Mountain hiking club launches basic safety course in Kurdistan Region

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – A hiking club in the Kurdistan Region on Tuesday announced that it had begun a training session that provides basic knowledge of the sport of mountain hiking, as such, is new to most residents of the autonomous region.

The trainings, held by the Kurdistan Hiking Federation in Erbil, will last for three days and will include basic skills of mountain climbers, including safety measures. 

The organizers aim to “strengthen the infrastructure the science and art of hiking so the safety of hikers would be secured,” Anwar Mohammad, the group's leader, told Kurdistan 24.

The course is only for beginners, but anyone wishing to attend the upper-level sessions to be provided in the future must first graduate at this level.

Although the Kurdistan Region is famous for its mountainous topography, hiking as a sport has only recently gained popularity.

Several other informal organizations or businesses that arrange group climbing on the weekends supported the course, with some skilled hikers expressing concern that novices taking to mountain trails could lead to injuries due to the lack of sufficient expertise in the field.

Bahjat Raf’at, the head of the Popular Hikers Group, told Kurdistan 24 that such courses are essential as they lay a “scientific foundation” for the hikers and would “save them from many problems.”

“Some consider themselves as hikers without having any knowledge and science and it will cause them to have many issues,” Raf’at added.

The course focuses primarily on theoretical knowledge of the sport rather than practical implications.

In the session, female enthusiasts alongside their male peers were present.

“We would like to see females participating in these trainings as well as their male partners,” Eman Bahjat, a female hiker and attendee of the session, told Kurdistan 24, stressing as well that the “scientific study of the sport is essential.”

Editing by John J. Catherine