Leh: The Army has said its 14-member mountaineering expedition team successfully scaled 21,000-feet-high Mount Kang Yatse-I, one of the toughest and most technical peaks in the Zanskar ranges of Ladakh.
The expedition was flagged in by Chief of Staff, Headquarters Northern Command, Lt Gen N S Raja Subramani, at Leh, a defence spokesman said.
He said the formidable mountain, Kang Yatse-1, calls for specialist technical climbing skills of rock, ice and snow craft and excellent physical fitness in addition to extreme mental fortitude.
With a steep summit climb, frequently punctuated by multiple vertical ice walls, moraines, crevasses, technical boulder sections and steep couloirs, Kang Yatse-1 is a mountaineer’s ultimate trial of technical skill, physical and mental ceiling and heterogeneity of experience, the spokesman said.
“The success of the expedition is yet another stellar addition in the myriad accomplishments of the Indian Army,” he said.
He said the expedition was undertaken by a 14-member team of Malaun Gurkha Unit of Thanpir Brigade of Dah Division as a tribute to the struggle of “our freedom fighters” as part of the ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’ and to mark the 75th anniversary of India’s Independence.
The expedition also aimed at inculcating esprit de corps and nurturing the spirit of adventure among the troops, the spokesman said, adding it was an apt tribute to the saga of Indian freedom fighters as it invokes superlative will power and a never say die spirit to summit the treacherous heights — an ideal fundamental to the freedom struggle and the exalted traditions of the Indian Army.
The expedition was also a tribute to the various battles fought and won by the armed forces to safeguard the integrity and sovereignty of the nation, the defence spokesman said.
