QASIM AIR BASE, Pakistan — From hundreds of feet in the air, on a flight through the spectacular pine-green and earthen brown mountain passes of Kashmir, the tents tell the ongoing story of human misery below.

Semicircular white tents with "UNHCR" stenciled on the side, for United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, have the look of Conestoga wagons.

Tan and green army-style tents are gathered in clusters at unbelievably high reaches on terraced mountainsides accessed only by zigzagging trails.

Nearby are stone and wood homes crumbled by the Oct. 8 earthquake, many pancaked to the ground beneath tin roofs.

The quake centered 60 miles northeast of the Pakistan capital of Islamabad killed an estimated 80,000 and left 3.3 million homeless.

For helicopter crews still arriving from the United States to provide aid, the disaster is something typically seen from on high.

Interaction on the ground comes in 15-minute intervals beneath hurricane-force rotor downdrafts.

Big twin-rotor Chinooks set down only as long as it takes for waiting Pakistani soldiers to hurriedly offload tents, food and blankets, and load refugees or wounded back on.

For people cut off from the world, the relief is a lifesaver.

Spc. Terrence Tacker, 29, who arrived with the "Hillclimbers" of the Hawai'i-based Company B, 214th Aviation, last week, said "the people have been real happy to see us, waving at us."

"A couple of elders, when we dropped them off, they shook our hand and kind of saluted us. That was pretty neat," said Tacker, a flight engineer from Lansdale, Pa.

Capt. Faisal Naveed Ashraf, a 27-year-old Pakistan army fixed-wing aircraft instructor who flies as a safety officer on the U.S. relief flights, said the people receiving help are appreciative.

"They are sitting waiting for any help," he said, "and they are praying that this helicopter will land and give them supplies. Now they see Americans are coming and are definitely very happy to see them."

Three of the Chinooks arrived at Qasim Air Base in Rawalpindi on Thursday after leaving Hawai'i a week and a half before on C-5 Galaxy cargo planes.

The aircraft were reassembled at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, and from there made the two-hour flight east. A fourth Chinook made the trip on Saturday.

Twenty-one Chinooks from Hawai'i, Kansas and Texas with Task Force Quake are expected to expand on relief flights made by eight U.S. choppers since Oct. 10 — two days after the earthquake hit.

More than 100 international organizations have contributed aid, and helicopters from countries including Afghanistan, Japan, Russia, Germany, Switzerland, and France have made relief runs.

"If you want to see just about every kind of helicopter in the world, they're here," said Maj. Richard Gordon, the operations officer for the parent unit of Hawai'i's Hillclimbers.

'GOTTA FEEL FOR THEM'

Capt. Michael Sines from Montclair, Va., and his crew flew their first all-day mission in Pakistan on Friday, delivering more than 25,000 pounds of tents, clothes and food on two supply runs deep into the Kashmir mountains.

He expects to be flying six days a week.

"It feels great to be able to get stuff to the people. You've gotta feel for them. They've been out here now, what, three weeks since the earthquake hit?" said Sines, 32, who commands the Hawai'i-based unit.

"We've got to focus on flying the aircraft," he added, "but once you're on the ground pushing stuff out, you can kind of start taking it all in."

So great is the need that Pakistanis sometimes rush landing helicopters, desperate for the supplies on board, and crews have to hover and push tents, blankets and food out the back, from 50 feet off the ground.

For that reason, U.S. crews prefer to see Pakistani military on the ground when they land.

There are no grids or coordinates for secondary drop zones. That's up to the pilots.

"You find one — an empty field or something," Sines said.

MORE HELP ON THE WAY

The aid is part of a U.S. presence in Pakistan that will grow to more than 1,000 as more medical personnel, helicopter crews and engineers arrive.

The United Nations' Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said nearly three weeks after the magnitude-7.6 earthquake hit that "the unfolding picture reveals levels of human and economic devastation unprecedented in the history of the subcontinent."

The affected region is home to a population of 4 million to 5 million at the foot of the Himalayas, with thousands of villages, hamlets and isolated settlements scattered over 18,000 square miles.

Access remains a major concern with the majority of roads and bridges destroyed, not just blocked.

The United Nations agency said Pakistan and the global community "are facing a challenge of colossal proportions."

"The combination of rapidly deteriorating weather conditions, the extraordinary logistical challenges in reaching hundreds of thousands of people scattered in mountainous areas, and the lack of winterized shelter, all indicate that the worst-case scenario — many more thousands dead — might become a reality."

Helicopters are key to reaching those areas, and with a goal of providing as much relief aid as possible before the Himalayan winter sets in, the job is pretty straightforward for units like the Hillclimbers.

The big twin-rotor transports fly from Qasim Air Base near Islamabad to nearby Chaklala Air Base, get loaded floor to ceiling, front to back with supplies by the Pakistani army, fly to remote mountain villages to drop off the supplies, and fly back to Chaklala to do it all over again.

LIVING INSIDE A HANGAR

Typically, between two and three missions can be squeezed in from sunrise to sunset, flying a maximum of a little more than an hour out because Chaklala is the only refueling location.

At Qasim, more than 400 service members, including Chinook and Black Hawk helicopter crews from U.S. bases in Hawai'i, Germany, Kansas and Texas live in 28 20-man tents inside a hangar.

The Navy also has two Black Hawks and two MH-53s at Qasim, and Britain has three Chinooks and crews there.

Soldiers had been warned not to wander through grass bordering the taxiways because cobras occasionally are spotted there, and the helicopter crews sleep under mosquito nets because of malaria concerns.

Qasim, at 1,625 feet, still has temperatures in the 70s and 80s. It gets colder as the elevation to the north increases to between 3,000 feet and 10,000 feet, where relief helicopters operate just short of the snow-covered Himalayas.

Sines and four crew members started the day Friday at sunrise on the airfield shared with more than a dozen Pakistani brown and tan camouflage Russian-made Mi-17 helicopters, and about a dozen other Chinooks.

M-16S STORED AWAY

With the relief effort aimed at not only helping people in need but also bettering relations in the country where Osama bin Laden could be hiding, Sines' crew taped American flags to the sides of their Chinooks, and hung cloth American flags on the ceiling of the aircraft.

The day before, they had stacked their M-16 rifles for storage during the humanitarian mission.

Ten minutes after taking off from Qasim, Sines put down the Chinook at Chaklala, and while he was briefed on destinations, colorfully adorned Pakistani trucks pulled up and Pakistani and U.S. soldiers started loading the aircraft.

Inside went 50 tents, 30 big red bags with food and blankets, and a bunch of white bundles of blankets with "China Aid" labels.

Spc. Jeremiah Belyeu, 21, a crew chief from Beach City, Texas, estimated there were 11,000 to 13,000 pounds of supplies on board.

"Normally, we can carry 14,000 to 15,000 pounds (maximum) internal," he said.

Sines found out he was flying to a village northwest of Muzaffarabad, one of the cities closest to the epicenter of the quake.

"Just watch when you go into these LZs (landing zones). They've got wires everywhere," Chief Warrant Officer 2 Paul Heitzenroder told Sines at the preflight briefing.

Heitzenroder is with Fox Company, 155th Aviation, out of Germany, a unit called "Big Windy" that was assigned to Bagram Air Base before being routed from there to Pakistan for earthquake relief.

"We've been doing missions since the 11th of October," said the 29-year-old Tucson, Ariz., man. "Probably had two days off since then."

He's been up to 11,700 feet in Pakistan, but said that's rare.

"Normally, LZs are about 4,000 feet. It's not bad at all," he said.

Flying north for about an hour, the helicopter passed through the haze of Islamabad, and quickly reached foothills and then terraced mountainsides at about 6,000 feet with deep streamside valleys covered in pines.

Along the way, many buildings looked intact, but others clearly had collapsed beneath their tin roofs.

LOOKING FOR ZONES

Banking through the narrow valleys, the rotors beating the air in varying tones to create lift, Sines guided the helicopter to a landing zone outlined in rocks next to a river, drawing the stares of dozens of villagers, but pulled up and flew on when no Pakistani military was apparent below.

The chopper winged through several other valleys before Sines finally landed on a sloping landing zone about the size of a soccer field that still bore stubble from what appeared to be a corn field.

Hundreds of villagers stared from a distance with no way to communicate with the crew in the din created by the rotors as the frenetic offload by a dozen or more Pakistani soldiers and the crew on board began.

Fifteen minutes later, the chopper was back in the air and headed back to Chaklala for a new load of supplies.

The second landing zone was much like the first — to a remote mountain village, this time flying up to 9,000 feet at one point near the border of Indian-controlled Kashmir, passing a wide but unidentified river and extensive valley farming terraces.

About two dozen refugees were transported to Muzaffarabad, and the Pakistanis, all of whom appeared in good health, politely responded to directions and curiously stared at the U.S. soldiers or out the windows at the terrain thousands of feet below.

Sines flew in Afghanistan with Hawai'i's 25th Infantry Division (Light), returning from the deployment this spring. He said the mountains of Kashmir didn't pose any new challenges.

"We're used to that," he said. "We did that for a year. The terrain is similar, the altitude is similar."

As of Friday, U.S. helicopters had flown 740 sorties, evacuated 2,864 casualties, and transported 2.6 million pounds of supplies.

The mountains still can make for difficult flying, though, and winter storms will add a new dimension to the relief missions.

"When you start getting the winds coming over those mountains, you've got to learn to ride the wind currents," said Chief Warrant Officer 3 John B. Roberts, a 53-year-old reservist and Chinook pilot out of Washington state attached to Company B, 7th Battalion, 158th Aviation Regiment out of Kansas.

Once the wind dips over a mountain, it has a tendency to curl back in, "and if you're too close, it can throw you into the mountain," Roberts said. "So it's a lot more challenging flying."

As snow starts to fall, it brings the possibility of whiteouts, and Chinooks don't have de-icing capabilities, Roberts said.

"It's going to be more dangerous as we get closer to the winter, that's why we're trying to move so much stuff around now," he said.

Pilots who have been flying for weeks already say a shift has taken place from flying wounded Pakistanis to flying refugees to be with family members who were hospitalized elsewhere. But the supply missions continue at a feverish pace.

Each morning, the dozens of Pakistani, U.S. and British helicopters at Qasim wind up their engines in a deafening roar and take off to the north to make another dent in a mountain of need.

The duration for the Hawai'i Hillclimbers' deployment to Pakistan is expected to be three months, but the exact length is uncertain. The unit got back from Afghanistan in the spring and is deploying to Iraq next year.

"I think the U.S., of all the coalition partners, will be here the longest," said Gordon, the operations officer for the Hillclimbers' parent unit, the 2nd Battalion, 25th Aviation Regiment.

HUMAN TOLL EVIDENT

"The people of Pakistan are taking care of us, too, and it's important for us to create some better perceptions and understanding, because this place got rocked, just got rocked," he said.

Pvt. Steven Farmer, 27, a hydraulics mechanic from Idaho Falls, Idaho, saw some of the human toll — even from the air.

In one village he noticed family graves old and new behind homes, maybe 50 in all.

"It was like they buried their families for years and years, and you can see the fresh ones there," he said. "The older graves are nice concrete, but the recent ones are just dirt and piled-up rocks. It makes you real compassionate."

Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com.