The National Cadet Corps (NCC) Girls Expedition to Mt Everest that was flagged-off by Minister of State for Defence Rao Inderjit Singh on 09 Mar 2016 reached the base camp of Everest in Nepal .
The team led by Col Gaurav Karki had reached Kathmandu on 31 Mar 2016. The ten girls, scheduled to summit the peak between 15 May to 25 May 2016 tracked for 156 kilometres of tough terrain from Jiri to reach the Everest Base Camp.
The team has trained hard for the Mt Everest Mission. Pre-Everest Expedition to Mt Deo-Tibba (19688 ft), near Manali in Himachal Pradesh was conducted for 40 cadets in Apr-May 2015. 15 cadets were selected for the next phase based on their performance. In Aug 2015, the team set off on second Pre-Everest Expedition to Mt Trishul (23360 ft), and helped in selecting 10 girl cadets for Everest Expedition. These ten girls thereafter did a month long winter training in Siachen glacier.
The aim of mountaineering expeditions in NCC is to strengthen the character and instil qualities of courage, comradeship, discipline and leadership in the cadets. NCC has always been in the forefront in adventure activities. The first mountaineering course for NCC Cadets was conducted for 42 days at Himalayan Mountaineering Institute (HMI), Darjeeling in 1961. Every year, NCC sponsors 354 boy and girl cadets for basic mountaineering courses at HMI, Darjeeling, NIM Uttarkashi, Atal Bihari Vajpayee Institute of Mountaineering and Allied Sports (ABVIMAS), Manali and JIM & WS Pahalgam.
Mountaineering Expedition as an adventure activity was introduced in NCC in the year 1970. Since then, NCC conducts two mountaineering expeditions every year, one each for boy and girl cadets thus having launched more than 70 expeditions to various peaks.