CUG: a cradle of China's mountain climbers

After a year-long intensive training program, Chen Chen, a graduate student from the China University of Geosciences (CUG), became the first Chinese college student to reach the summit of Mount Everest, the world's highest mountain, on May 19, 2012.

A photo taken on May 9, 2020, shows Chen Gang and other members of the Chinese expedition team heading for the summit of Mount Everest. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

The Chinese expedition team reaches the summit of Mount Everest on May 27, 2020. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

In the following four years and seven months, the expedition team of CUG successfully accomplished other major goals and climbed nine of the highest peaks in the world.

There were 12 alumni of CUG in a team of over 30 professional surveyors, who were given the mission of re-measuring the height of Mount Everest in May 2020.

Over the decades, CUG has fostered over 6,000 climbing talents, some of whom have set foot on the highest mountains across seven continents and have been on expeditions to the Antarctica and Arctic.

CUG compiled theoretical and practical textbooks and made teaching videos in 1978,1985 and 1989 in accordance with the characteristics of geosciences, to help teachers and students further enhance their survival capabilities in the exploration of mineral resources.

Under the leadership of renowned geological experts like Yang Zunyi, Wang Hongzhen and Chi Jishang, teachers and students from CUG have made lots of original and pioneering achievements during their scientific expedition to Mount Everest, the Ngari prefecture and the Sanjiangyuan (Three River Source) area.

Their publications on the geological and paleontological studies of the Ngari prefecture have filled a domestic gap in research of the area.

Meanwhile, CUG has also established unique mechanisms in the cultivation of professional mountaineering talents.

Early in 1998, CUG took the lead among domestic universities in opening outdoor survival courses, and became one of the first universities to establish a resource library on the education of outdoor survival. It allowed all on-campus students to universally register for outdoor survival courses in 2004, created the country's first academic major of outdoor sports in 2005, and began to enroll graduate students for a master's degree in mountaineering outdoor sports in 2007.

The establishment of the China Mountaineering Outdoor Sports College at CUG in November 2018 has made it the first domestic university to have an independent school of outdoor sports and furthered its efforts on the cultivation of reserve climbing talents.