3 days ago
16-year-old from Uttarakhand scripts history by scaling Mt Everest
Roorkee: A 16-year-old from Uttarakhand was this year's youngest climber to scale Mt Everest. Sachin Kumar, an NCC cadet from Uttarkashi who recently cleared his Class 12 exams, was part of an all-India expedition team of 10 student cadets, five of them women, selected from across the country.
The team departed from Delhi on April 3 and successfully summited the world's highest peak on May 18.
Also on the team was Subedar Ankur Rawat, 40, a resident of Roorkee and the expedition's coach, who conquered the peak for the second time, having first done so in 2016.
Uttarakhand was represented by five climbers: besides Kumar and Rawat, the team included 21-year-old Virendra Singh Samant from Champawat and 22-year-old Mukul Bangwal from Pauri Garhwal, both BSc students, as well as Col Rajneesh Joshi, 45, a resident of Dehradun who served as the expedition's deputy group leader.
"We were a total of 17 climbers who summited Mount Everest at 3am on May 18. We stayed there for more than one and a half hours," said Rawat from Nepal.
Uttarakhand's directorate of sports said that the climbers from the state will be officially welcomed and felicitated upon their return. The team is currently in Nepal.
Among the five from Uttarakhand, Sachin Kumar is a student at Rajkiya Adarsh Kirti Inter College, Uttarkashi, and hails from the village of Dhanari.
Cadet Samant is from Padanga Badoli in Champawat and is pursuing his BSc third year at DAV Degree College, Dehradun. Bangwal, from Kaliyasaur village in Pauri, is a BSc third-year student at HNB University's Srinagar campus.
Col Joshi, also from Dehradun, is currently the Principal of the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, Darjeeling. Coach Rawat serves in the Secunderabad-based Army Ordnance Corps.
"These five are the pride of our state.
On this occasion, we also appeal to all achievers to share their records and other details with us through their respective departments so that we can continue to update our state's records from time to time," said Dharmendra Prakash Bhatt, joint director, Uttarakhand sports directorate.
Last year, the Army Adventure Wing initiated plans for a Mt Everest expedition team comprising NCC cadets. A total of 240 students with an NCC 'B' certificate were initially shortlisted.
From these, 34 were selected, who then underwent a high-altitude expedition to Mt Abi Gamin in Chamoli in Sept–Oct as a selection test. Eighteen cadets were chosen from that group.
This year, those 18 cadets were trained in Siachen, after which the final team of 10 (five boys and five girls) was selected for the Everest expedition. They were: Sachin Kumar (Uttarkashi), Mukul Bangwal (Pauri), Virendra Singh Samant (Champawat), Mohit Knathia (Jammu), Padma Namgail (Leh Ladakh), Kritika Sharma (Himachal, the youngest female NCC cadet at 18), Monika (Rajasthan), Abida Afreen (Leh), Pratima Rai (West Bengal), and Rifiness Warjri (Meghalaya).
The 25-member team, which included group leader Col Amit Bisht, deputy leader Col Rajneesh Joshi, and coach Subedar Ankur Rawat, was flagged off by Union defence minister Rajnath Singh in Delhi on April 3.
