French army team to scale Annapurna peaks

POKHARA: A team of French army personnel is all set to scale the Mount Annapurna in Kaski district.

Organising an event on Friday, tourism entrepreneurs in Pokhara extended their best wishes to the team.

Four members of the team will ascend the 8,091-metre high Annapurna I while three others will scale the 7,219-metre high Annapurna South, according to the expedition team leader Major Jean Yves Igonenc.

Igonenc and team’s doctor Valentine Malavoy, however, will not scale any of the summits.

The team will leave Pokhara for the Ghandruk-based Annapurna Base Camp on Saturday, according to the Major.

Mountaineering guide Tndi Sherpa said the team would leave for the peaks without oxygen support.

Two French Maurice Herzog and Louis Lachenal had climbed the Annapurna I on June 3, 1950, around three years before the Mount Everest was scaled for the first time.

Som Bahadur Thapa, Chairman of the Pokhara Tourism Council (PTC), which organised the farewell event, said the expedition would help Nepal tourism revive after the devastating April 25 earthquake.