IAF lifts four NCC women cadets off 18,500 feet in Ladakh
The Siachen Pioneers at Leh flew a first-light evacuation with no helipad. The Aparajita trek has three officers and 28 cadets on a 250 km route flagged off on 18 August.
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Indian Air Force helicopters from the Siachen Pioneers unit at Leh lifted four National Cadet Corps women off a campsite at 18,500 feet in Ladakh after an SOS during the all-India high-altitude trek named Aparajita. The crew flew at first light, landed on ground with no helipad, and took the four cadets to Leh for treatment. Defence public relations released a photograph of the camp.
Thin air at that height cuts rotor performance. There was no prepared pad. The terrain is the same mix of rock and snow the unit trains on for Siachen work. A precise landing in those conditions is the job. The IAF described it as urgent medical evacuation, not a crash rescue.
Aparajita is a 30-day walk of about 250 kilometres. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh flagged it off in New Delhi on 18 August. The party is three women officers and 28 girl cadets. The average age is 19. The youngest cadet is sixteen and a half. The route runs Kibber, Dumla, Thaltak, Bongrojen, Parang La, Dak Karzong, Norbu Sumdo, Kiangdom and Korzok, across high desert, glacier, snowfield and river valley. Parang La sits near 18,370 feet.
Who is on the walk
Wing Commander Kunal Sharma has overall command. The officers named with the column are Lt Col Sonam Pandey, Sqn Ldr Elizabeth A. Issac, Maj Anjali Rathee, Lt Snehal Patil of the Navy and Lt Radhika Chahal of the Military Nursing Service. Six instructors, two Associate NCC Officers and four Girl Cadet Instructors are attached. Cadets were selected through endurance tests and given altitude preparation. The group spent two days in Shimla from 20 August walking short trails and eating in nearby villages before they moved higher.
The expedition is billed as the first all-India NCC trek done entirely by girl cadets at this height. That is a public message as much as a training plan. It is also a medical risk. Four evacuees from a party of 31 walking members is a high fraction. The IAF has not published diagnoses. At 18,500 feet the usual list is pulmonary or cerebral oedema, exhaustion, or trauma. The fact that the call went out at night and the aircraft came at first light suggests the camp could hold until dawn but could not walk the four down.
How this sits next to other high rescues
In late August, Army Aviation from the Fire and Fury Corps pulled a casualty off a slope at 18,600 feet near Nun Kun with one skid touching the ground because there was no pad. The crew stripped weight, flew light on fuel, and used the last landing window of the day. That was a different unit and a different patient. Together the two jobs show what 18,000 feet now requires of Indian rotary crews in Ladakh: hover with almost no lift margin, on a slope, in wind, for a stretcher.
The Siachen Pioneers exist for that work. Leh is their base. The NCC trek put four teenagers into the same air the unit already flies. The successful lift is the story the defence ministry will keep. The quieter fact is that a flagged-off empowerment walk still depends on an IAF crew that can land where there is no helipad when a 16-year-old cannot take another step.
The column still has most of its distance to Korzok. The four cadets are in Leh. Whether they rejoin or go home will decide how Aparajita is written up at the end of the 30 days. The helicopters have already written the middle chapter.
