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Climbers ready for next challenge

Wu Yu-lung, right, Chiang Hsiu-chen, center, and Huang Chih-hao hold up banners at the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport after returning yesterday from their Mount Everest expedition. PHOTO: CHU PEI-HSIUNG, TAIPEI TIMES

Three Taiwanese climbers who scaled Mount Everest last week returned home from Bangkok yesterday, with all three ready for their next challenge.

Chiang Hsiu-chen (江秀真) and her fellow mountaineers received a hero’s welcome at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport. Their success made Chiang the first Taiwanese woman to conquer the highest peaks on seven continents. It also marked the first time in 13 years that Taiwanese alpinists made it to the top of the 8,848m Mt Everest, said the Atunas Group, which organized the latest expedition.

Chiang, 39, has scaled the highest mountain in the world from both the north side and the south side of the peak, after completing the assault on Mt Everest’s summit last week from the south side, the more conventional route. She climbed the more treacherous north side 14 years ago.

MISSION

Chiang, a mountain ranger at Yushan National Park, and the two male climbers — Wu Yu-lung (伍玉龍), a 49-year-old Bunun tribesman who is the leader of a rescue team, and 33-year-old Huang Chih-hao (黃致豪), who is doing postdoctorate research in electronic engineering at Colorado State University — reached the top of Mt Everest at 12:52pm on May 19.

In a brief interview with the Central News Agency at the airport, Chiang said she was looking forward to her next mission — developing a system to teach mountain climbing in Taiwan.

“Teaching and training [people] about mountain climbing is even more challenging than scaling Mt Everest,” she said. “I will try my best in the next 20 years to contribute to mountain-climbing in Taiwan, an island that boasts a number of high peaks.”

Wu said he would work two or three more years to save enough money to challenge the world’s third-highest peak in India.

Huang said his next challenge would be climbing one of the world’s highest mountains without the aid of bottled oxygen and Sherpa guides, and making a documentary about it.
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