SIX thousand, one hundred and eighty nine metres above sea level. That is the elevation of the summit of Nepal's Island Peak.

It is also the greatest height - literally - reached by anyone from the Institute of Technical Education (ITE).

An ITE team of eight students and three staff members set off for the Himalayas on 18 Mar.

The ambitious attempt, part of ITE's Global Education Programme, was its first mountaineering venture.

The trip cost $4,000 per person. Part of the money came from their own pockets while fund-raising activities paid for the rest.

To prepare for the climb, the team went through six months of gruelling training under lecturer and team leader Trevor Ian Lim, 35.

How bad was the training? One exercise had the team, carrying backpacks weighed down with 15kg of rocks, rice and sand, climbing every flight of stairs in a 40-storey Toa Payoh HDB block.

They also trekked for three hours in Bukit Timah and ran 10km during their thrice-a-week training sessions.

But it was still hard for them to adjust from sunny Singapore to snowy Island Peak when the team flew over. They had arrived in Kathmandu, then flew to Lukla and trekked to the base camp.

Temperatures at the camp dipped as low as minus 13 degrees at night. Three team members had to be evacuated by helicopter to Kathmandu because of frostbite.

Altitude sickness, something they couldn't train to overcome in Singapore, also meant some had to turn back before reaching the top.

Miss Malissa Abdul Rahman, 22, was one of those who had to give up midway. One of the only two women on the trip, she was unfortunately 'sick from day one'.

Lecturer Daphne Tang, 24, turned back with Malissa.

'When we told Trevor we were turning back, we both cried. We were so near yet so far,' she said.

The team was then only three days away from the summit.

More team members also had to later turn back for similar safety reasons.

In the end, only two made it to the top - student Mohd Firdaus Mohd Rashid, 20, and staff member Darrel Kon, 40.

Mohd Firdaus said: 'I was very happy and proud when I reached the summit because I'd finally reached my goal after trekking for nine hours non-stop.

'We had a very good view from the top... I felt like I was flying.'

Three other team members reached the 6,160m-high second summit. But due to changing wind conditions, they decided not to go ahead with the final summit push.

Still, it was quite an experience.

Leroy Peh, 19, said: 'We trekked up slopes that were 45 to 60 degrees steep for three hours non-stop, pausing only to catch our breath.'

But the hardest part came during Summit Day on 30 Mar, he recalled.

'We had to scale a sheer ice wall about 150m high and 90 degrees steep. It took us more than an hour to climb.'

Many times, they got cold feet.

Team leader Mr Lim said: 'It was hard, cold and dusty. I kept asking myself why I was torturing myself like this. But it was easier to press ahead than to make the long trek back. And I didn't want to disappoint my team members.'

Charissa Yong, newsroom intern

This article was first published in The New Paper on May 13, 2008.