The pieces are coming together! This past week I finally had the time to put together a website for our nonprofit GUI. This has been a life-long pursuit of establishing an organization that has the capacity to seed humanitarian programs … Read More
UPDATED Part II Iraq is a place where discoveries are still being made; whether it is reaching summits of mountains for the first time, or re-discovering canyons long-forgotten, or even learning about history that was right in front of you … Read More
An incredible canyon with deep water soloing and climbing walls over 100 meters tall was just re-discovered in Iraqi Kurdistan – the Bride & Groom Canyon. With the country still under quarantine, people are looking for interesting ways to spend … Read More
Now you can support all of our efforts and get something in return – hand crafted, fashionable, non-medical masks. For the past two months we have been hand-crafting masks and donating them to essential and medical workers. The fashionable designs … Read More
In an unprecedented time when the entire world economy has ground to a halt due to the novel Corona Virus, a small group of mountaineers is busy making history in Iraq. Together, on January 24, 2020 this year we achieved … Read More
An exciting first happened yesterday in the city of Sulaymaniyah in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq; we held our first Online Climbing Video Class at the First Climbing School in Iraq, the Hawraz Climbing School. The class was taught by … Read More
In the face of the global pandemic that has brought us all indoors, our school has not seen any less demand. In Iraq, climbing is like an obsession that will not release its grip as the Kurds dream of the … Read More
On January 24th, 2020 the First Climbing School in Iraq in history held its first class (will be covered in upcoming post!). Due to the demand for this sport, the ceremonious occasion was attended well over capacity with 69 students … Read More
Climbing Iraq’s mountains only started around the year 2000, and that was just a handful of people. It wasn’t until eight years later that a climbing community started to form, but that just sparked a fire which exploded when Social … Read More
On March 5th I got a text message from Iraq, from Kamaran H. Rasul, that was just a video. I couldn’t really understand what was going on, bleary eyed from sleep, as I watched a bulldozer pass by on the … Read More