Xenon gas ~ scaling Mt. Everest ! - Bachendri Pal

 

It  is a chemical element; with  symbol Xe and atomic number 54. Xenon gas is a noble, colorless, odorless, and unreactive gas. It's a trace component of Earth's atmosphere, present in small amounts (less than 1 ppm). Xenon is also known as a "stranger gas" because the Greek word "xenos" means "stranger".

 

History was scripted on this day 41 years ago, when Bachendri Pal became the first Indian woman to summit Mount Everest. She scaled the world’s highest peak at 8,848 metres as part of India’s fourth expedition to Everest. Is it really a Sport  ?   – certainly one of a physical pursuit demanding an affinity for suffering, where it is cerebral in its requirement of good judgment, most importantly in extreme situations when the mind is most clouded and consequences of bad decision-making tend to multiply.  Considering the level of  risks of what the participants call the objective level, it  involves assessing dangers one may encounter – weather, avalanches, poor rock, and many more unthought of ! – really very tough challenges experienced and willfully pursued  by mankind.  .. .. it is conquering Mount Everest called ‘mountaineering’ !

 

The world’s highest mountain peak Mount Everest is called Chomolungma in Tibetan and Sagarmāthā  in Nepali.  Mount Everest, located on the top of the world, attracts people.  Sagarmāthā is Earth's highest mountain. Its peak is 8,848 metres (29,029 ft)  ~ although more than 4,000 people have scaled the summit since Sir Edmund Hilary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay first conquered the mountain in 1953, hundreds have also perished.  Statistics reveal that scaling Everest is much easier than it used to be. In 1990 just 18 per cent of summit attempts were successful, but in 2012 that figure was 56 per cent. 

The first recorded efforts to reach Everest's summit were made by British mountaineers. As Nepal did not allow foreigners to enter the country at the time, the British made several attempts on the North Ridge route from the Tibetan side. After the first reconnaissance expedition by the British in 1921 reached 7,000 m (22,966 ft) on the North Col, the 1922 expedition on its first summit attempt marked the first time a human had climbed above 8,000 m (26,247 ft) and it also pushed the North Ridge route up to 8,321 m (27,300 ft). On the 1924 expedition George Mallory and Andrew Irvine made a final summit attempt on 8 June but never returned, sparking debate as to whether they were the first to reach the top. Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary made the first documented ascent of Everest in 1953, using the Southeast Ridge route. Norgay had reached 8,595 m (28,199 ft) the previous year as a member of the 1952 Swiss expedition.

 

Bachendri Pal was born on 24 May 1954 in Nakuri village, in the Uttarkashi district, as  one of five children to Hansa Devi, and Shri Kishan Singh Pal, – a border tradesman who supplied groceries from India to Tibet. Just a few days less than year before,  was the day of original ascension of Mount Everest by Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary. She completed her M.A. and B.Ed,  started mountaineering at the age of 12 when, along with her friends, she scaled a 13,123 ft (3,999.9 m) high peak during a school picnic.  She became the first female to climb Mount Gangotri 23,419 ft (7,138.1 m) and Mount Rudragaria 19,091 ft (5,818.9 m) in 1982. In that time, she became an instructor at the National Adventure Foundation (NAF), which had set up an adventure school for training women to learn mountaineering.

 

Pal encountered stiff opposition from her family and relatives when she chose a career as a professional mountaineer rather than a schoolteacher. However, she soon found success in her chosen field when, after summiting a number of smaller peaks, she was selected to join India's first mixed-gender team to attempt an expedition to Mount Everest in 1984.  In 1984,  India scheduled its fourth expedition to Mount Everest, christened "Everest '84". Bachendri Pal was selected as one of the members of the group of six Indian women and eleven men to attempt the ascent of Mount Everest.  The team was flown to Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, in March 1984, and from there the team moved onwards. Recalling her first glimpse of Mount Everest, Bachendri reminisced, "We, the hill people, have always worshipped the mountains... my overpowering emotion at this awe-inspiring spectacle was, therefore, devotional."  The team commenced its ascent in May 1984. Her team almost met disaster when an avalanche buried their camp, and more than half the group abandoned the attempt because of injury or fatigue. Bachendri Pal and the remainder of the team pressed on to reach the summit.    

On 22 May 1984, Ang Dorje (the Sherpa sirdar) and some other climbers joined the team to ascend to the summit of Mount Everest; Bachendri was the only woman in this group. They reached the South Col and spent the night there at Camp IV at the altitude of 26,000 ft (7,924.8 m). At 6:20 a.m. on 23 May 1984, they continued the ascent, climbing "vertical sheets of frozen ice"; cold winds were blowing at the speed of about 100 kilometres per hour (62 mph) and temperatures touching −30 to −40 °C (−22 to −40 °F). On 23 May 1984, the team reached the summit of Mount Everest at 1:07 p.m. and Bachendri Pal created history.  She achieved this feat on the day before her 30th birthday, and six days before the 31st anniversary of the first ascension of Mount Everest.

 

With a great accomplishment, she has been conferred many awards and accolades that include :  Gold Medal for Excellence in Mountaineering by the Indian Mountaineering Foundation (1984);  Padma Shri in 1984;  Arjuna Award 1986;  National Adventure Award by the Government of India (1994);  entry in Guiness book of World records;   •          Honorary Doctorate from the Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna Garhwal University  .. ..  &  Padma Bhushan 2019.  

Everest is named after the colonial-era British surveyor George Everest, who never actually saw it.   

Kritika Sharma, a 19-year-old woman and college student from Himachal Pradesh  has captured nationwide attention, as  she successfully scaled Mount Everest on May 18, 2025. Kritika belongs to a remote village of Gattadhar, within the Sangrah subdivision of Sirmaur district. With her historic climb, she took the Indian tricolour, NCC flag and college insignia to this 8,848m summit, symbolizing her respect for her country, her commitment to her career of choice and the spirit of Indian youth, all at once.  

Chhonzin Angmo, a tribal woman from a remote village in Himachal Pradesh's Kinnaur district, suffers from total blindness but she has never let her visual impairment stand in the way of her dreams.  This week, she scripted history by becoming the first visually-impaired woman from India and the fifth such person in the world to scale Mt Everest, planting the Tricolour on Earth's highest mountain. 

.. .. if you remember the first para still  !  ~  Four British climbers have become the first to summit Mount Everest using Xenon gas to accelerate their acclimatisation, shaving weeks off the traditional expedition timeline.  The historic ascent, organised by Austria-based Furtenbach Adventures, marks a new chapter in high-altitude mountaineering. Typically, climbers spend several weeks or even months on Everest, gradually adjusting to the mountain’s thin air before attempting the 8,848-metre summit. Rapid ascents without proper acclimatisation are considered extremely dangerous due to the risk of altitude sickness and hypoxia. However, the British team, after inhaling Xenon gas in Germany and sleeping in high-altitude simulation tents at home, managed to reach the summit in less than five days after leaving London. They also used supplemental oxygen during their climb, as is standard practice.

 
Interesting !
 
Regards – S. Sampathkumar
26.5.2025