SNC Mountaineering Team Successfully Summits Mt Menthosa

SNC Mountaineering Team Successfully Summits Mt Menthosa

The ten member SNC mountaineering expedition to Mt Menthosa (6443 metres), successfully summited the peak on 16 October 2018. The team led by Lieutenant Commander Shivesh Kumar Sanam, comprised Lieutenant Commanders Sahil Verma and Neelam Kandpal, Mahesh Kumar POME, Bhaskar Pal POPTI, Vysakh KS LMA, Abhishek Inge LS SD, OD Sharma LS GW, Praveen Sardar LCOM and Sagar Salunkhe MA1. The team was flagged off from Kochi on 21 September 2018 and spent a brief time at IMF, New Delhi to hone their mountaineering and climbing skills as also physical conditioning. The climb started from Urgos village, in the Lahul Spiti, Himachal Pradesh and the team set up four camps enroute to the summit. The team encountered extremely low temperatures (-25°C), soft snow and wind speeds of over 20 knots, which made the initial progress slow. The team started its summit attempt at 0200 hrs on 16 October 2018 to take advantage of the hardened snow. From the summit camp, it took a little over eight hours for the entire team of 10 members to reach the summit at 1030 hrs.