MOUNTAINS NEAR KABUL — By vehicle and by foot, Canadian troops penetrated deep into mountains near Afghanistan's capital, searching caves, ravines and mountain passes for evidence of a suspected Taliban and al-Qaida buildup.

The reconnaissance, or recce (pronounced REK-ky) troops didn't find all they were looking for, but they returned safely and gained valuable on-ground intelligence of an area unseen by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force or the U.S.-led coalition against terrorism for more than a year.

The mission, the first major operation of the troops' deployment here, came a week after the 1,950-member Canadian contingent almost doubled the size of its area of interest, encompassing remote regions far from the city streets where troops have been patrolling since mid-August.

ISAF has had reports since early July of groups of between 20 and 30 Taliban and al-Qaida slipping into the country from Pakistan. More recently, the incursions have shrunk to threes and fours.

Attacks and other incidents have been steadily creeping northward toward Kabul in recent weeks.

And while the U.S. coalition has been concentrating its efforts to the east, many of the remote areas around the capital have been left unattended.

For the Canadians, patrolling the area is a force-protection measure as much as anything.

"We're the only guys out there," said the platoon leader, Lieut. Tim Partello, a native of Guelph, Ont. "And that puts it on our plate, regardless of whether there is an intent out there or not."

The platoon-sized, long-range reconnaissance mission, accompanied by combat engineers and forward controllers with U.S. aircraft and Canadian howitzer guns at the ready, set out in the predawn hours Wednesday.

While most recce missions are conducted covertly, this one was purposely overt. Heavily armed and well-manned, part of its objective was to exert an intimidating ISAF presence in the area and perhaps draw out hostile forces.

The convoy of about eight vehicles headed directly to a suspected Taliban area within striking range of Camp Julien, the Canadian base in the city's southwest corner.

The route wound through mountain passes taken by centuries of invading armies _ Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, the British, the Soviets.

While snipers took to the high ground, Partello dispatched two teams: one to a ridgeline looking westward, another up a dry creek bed, a suspected incursion point for smugglers, gun runners and hostile forces.

They were trying to determine whether the route was passable by vehicle. It wasn't, so they looped around the range and began 1½ days of attempts at finding other access points.

Along the way, they found caves set in the mountainsides, and teams were dispatched to investigate some.

The initial cave was among the most interesting. The first of at least two chambers was about 1.5 metres high, three metres wide and five metres deep. The second appeared to be smaller.

Cpl. David Rowsell, a native of Campbellford, Ont., had the unenviable job of forging into the blackness.

"It was dark in there," said Rowsell, a member of the battle group based in Petawawa, Ont. "You couldn't see around the corners too well with the lighting and the equipment that we had."

"But we're trained for it. You hope for the best, expect the worst and just hope everything you learned carries you through and you make it out OK."

Rocks were stacked in front of the cave and also sealed off an anti-chamber to the right and in back of the initial room. Inside, the floor was stacked with dry leaves and the air was ripe with the sickly sweet smell of death.

What appeared to be a knife handle was sticking up. The mine detector was going crazy, whining and bleeping as if it were imparting an alien message.

"That's not good," one of the engineers told Partello outside the cave.

They cleared part of the wall to the anti-chamber from outside, using a long rope attached by Rowsell.

The room appeared to be a tomb, but the engineers couldn't be sure. Gun smugglers or hostile forces are known to have put dead carcasses of one kind or another in caves with their stash to ward off the curious.

They decided further investigation, with the equipment they had, wasn't worth the risk.

Their travels took them to several suspected Taliban villages, where the usual cheering children and smiling adults were nowhere to be seen.

But while teams set out to reconnoitre one area, two children arrived bearing gifts: a boy with grapes and a young girl with a flower.

Afraid of local water, most of the soldiers declined the grapes, even after the children followed their father's motioned instructions, given from afar, and ate some themselves. Apparently intimidated by the soldiers' guns, the girl gave the flower to a reporter.

Late Thursday, they went through another sprawling village. While the place was almost destroyed, people still lived there and young girls went to school among the ruins.

It is hard to imagine a place in Afghanistan that hasn't been touched by war. Cemeteries are everywhere. Lone graves lie by roadsides, on mountaintops, in battlefields. Even the most remote villages are smashed.

The soldiers saw it all as they continued toward another creek bed over rough, rocky terrain, their Iltis vehicles tossing and rocking like ships on a changing sea.

Partello ordered his troops to walk to "save the vehicles." They had already lost one on Wednesday, but were ultimately impressed with the performance of the much-maligned vehicle.

At the end of a long, hot day, they humped 1,500 metres up a steady grade, the vehicles following.

All stopped and took a knee on occasion, searching the surrounding cliffs for hostile forces as a tiny stream trickled and gurgled, the only remnant of a once-tumbling creek after more than six years of drought.

As the snipers took to high ground for about the sixth time that day, the others bedded down for the night in a ravine, eating rations, sleeping on rugged scree faces, rotating watches every three hours.

The star-filled sky lit up repeatedly, apparently from far-off American air strikes on hostile positions.

On Thursday, the Canadians extracted from the ravine, moving out across a forgotten battlefield past the hulks of destroyed tanks, armoured vehicles and heavy artillery. Unexploded ordnance and other instruments of war were everywhere.

Navigating by an old Soviet map that Partello says is still the best available, the recce troops rarely drove conventional roadways. They found many of the mapped features or routes had disappeared, and others weren't mapped at all.

The mine threat was sometimes palpable. In places, engineers walked in front of the vehicles as they inched along. The derelict corpses of past mine strikes lay scattered along trailsides.

Engineer Sgt. Mikes Cotts of Watrous, Sask., took the point on several occasions with the intimate knowledge that Afghanistan is littered with between five and 12 million landmines.

The country's mine cataloguing centre was destroyed by fire several years ago. Officials are only just now starting to reassemble the information on where mines have been distributed.

Cotts knew only that there were three catalogued minefields in the 400-square-kilometre area in which they were operating.

Engineers know what to look for: tracks, animal droppings, other evidence of use or lack of it. In fact, Cotts nixed the most promising vehicle route into the mountains on Thursday because there was no evidence it had been used recently.

"We were in some weird places today," he said. "Creek beds are generally OK. I try to follow vehicle tracks, human footprints, goat manure.

"The main indicator for me in this country so far is local avoidance. If the locals don't go there, I'm not going to go there, because they're not going there for a reason."

To Cotts, with 17 years in the military and five previous tours overseas under his belt, the biggest threat was sleeping in the ravine on Wednesday night.

"There were mountains on both sides of us," he said. "They could have rolled grenades down on us and stuff like that."

The soldiers in general seemed to take the threat of a mine strike in stride.

Veteran Sgt. Jack Durnford of Francois, Nfld., who rode in the lead Iltis, said he has complete confidence in the engineers and, after that, the rest is up to fate.

"If (the engineers) say it's good to go, it's good to go," said Durnford.

"It's not a time to be scared when you have seven other corporals and privates behind you. You've got to lead."

Added Warrant Officer Dave Hood of Port Hope, Ont.: "You have to trust your peers, your superiors, your equipment."

The soldiers spent Thursday "bouncing off" the mountains, as Partello described their repeated attempts at finding ways in and out by vehicle.

Once, he ordered all but the drivers to be in a position to jump from their Iltises as they climbed a steep mountain trail in case they stalled and the brakes failed, which had happened once on the previous day to his own vehicle.

Soldiers subsequently sat with one or two legs hanging out the sides of the notoriously cramped jeeps.

On the way back down, a truck driver signalled to them, pointing to an afghani bill, the load in his truck and then two nearby men armed with AK-47 assault rifles. By this, the Canadians concluded the pair were bandits.

The pair, it turned out, were detaining gravel trucks coming out of the creek beds and extorting money from their drivers. They left the area after it became evident the Canadians were watching them.

The day ended with the discovery of another cave, a big one on a hillside near a roadway. It was deep and engineers couldn't get inside.

On his first operation as platoon leader, Partello, 32, who rose to officer from the enlisted ranks, appeared to exercise aggressive leadership, sound judgment and wise delegating abilities.

"It was awesome," said the youthful lieutenant who, with shaven head and can-do attitude encompasses what soldiers call the "switched-on" attitude typical of paratroopers and reconnaissance soldiers.

No hostile forces were found on the mission, and neither was any passable vehicular route into the mountains. But the soldiers cleared some routes and gained valuable insight on the area for possible future missions.

"We just got our foot in the door," said Partello. "Next time, we'll finish the job."

Added Hood: "The task was successful and no one got hurt. It's pretty much a good two days' work."