Thaindian News

New Delhi, Apr 18 (ANI): A young girl from Arunachal Pradesh has been selected to lead the International Everest Expedition (IIE) 2011, creating history of sorts in Indian mountaineering.

Anshu Jamsenpa will lead the nine-member team comprising mountaineers from five countries - four Indians (including fellow Arunachalee Tine Mina), two Italians, a Canadian, an Iranian and a Swede, that will scale the world’s highest mountain Mt Everest this summer.

Tine Mena from Roing and Anshu from Bomdila have successfully completed their pre-Everest expedition and were recently selected for Everest Expedition 2011.

The mountaineers reached the Everest base camp on Saturday afternoon at 2:35 p.m. after nine days of hard trek from Lukla village in Nepal.

The team members are doing well, except for one JJ Khajuria of Rajasthan, who had to be airlifted and evacuated to Kathmandu Friday after suffering severe high altitude sickness at 18500 feet while acclimatizing.

Anshu said over N-CELL from the base camp that she would try her best to lead the team to the Everest summit, without compromising their safety.

The Nepal tourist and civil aviation ministry, Nepal Mountaineering Association and the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu are keeping watch on the day-to-day progress of this international expedition.

The Everest base camp is located at 17500 ft. It is where climbers begin their actual expedition. From the base camp, climbers typically train and acclimatize (permitting the body to adjust to the decreased oxygen in the air) by trekking and bringing supplies back and forth through the treacherous Khumbu Icefall.

This training and recuperation continues throughout the climb at Camp 1 (19470 ft), Camp 2 (21450 ft), Camp 3 (23760 ft) and the final summit push from Camp 4 (26400 ft) is expected to be made sometime between May 22 next, depending on weather condition. (ANI)