Savita Kanswal, the conqueror of Everest, among those who died in Uttarkashi avalanche
Savita made a new national record by climbing both the mountains in such a short time. In the year 2021, Savita Kanswal successfully climbed the world's fourth highest peak Mount Lhotse (8516 m) under the Everest Massif expedition.
FollowSavita Kanswal, the first Indian woman to scale Mount Everest and Mount Makalu in a span of 16 days, lost her life in an avalanche in Uttarakhand's Uttarkashi hills on Tuesday, 4 October. The ace mountaineer had been serving as an instructor for the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering's Advanced Mountaineering Course (NIM) in Draupadi's Danda Peak when she met with her death.
On Tuesday evening, Amit Bisht, the principal of NIM, announced Kanswal's death. She was the youngest sister in a family of four children residing in Uttarkashi's Lonthru village.
As a student at a local government school, she would have to trek four kilometres from her house in Maneri to go to the institute. She had attended an adventure course at school, which had introduced her to the world of climbing.
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In 2013, the mountaineer enrolled in a basic climbing course at Nehru Mountaineering Institute Uttarkashi, where she later became a coach. In order to fund her education at NIM, Kanswal had taken up part time jobs, including stints at Cafe Coffee Day and Reliance. She was hired as a trainer at NIM in 2016.
Savita Kanswal completed her biggest feat on May 12, 2022, when she climbed to the summit of Everest at a height of 8,848 metres. She climbed Mount Makalu sixteen days later (8,484 metres). Kanswal had climbed Mount Everest four times in a row, as most mountaineers do. Her voyage was funded through crowdsourcing, with hundreds of people contributing to her cause.
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