Aurangabad woman conquers Everest in 2nd attempt

AURANGABAD: Manisha Waghmare, the 36-year-old mountaineer from the city, successfully scaled Mount Everest on Monday, said her trainer and co-mountaineer Jagdish Khairnaar of Indian Cadet Force.
This is her second attempt to scale the world’s highest peak, which is 8,848 metres above sea level. Last year, Waghmare had to retreat 170 metres ahead of the Everest summit due to bad weather, he said.
According to Khairnaar, Waghmare left for the Everest Summit from Aurangabad on April 4. Waghmare went to Mumbai by railways and then from there reached Kathmandu the same evening. Her expedition from Kathmandu started on April 6 from where she travelled by air to Lukla at 2,800 metres above sea level.
“Waghmare reached the Everest base camp on April 14, where the acclimatisation training started. The training included climbing the high peaks around the base camp, ice climbing and glider training. The base camp is at 5,400 metres and there is 20-25 days of acclimatisation training,” Khairnaar said.
On April 27, Waghmare with her team left the base camp and summit camp 1, camp 2 and returned to the base camp on May 2. After 2-3 days of rest, the weather conditions worsened so her team had to go down three camps at Namche Bazaar.
On May 13, the team was back to the base camp and undertook two days of oxygen training. On May 17, at 1.30 am, the team started the Everest summit. They reached camp 2 on May 18, camp 3 on May 19, camp 4 on May 20. On May 21, after 10 hours of trek, she reached Everest at 8.10am, said Khairnaar.
Asian Trekking Pvt Ltd, the firm which coordinated the summit, informed Khairnaar about Waghmare’s achievement. Khairnaar was with Waghmare till the base camp.
On its Facebook page, the firm posted that their seven member team including Manisha Jayakrishna Waghmare under the Eco Everest Expedition 2018 scaled Mt Everest on May 21. It states that Waghmare finished her summit at 8.10am.
Waghmare is the sports director at the Indirabai Pathak Women’s College in Aurangabad.
Manisha had started training for mountaineering in 2003. She then decided to summit the highest peaks in each of the seven continents. So far, she has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa, Mt Elbrus in Europe and Mt Kosciuszko in Australia.
Her family is overwhelmed with the achievement.