KATHMANDU: Six
Indian climbers reached the top of Mount
Everest on Saturday, the
first group to
summit the world’s highest peak this season.
The team reached the peak from the **rthern Tibet side of the mountain on Saturday morning, with the
first climber summiting at 8:20 am (0020 GMT) and the rest of the group following shortly after.
"Six members from our team reached the
summit this morning, the
first of the season," confirmed Satish Kumar from Transcend Adventures, the operator organising the climb.
Some members of the team are from low income backgrounds and had been sponsored by the state government of Andra Pradesh, in southeastern India.
The
first member of the group to reach the peak was Nagaraju Sundarana whose parents are day labourers, followed by son of a fisherman, Satya Rao, according to Transcend Adventures’ facebook page.
"We have 23 in our team and 19 are sponsored by the government. They are between 19-29 years old from low income families. They have been training for one and a half years," team leader Shekhar Babu told AFP.
The busy spring climbing
season on
Everest runs from late April to May when a narrow window of good weather opens allowing
climbers to reach the top of the world.
But so far high winds, fresh s**wfall and unusually cold temperatures have forced most teams to delay their
summit attempts.
Nearly 750
climbers are waiting to ascend the 8,850-metre peak from the Nepal side, and a**ther 300 on the Tibet side.
On the busier south side, a team of highly skilled rope fixers are still waiting for a period of good weather to lay the ropes to the summit. A group of Sherpa
climbers fixed ropes to the peak on the **rth side on Thursday, paving the way for the
first summit of the season.
The
season has already been hit by two deaths -- experienced Swiss climber Ueli Steck who died late April while on an acclimatization climb and 85-year-old Min Bahadur Sherchan who died while attempting to reclaim his title as the world’s oldest person to
summit Everest.
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