Kamet is the second-highest mountain in the Garhwal region of Uttarakhand, India, after Nanda Devi. It is the 29th highest mountain in the world. It lies in the Chamoli District of Uttarakhand. Its appearance resembles a giant pyramid topped by a flat summit area with two peaks.
Lieutenant Colonel James Owen Merion Roberts MVO MBE MC was one of the greatest Himalayan mountaineer-explorers of the twentieth century; a highly decorated British Army officer who achieved his greatest renown as "the father of trekking" in Nepal. His exploratory activities are comparable to those of Eric Shipton and Bill Tilman.
Francis Sydney Smythe, better known as Frank Smythe or F. S. Smythe, was an English mountaineer, author, photographer and botanist. He is best remembered for his mountaineering in the Alps as well as in the Himalayas, where he identified a region that he named the "Valley of Flowers", now a protected park. His ascents include two new routes on the Brenva Face of Mont Blanc, Kamet, and attempts on Kangchenjunga and Mount Everest in the 1930s. It was said that he had a tendency for irascibility, something some of his mountaineering contemporaries said "decreased with altitude".
Trisul is a group of three Himalayan mountain peaks of western Kumaun, Uttarakhand, with the highest reaching 7120m. The three peaks resemble a trident - in Sanskrit, Trishula, trident, is the weapon of Shiva. The Trishul group forms the southwest corner of the ring of peaks enclosing the Nanda Devi Sanctuary, about 15 kilometres (9 mi) west-southwest of Nanda Devi itself. The main peak, Trisul I, was the first peak over 7,000 m (22,970 ft) to have ever been climbed, in 1907.
Abi Gamin is a Himalayan mountain peak mostly situated in the Chamoli district of Uttarakhand state in India, 2 km (1.2 mi) northeast of Kamet. Its summit is on the border with Tibet and its northern slope is in the Ngari Prefecture of Tibet.
In the history of mountaineering, the world altitude record referred to the highest point on the Earth's surface which had been reached, regardless of whether that point was an actual summit. The world summit record referred to the highest mountain to have been successfully climbed. The terms are most commonly used in relation to the history of mountaineering in the Himalaya and Karakoram ranges, though modern evidence suggests that it was not until the 20th century that mountaineers in the Himalaya exceeded the heights which had been reached in the Andes. The altitude and summit records rose steadily during the early 20th century until 1953, when the ascent of Mount Everest made the concept obsolete.
Bandarpunch is a mountain massif in the Garhwal Himalaya in Uttarakhand, India. The massif has 3 peaks: White Peak, also called Banderpunch II, to the west above Yamunotri; almost 5 km east is Bandarpunch main peak or Banderpunch I ; and about 4 km to the north-east is Kalanag.
John A. K. Martyn OBE (1903–1984), was an English schoolmaster, scholar, academic and a distinguished British Himalayan mountaineer. He was the second headmaster of The Doon School.
Gurdial Singh was an Indian schoolteacher and mountaineer who led the first mountaineering expedition of independent India to Trisul in 1951. In 1958, he led the team that made the first ascent of Mrigthuni . In 1965, he was a member of the first successful Indian expedition team to climb Mount Everest.
Romilly Lisle Holdsworth, commonly known as R. L. Holdsworth, was an English scholar, academic, educationalist, cricketer and a distinguished Himalayan mountaineer. He was a member of the first expedition to Kamet in 1931, which included other stalwarts such as Eric Shipton and Frank Smythe. Holdsworth, along with Shipton and Smythe, are credited with the discovery of the Valley of Flowers, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, during their return from Kamet.
John Travers Mends Gibson was an English schoolmaster, scholar, academic and a distinguished British Himalayan mountaineer.
Colonel Narendra Kumar, PVSM, KC, AVSM, FRGS was an Indian soldier and mountaineer. He is known for his expeditions across various mountain ranges such as the Himalayas and Karakorams, and respective subranges such as the Pir Panjals and Saltoro Mountains. His reconnaissance efforts on the Siachen glacier were key to the Indian Army's reclamation of the forward posts of the glacier in Operation Meghdoot in 1984. He was the deputy leader of the first successful Indian Mount Everest expedition in 1965.
Mountaineering is quite popular in India, since the entire northern and north-eastern borders are the Himalayas, the highest mountain range in the world. The apex body in India is the Indian Mountaineering Foundation, which is affiliated to the International Federation of Sport Climbing.
The British Army Mountaineering Association (AMA) is the governing body for climbing competitions and the representative body for mountaineering in the British Army. It is a member of the British Mountaineering Council and is the largest climbing club in the United Kingdom.
Lieutenant-General Sir Harold Williams was an Irish-born British Army officer, engineer and mountaineer.
Colonel M W H (Henry) Day, MA, CEng, MICE, Royal Engineers was a British Army Officer who made the first British ascent of Annapurna I. In addition to the first British ascent of Annapurna, he was an active member of the Army Mountaineering Association (AMA) and a member of the Alpine Club (UK) contributing to the Alpine Journal. He was an active climber in the Alps and took part in the first winter ascent of the Grands Charmoz with Rob Collister. He was member of the AMA Tirich Mir (1969) expedition, summiting the peak; the AMA Himachal Pradesh (1973) expedition; the 1976 British and Nepalese Army Expedition to Everest. He led a Royal Engineers expedition to Trisul II (1978) and in 1981 a British Army expedition to the Da Xue Shan mountains in Sichuan province, China attempting to climb Jiaz. In 1987 Henry Day led the climbers attempting to climb the virgin east face of Xixabangma, in China, organised by the Scientific Exploration Society with a view to conducting scientific research en route. In 2008 he organised a climbing expedition to the Georgian Causasus.
Major Jai Vardhan Bahuguna, KC, SC, VSM was a leading mountaineer of India and a Indian Army officer with the Corps of Engineers. He lost his life in an Indian Army expedition to Mount Everest in October 1985, in which four other army officers were also killed. This was his second attempt.
The role of The Doon School in Indian mountaineering describes the formative links between The Doon School, an all-boys boarding school in Dehradun, India, and early, post-Independence Indian mountaineering. From the 1940s onwards, Doon's masters and students like A.E. Foot, R.L. Holdsworth, J.A.K. Martyn, Gurdial Singh, Jack Gibson, Aamir Ali, Hari Dang, Nandu Jayal, were among the first to go on major Himalayan expeditions in a newly independent nation. These early expeditions contributed towards laying the foundation of mountaineering in an independent India. Mountaineer and chronicler Harish Kapadia wrote in his book Across Peaks & Passes in Garhwal Himalaya: "To my mind, it was when Gurdial Singh [then a Doon School master] climbed Trisul in 1951 that was the beginning of the age of mountaineering for Indians."
Balwant Singh Sandhu (1934-2010) was an Indian mountaineer and a colonel in the Indian Army. He made the first ascent of Changabang along with Sir Chris Bonington in 1974. In 1981, he received the Arjuna Award for excellence in mountaineering, and in 2010, after his death in an accident, he was posthumously awarded the Tenzing Norgay National Adventure Award, the highest adventure sports honour of India. Mountaineer M S Kohli described him as a "world-class climber".
Aleš Kunaver was a Slovenian alpinist and tour guide.
