to get out of Afghanistan despite real dangers in the journey. Night after night I would follow my brother’s movements as he would try and fail to gain access to the airport. Sometimes having to walk by dead bodies while carrying his 18-month-old daughter. What is the importance of my climb in comparison to the challenges of the refugees at the airport? The mental burden of making life and death decisions, not only for yourself but for your whole family is on a different level of stress than the trivial decisions of a mountaineer.
I could only re approach this submission after my brother and his family reached the U.S. My biggest concern now is how to pay the employees of my company in Afghanistan so that they can feed their families. Now that the U.S. has seized Afghanistan’s reserves, banks are shut down and the economy is being choked in a way that could lead to a massive humanitarian disaster in the short term. Holding the country’s reserves is an important part of the U.S. government’s negotiating with the Taliban and Pakistan to achieve its interests, so I don’t suggest that the money is given without precondition. But, there is an opportunity to release the funds—$100M at a time—and observe if the Afghan central bank only auctions the funds to private banks so they can create liquidity in the market, or if they are misused by a Taliban-led government. The majority of funds can be held for negotiating. I’m hopeful that some solution can be found so the people of Afghanistan aren’t hurt by this action of the U.S.
I also would like to share that although this turmoil has caused concern to me and my family, my personal view is that the last three presidents have all been correct in their assessment that it was time to get out of Afghanistan. I also don’t put much stock in criticisms of the Biden administration’s exit. As many have said, there is no clean way to lose a war. One of the reasons I am ambivalent about this regime change is that it has been obvious for some time that the government of the last 20 years of Afghanistan was not sustainable. The Afghan government was set up as one of the most highly centralized governments with minimal local input—the President would appoint the equivalent of the governor of Pennsylvania. Just as importantly, the Afghan government was paid for with Western funds, not by taxation of the local economy—so there was further reason for the government to be unresponsive to its people. The government, by the end, was corrupt to its core, and seemed irredeemable (for more on this see the reporting by Anand Gopal).
On top of the endemic corruption, the government also faced a difficult external factor. Pakistan did not support this government, and as a country of 200 million with a long porous border, its views matter. Obama’s calculus was that if Pakistan wants to manage Afghanistan, let them. The recent change of power was the U.S. affecting that transfer. While as an Afghan citizen I would prefer not to be ruled over by Pakistan, their governance is preferred to the proxy war that has been fought for the last 15 years between Pakistan and the U.S.A. This fight between nominal allies has had a massive cost in Afghan lives. As a U.S. citizen, I don’t see why my tax dollars should be spent fighting a war without clear goals, and I agree it was time to withdraw.
For Afghan Peaks most of my implementing partners in Afghanistan escaped to Italy where they have found refuge. My hope is that the new regime, whatever positives and negatives it may have, will be welcoming of those who want to help the populace and that I will be allowed to restart skiing and mountaineering in Afghanistan. The work will not be about supporting a particular government or regime, but rather about helping the citizens of a destitute country learn new skills, and hopefully, find some joy.
I think my lesson from Denali is that any hard struggles will have many ups and downs with unseen obstructions popping up during the journey. If the struggle is important to you, then there is nothing else to do, but patiently and firmly overcome those obstacles. Coronavirus, and thalassemia created additional challenges for me on Denali and each were good reasons to give up on my goal. But, I didn’t give up. Afghanistan is a poor, landlocked country which has been the staging ground for global and regional proxy wars for more than 40 years. These are massive challenges that make the challenges on Denali seem minor. However, I believe the people of Afghanistan are worth my support, and I intend to carry on and I hope some of you with a passion for this issue will join me.
