Two students, Rajat and Kheemi Ram, from the Government High School Manali have been selected for an expedition to the Mount Everest peak in Nepal this year. The expedition starts in April next year. In 2012 also, three students from Manali were selected for the similar expedition. They successfully completed the expedition last year.

Once again, students from the Kullu Valley have brought laurels to the state.

To train these young mountaineers in the making, they will be sent to the Siachen Region in J&K for a rigorous winter training course. Army Mountaineering Institute at Siachen will conduct the training program for these kids in Siachen. These young students are associated with the NCC Program. A basic Mountaineering Course was organized by the NCC in which 108 students participated from across the country. Out of these 108 students, 10 were from the Kullu-Manali Region, which is an achievement in itself.

The basic course was organized at Uttarkashi in Uttarakhand, hosted by the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering. The basic course meant climbing a 4450 m high peak.

The next round took 40 out of 108 students to even higher Himalayan Ranges.

The second round was named as Pre-Everest Expedition Round. Selected students climbed Deo Tibba (6001 meters), one of the highest peaks of Himachal Pradesh in the second round. Four out of ten Manali students made it to the next round.

In the last round, the students climbed a Seven Thousander peak in Uttarakhand which saw seven out of 108 students making it to the Mount Everest expedition. The Winter Training program is to be organized from 25 December to 11 January in Army Mountaineering Institute in Siachen.