This is The Shorts and you're listening to The Jerkpack Diaries, a duct tape

and beer production with additional support from New Belgium Brewing, Kuat

Racks and Patagonia.

Snow started to fall as I navigated in urban maze of open air markets, tall

buildings and mosque with shiny minarets. My new friend, but back and I got

some inquisitive stairs from the locals as we food shopped for the next few days.

In skibuts. I guess the looks might have derived from the fact that we were

wearing backpacks with a frame skis attached, smack in the middle of an 8 million

person city, Tehran, Iran. A city breaks so tightly against the mountains that

wants to finish our shopping, we just parked on a side street in the middle of

the city and started hiking in.

Meerk hours after landing, my senses were overloaded with change. As we hiked

upwards, roads gave way to increasingly narrow paths, we passed shepherds and

donkeys, faring supplies up to shops since vehicles couldn't access the trail.

Finally, the geography for small settlements gave way to pillows of fresh snow,

hugging the sides of steep rocky peaks. Just below the imposing stone hut

that would be our home for the night, we turned to quietly take stock of the

landscape behind us. We gazed 3000 feet down on the city as a sunset, turning the

Tehranian smog into a fiery glowing haze.

Nine months earlier at a bar in Pittsburgh, a mutual friend had introduced me to

Bebek, an Iranian-American. Within seconds we began talking about the Al-Boer's

mountains, the most prominent range in Iran. Delighted at the chance conversation, I

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