Dedi Satria is part of a team that started scaling the mountain on Jan 2, the university`s climbers team manager, Ade Wahyudi, said in a press release received by ANTARA on Monday.
The journey to reach the Vinson Massif peak is included in the series of the world`s Seven Summits, which the UI students are taking part in.
"(It is) an outstanding achievement. We have been waiting for and longing to reach this peak. Finally, we could reach the sixth peak in the series of Seven Summits, the peaks in the coldest continents," Wahyudi noted.
Satria, along with his colleagues Mahendratta S, Fandhi Achmad, and Ahmad Nadil, had previously reached the Carstensz peak of Indonesia in May 2016.
In September 2016, he also managed to reach the Elbrus peak of Russia with Achmad and Wahyudi.
In February 2017, Satria and another fellow climber Agam Napitupulu managed to reach the peak of Aconcagua in Argentina.
Mapala UI has become the first team to set foot on the Carstensz peak in 1972 and has been taking part in the world`s Seven Summit expedition.
Over the next few years, four other peaks were scaled by the team, namely the peak of Kilimanjaro (1983), McKinley (1989), Elbrus (1990), and Aconcagua (1993).
Mapala UI team has reached five peaks in the Seven Summits expedition, but is yet to make it to the peak of Vinson Massif and Everest due to the death of its main expedition climbers, Norman Edwin and Didiek Samsu, during an attempt to climb Aconcagua in 1992.
"After a long unsettling seven summits expedition, Mapala UI at the end of 2017 sent Satria to Vinson Massif, the highest peak of Antarctica. When we heard that Satria had reached the top of Vinson, we regained our pride and enthusiasm," leader of the Mapala UI Yohanes Poda said.
The tallest peak on the Antarctic continent could only be scaled when the southern region of the earth experiences summer, which ranges between December and January.
To complete the expedition, the climbers of Mapala UI will continue with the 8,848-meter-high of Mount Everest, which is the world`s highest peak located in the Himalayas---the international border between China and Nepal.
Reported by Hanni Sofia Soepardi
(Y013/INE)
EDITED BY INE/a014
Reporter: Yashinta Difa Pramudyani
Editor: Heru Purwanto
Copyright © ANTARA 2018
