A 28-year-old woman who lost her life in a Kachin mountaineering trip has been described as a guiding lighthouse and a big-hearted adventurer.
Yangon-born Saint Htet fell on the descent of Mount Phangran Razi on the Myanmar-India border in Kachin state last Friday morning (April 12).
Her body was discovered in an icy ravine 2,000 feet deep, according to her fellow climbers, and is yet to be recovered.
Her brother, Phone Toe Kyaw, 20, described Saint Htet as a keen traveller who loved the outdoors and was cherished by her family.
The eldest of three siblings, Saint Htet was born in Mayangone township and graduated with a business management degree from Brunel University, London in 2015.
She was part of the 20-strong amateur climbing team The Summiter Group who left Putao, a town at the foot of the Himalayas, on April 6. Within six days they had travelled 95 kilometres northwest to the mountain, which they successfully summited hours before Saint Htet fell.
A photograph shows the climber proudly holding the Myanmar flag near Phangran Razi’s 14,199-foot peak.
Phone Toe Kyaw told Myanmar Mix she was a “happy and lovely” person whose death was “such a great loss.”
“She loved travelling to the beach, camping by herself without a tour guide. She loved bicycling, swimming and teaching others. She had many friends and was dedicated to helping if her friends needed a hand. She was always trying to learn something new.
"Since she was the eldest and the educated one in my family, she was a lighthouse. She always guided us through real world problems and in education.”
“I am very proud of her achievements,” he said, adding that it was the highest mountain she had scaled.
Childhood friend Nay Chi Myo, 27, said she initially refused to believe the "adventurous and big-hearted" Saint Htet had died.
“We cheered her on before she went there,” she told Myanmar Mix. “She had many experiences in climbing, she had even been to the Rakhine Yoma [a mountain range in western Myanmar]. We thought that she would come back to us. But we are proud of her for reaching her goal.”
Team member Hnin Hnin Wai posted on Facebook that the The Summiter Group had “supported each other by wiping one another’s tears” and “felt the taste of success as one.”
“Dear sister who told me that we would go on a bike trip together after climbing this mountain, we are proud of you though we have sorrow in our hearts,” she wrote.
