Police Escort Women’s Himalaya Expedition

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28984, 27 August 1959, Page 13

Police Escort Women’s Himalaya Expedition

(Rec. 8 p.m.) KATMANDU (Nepal), Aug. 25. Nepalese police are escorting a team of women who are to attempt to climb the world’s sixth highest peak because of possible hostility from tribesmen who object to the women’s guides. The all-woman expedition, led by a leading French mountaineer, Mrs Claude Kogan, is five days out of Katmandu on the 17-day trek to the 26,867 ft peak Cho Oyu—the name means turquoise goddess—near Mount Everest. The women’s Sherpa team has been selected by Tensing Norkay.

joint conqueror with Sir Edmund Hi.lary of Everest in 1953. There is rivalry between two groups of Sherpas in the Himalayan area. One, under Tensing’s leadership, which settled in the Indian town of Darjeeling, has long been the backbone of Himalayan expeditions.

The other, in the Sherpa area of Solu Khumbu, is led by a Sherpa named Urken. It is said to want a monopoly on guiding expeditions in the Nepalese Himalayas. The international women s group has hired some Sherpas from Solu Khumbu, but apparently this did not satisfy Urken’s group because the guides were recruited without their help. A Nepalese Foreign Office spokesman said today there was no basis for reports that Chinese checkposts in the Cho Oyu region might interfere with the expedition. .. The checkposts are on the Chinese side of the border while the route to the peak is entirely within Nepalese territory, he said.