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Uttarakhand’s youngest girl to scale Mt. Everest now starts 10-year mountaineering project for women from across country
Sheetal Raj, who scaled Mt. Everest last year to become the youngest in the state to achieve the feat, said that after achieving her goal, she wanted to do something to bring more women in the field of mountaineering which is mostly a male dominated field.
In a novel bid, Uttarakhand’s youngest girl to scale Mt. Everest last year has now started a 10-year mountaineering project for women from across the country who do not get a platform to showcase their mountaineering skills.
Sheetal Raj, who scaled Mt. Everest last year to become the youngest in the state to achieve the feat, said that after achieving her goal, she wanted to do something to bring more women in the field of mountaineering which is mostly a male dominated field.
“After I had scaled Mt. Everest, my only wish was to see more women to come into this field. Many women have the potential to reach great heights but do not get a platform where they can be given training or the financial support. With this project, I aspire to train girls and women in mountaineering and help them go for expeditions in future,” said Raj.
For the first year of training, around 30 women have been selected who have been trained in Darma Valley in Pithoragarh district at a height of 3000m under an organisation named ‘Climbing Beyond the Summit’ (CBTS). Raj and her coach Yogesh Garbiyal founded this organisation to promote mountaineering among women.
She said that first these women are being given basic training and then they will be enrolled with Nehru Institute of Mountaineering for certification course before the final expedition. Girls and women from the age group 13-40 have been selected for the first expedition.
Garbiyal, co-founder of CBTS said that the project not just aims to bring women into the field of mountaineering but also give exposure to women from local areas and train them with basic mountaineering skills which they can use to become trek and tour guides.
“There are many places in the remote areas of Uttarakhand which have potential for tourism but not many people know about them. We are taking these women for training in the three valleys, Darma, Vyans and Chaudans. The women can use the exposure learnt from these training sessions to connect it to livelihood opportunities in tourism sector,” said Garbiyal.
He further said that women selected from other areas like Mumbai and Pune have been selected from their online platform and those with basic certification in mountaineering were selected so that they can get a platform “to further polish their skills and join the expedition in future.”
The selected women were supposed to go on their first expedition in September this year, but due to Covid-19 epidemic they have postponed it by a year and plan to take the women on expedition next year with better practice.
