SINGAPORE: Six women are planning to scale Cho Oyu in Tibet on 16 August, ahead of their attempt to scale Mount Everest next year.

At a towering height of 8,200 metres, Cho Oyu has similar conditions as Mount Everest.

The group, Singapore's first women's Everest team, has been hard at work since 2004 to prepare for the most arduous journey of their lives.

Training intensified in the last four months.

Jane Lee, team leader of the Singapore Women's Everest Team 2008, said: "We do a few components, the first one will be long runs, of which we do anything from 25 to 50 kilometres a week.

"The second component will be our pack-carrying exercises; we load up our back packs to about 18 kg, and we actually wear 2.5 kg ankle weights on each leg and after that we either go to Bukit Timah Nature Reserve to climb or we do it on a 40-storey HDB block in Toa Payoh.

"We also do our all-night treks and that will be anything from 8 to 12 hours. We actually load up our back packs and we go walking all around Singapore."

They hold full-time jobs and train six days a week.

So what keeps them going?

"It's not just, for instance, if I don't train hard enough, I might just lose a competition or I have to go home. This is really life and death. So knowing this gives us that added motivation to really push that bit harder," said Jane.

Sim Yihui, co-leader of the Singapore Women's Everest Team 2008, said that another reason for them to push on is that "a few expeditions have gone to Everest since 1998, but none of them has any female climbers in the team. We felt that it wasn't that women cannot climb; it's just that there is no platform for them to climb."

There were 40 applicants when the team first started.

But after numerous rounds of interviews and physical tests, it's down to six in the team.

The team members say they are physically and mentally prepared to scale Mount Everest in March next year.

But there is one major hurdle they need to overcome, and that is funding.

They need S$1 million to scale Mount Everest, but so far they have only managed to raise S$50,000. - CNA/ir