Mountaineer Greg Mortenson thought his life's path would take him to the summit of K2.

He found, instead, that it led to building a school in the impoverished village of Korphe, Pakistan.

But that proved just the beginning.

He has since built 60 more schools in isolated and often dangerous areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

On Wednesday, Mortenson will speak about his life and work at 7 p.m. at Helena Middle School.

The talk will include some highlights from his book, "Three Cups of Tea," a fantastic, but true adventure story of how he came to build schools.

His story starts with failure.

On Sept. 2, 1993, Mortenson stumbled across a boulder-strewn, frozen landscape after failing to reach the summit of K2, the world's second-highest mountain in the Himalayan Range between Pakistan and China.

He wandered, emaciated and exhausted, into the remote village of Korphe, and was graciously taken in.

While there, he met 84 village children who forever changed his life.

"It was a cold October day," he recalled in a recent phone interview from his home in Bozeman.

The students were huddled on the frosted ground, scratching their lessons into the dirt with sticks.

Mortenson was so moved by the children's fierce desire to learn that he rashly promised to build a school for the village.

"I had no clue what I was doing," he admitted.

When he returned to the United States, he typed -- on a rented typewriter -- 580 individual letters to celebrities asking for money to build a school. It took three months.

He got one response. Tom Brokaw mailed him $100.

He also typed 16 grant applications. All failed.

Then he sold his climbing gear and lived in his old Buick to save money.

Eventually, he found the money, thanks to an eccentric donor and grade-school children who collected 62,340 pennies to help him build the first school.

But money was just one of the major obstacles Mortenson had to overcome. In true hero fashion, he persevered. Eventually, he and the villagers built the school.

It proved to be just the beginning of the tale. Soon, other villages wanted to build schools for their children, too.

So far, Mortenson and his organization, the Central Asia Institute, have built 52 schools in Pakistan and nine in Afghanistan.

They fund close to 40 additional schools that operate in tents and refugee camps.

Currently 25,000 students are being educated in the schools, Mortenson said. Of these, 14,000 students are girls.

Educating girls is at the heart of his efforts.

He quotes an African proverb: "If you educate a boy, you educate an individual, but if you educate a girl, you educate a community."

The proverb is bolstered by United Nations studies. They found that "if you educate a girl to fifth-grade level, you will reduce the infant mortality rate, reduce the population explosion and improve the quality of life and health itself," he said.

Mortenson attracts unlikely allies in his efforts, including Islamic leaders, tribal chiefs and military and warlord commanders.

Mortenson's work has earned him national and international awards, which he admits with a bit of embarrassment, are heaped in a corner of his basement.

But it's not awards that drive Mortenson. It's often what he sees in the eyes of children, he said.

And it's the success stories.

One of these is Aziza, the first girl to finish school in the Charpusan Valley of Pakistan.

She went on to study maternal health care. Since she returned to her village in 2000, not a single woman has died in childbirth, he said.

Prior to that five to 20 women in the valley died in childbirth each year, he said.

Another is the story of Shakeela, the first educated girl in the Hushe Valley of Pakistan. She will be the first physician to come out of that region, Mortenson said.

During Wednesday's talk, Mortenson will discuss his recent visit to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

He'll share his discovery of the "toilet school" in the Badakhshan province of northern Afghanistan.

In a dirt shelter -- a former highway-side toilet -- he found 18 students and a teacher.

A short distance away, there were 60 middle school students studying in a deserted shed.

And a little farther away, in a threadbare UNICEF tent, there were 40 high school students sitting in the dirt doing their lessons.

None of the teachers had been paid for a year. Mortenson plans to build them a school and pay the teachers.

Some describe Mortenson as "ordinary," others as "extraordinary."

Mortenson describes himself as a "quiet" and "shy" guy who is merely following his heart.

The adventures along the way are riveting.

He's been kidnapped in Pakistan, escaped a firefight between Afghan warlords, overcame two fatwehs by Islamic mullahs, and received post Sept. 11, 2001, death threats from fellow Americans.

He shared a Judith Campbell quote that he keeps taped to his bathroom mirror: "When your heart speaks, take good notes."

Presentation times

Greg Mortenson will give a free talk at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Helena Middle School, 1025 N. Rodney. The talk is sponsored by Carroll College. Follow-up book discussions without Mortenson will be held Sept. 18 at 7:30 p.m., Carroll College library; and Sept. 26, 7:30 p.m., Helena High School Library. Mortenson's visit is part of Carroll College's alpha seminar. His book, "Three Cups of Tea," is required reading for all incoming freshmen.