City youth summits Mt Ama Dablam peak in Nepal

Having scaled two 6,000 m peaks Kang Yatse-1 and Kang Yatse-2 in Ladakh just four months back, Jalandhar-based Gursimrann Singh Janjua (33) has now summitted Mt Ama Dablam (6814 m) in Nepal.

Serving as an IT project manager with Ernst and Young, this athlete-cum-trained mountaineer is keeping his passion alive by increasing his difficulty level in every new expedition. "Situated in a close vicinity to Mt Everest, Mt Ama Dablam is a technical peak. I say so as it requires a lot of training and practice to climb such difficult peaks. It required a good hold of rock, snow and ice craft."

Sharing his experience, he said, "I was leading a team of 12 international climbers, all from different backgrounds and varied experience levels. Of course, all of us could not make it to the summit but I was among the lucky few. The climbing was entirely on a narrow ridge line and it could not be done without proper training in rock climbing, traversal, jumarring and rappelling."

An engineer by profession and mountaineer by passion, Gursimrann is a blogger too as he mentions, "We had to face harsh high-speed winds during the climb and could barely spend 10 minutes at the top. We generally prepare small speeches that we deliver and record at peaks but the winds did not permit us to do that." One most interesting experience that he writes is, "My phone battery dramatically dropped down directly from 100 pc to 10 pc. Our compass calculations also failed there.

To keep pushing themselves, the climbers also carried a banner that read two lines, "The only easy day was yesterday" and "Nishchay kar apni jeet karo".

Gursimrann says that he makes it a point to promote sustainable travel and waste management in all his expeditions and he did that in this one too. "I specifically emphasised to the entire team to follow ‘Leave No Trace’ principle, further to which we brought back not just plastic waste but also our excreta to lower altitudes. Our team carried specialised bags for this purpose and brought back whatever plastic waste we could find on our expedition."

For Gursimrann, this is just the beginning "I have a challenging expedition lined up the next year and I am maintaining my fitness as I want to continue with this sport. But funding becomes an issue. It would really help if I had some support from sponsors."