Monica Jackson
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Monica Jackson | |
|---|---|
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| Born | 16 September 1920 Kotagiri, India |
| Died | 7 April 2020 (aged 99) Edinburgh, Scotland |
| Occupations | Mountaineer and author |
Monica Jackson (16 September 1920 – 7 April 2020) was a Scottish climber and a member of the first female expedition team to scale the Jugal Himal in the Himalayas.[1]
Monica Jackson was born in Kotagiri and grew up in the Biligirirangan Hills of southern India where her father Ralph Camroux Morris and her mother Heather (née Kinloch) were coffee planters.[2] She was sent to a boarding school in Arlesey, Bedfordshire at the age of ten and at sixteen she went to Benington College. She returned to India during World War II. She married Bob Jackson, managing director of Stronachs Advertising in Bombay. In 1949 she moved along with her daughter and son to the UK.[2]
Climbing career
While in the UK Jackson often made trips to the Scottish highlands, where she became a member of the Ladies Scottish Climbing Club. For several years she and her husband lived in Tomintoul and later ran Stein Inn on the Isle of Skye. In 1955, she climbed the Jugal Himal with Elizabeth (Betty) Stark and Evelyn McNicol.[3][4] They managed to get to the previously unmapped Phurbal Chyachumbu glacier and made it to the 22,000 ft peak on the frontier of Nepal and Tibet. They were the first people to climb the mountain and they named it Gyalgen Peak, after their lead Sherpa, Mingma Gyalgen.[5][6] They wrote a book Tent in the Clouds (1957).[2]
The Gyalgen or Gyalzen or Loenpo Gang East peak is on the border of the Nepalese Bagmati Province and China and it 6,151 metres (20,180 ft) high.[5]
