All-women mountaineering team scales 5,150-metre-high Sela pass

An all-women mountaineering team recently scaled the 5,150-metre-high Sela pass in the Darma valley of Uttarakhand's Pithoragarh district.

The team was led by Sheetal, a well-known mountaineer who scaled Mount Everest in 2019.

The expedition, sponsored by Pithoragarh-based NGO Climbing Beyond The Summits (CBTS), was flagged off by Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami in Nainital on September 8. The team scaled the Sela pass on September 25.

''The mountaineers reached the Kuti camp on September 16 and established its base camp at Nabha, which is 4,750 metres above sea level,'' CBTS founder and ace mountaineer Yogesh Garbiyal said.

''The team reached the pass in five hours from the base camp, plodding through five-foot-deep snow and unfurled the Indian flag at the top of the pass to become the first such group to do so,'' he claimed.