Members of historic 1978 expedition feted

The government today felicitated a team of renowned mountaineers who had pulled off a seemingly impossible expedition in 1978.

The felicitation event was also a part of commemorating the 40th anniversary of the historic summit when two of the expedition members scaled Mt Everest without using bottled oxygen.

A total of 12 mountaineers from the team had scaled Mt Everest in 1978 and the expedition is popularly known as Austrian Everest Expedition 1978.

Though four members of the expedition team have already passed away, the government today felicitated the eight surviving members of the expedition.

Minister for Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation, Rabindra Adhikari, felicitated the surviving members of the historic 12-member expedition — Wolfgang Nairz, Reinhold Messner, Peter Habeler, Helmut Hagner, Hanns Schell, Robert Schauer, Oswald Ölz and
Raimund Margreiter.

“We are thankful to all the mountaineers of the team who have directly or indirectly promoted Nepali mountaineering and tourism in the global market,” said Adhikari, adding that the government will do the needful to further promote mountaineering in the country in the coming days.

Similarly, Deepak Raj Joshi, chief executive officer at Nepal Tourism Board (NTB), said that mountaineering is one of the crucial parts of Nepal’s tourism and that mountaineering tourism has high scope in the country.

source:the himalayan times,20 april 2018