RP forms first expedition team to scale Mt. Everest

A Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) executive will be leading the first expeditionary attempt by Filipinos to put the country’s flag atop Mt. Everest, the world’s highest peak.

DOTC Undersecretary for Land Transportation Arturo Valdez, an avid mountaineer and sportsman, said that the attempt will be made in 2007 by a 20-man Filipino team.

The members of the team, composed of three women and 17 men, were presented yesterday at the Rock Climbing Complex of the Powerplant mall in Rockwell, Makati City,

"There are three Igorots, one Muslim and a female lumad from Bukidnon in the team," Valdez said. "The rest are from Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. These are top athletes, mostly mountaineers and frequent participants in local adventure races." He added that three personnel from the Armed Forces of the Philippines may also join the team in the coming weeks.

Valdez said that the team members will have to train rigorously for two years. Part of their preparations will be training at the Malayan Mountaineering School in Manali, India in June and July and climbing the high mountains of Kyrgyzstan in September.

"In Manali, India, we’ll have basic and advanced courses including crevasse rescue and many other things," Valdez said.

"Then in 2005, we will mostly be in Nepal and Tibet to expose ourselves to high altitudes and frozen peaks," he added, explaining that Filipino mountaineers may be physically fit in our tropical climate but may not make it under extremely cold weather conditions. "We have to acclimatize," Valdez said.

"In the next two years, we’ll be climbing eight major mountains which will culminate sometime in the last quarter of 2006 in the sixth highest mountain in the world, Mt. Chooyo in the Himalayan range," Valdez added.

But prior to these foreign expeditions, Valdez said the team will first climb the unexplored portion of Mt. Giting-giting on Sibuyan island in Romblon.

Valdez, a pioneering adventure mountaineer and marathon runner, organized the first successful climbs to the highest mountains in the Philippines. In 1982, Valdez led a team that climbed four mountains — Mounts Kanlaon, Mayon, Pulag and Apo — in one month. In 1992, he again led a four-man Filipino expedition team from Bacolod, Negros Occidental, that climbed the highest mountain in Southeast Asia — the 14,000-feet Mt. Kinabalu in Malaysia.

Valdez stressed that the first Philippine Mt. Everest Expedition will try to accomplish many firsts. "Maraming thrusts ito. Isa sa mga thrusts nito (This has many thrusts. One of these) is to put the first ASEAN woman at the top of Mt. Everest."

The first nationals from the Association of Southeast Asian nations that climbed Mt. Everest were a group of Indonesian military men, which reached its peak on April 27, 1997. Next came a team from Malaysia and then Singapore.

"As a sportsman, you always aim for the top but it’s also a way of lifting up the Filipino and showing to the world that the Filipino can. The subliminal message here is that if given the focus and if we put our act together, we can triumph in the midst of extreme challenges," Valdez said.