Noelle Wenceslao

Noelle Christina Wenceslao (born 1979) is a Filipina mountaineer, adventurer, and Philippine Coast Guard officer who, on 16 May 2007, became the first Filipina to reach the summit of Mount Everest. She, along with fellow female mountaineers Carina Dayondon and Janet Belarmino, reached the summit of Mount Everest as part of an all-women Philippine expedition that climbed the tallest mountain in the world from the northern route and descended via the southern route. Little is known about Wenceslao's life. Based on Elizabeth Hawley's The Himalayan Database, she was born in 1979 in San Juan, Metro Manila, Philippines and was 27 years old at the time of her successful ascent of Mount Everest in 2007. For her basic education, she studied at the Saint Pedro Poveda College (then known as the Poveda Learning Center), a private, Roman Catholic school exclusively for girls in Metro Manila's Ortigas business district. She graduated high school in 1998 at the top of her class and enrolled at the University of the Philippines Diliman in a computer engineering degree. At the university, Wenceslao, who wasn't athletic and hated sports during her childhood, became active in the UP Dragon Boat Team and the UP Mountaineers. She later joined the Philippine Canoe and Kayak Federation (PCKF) Women's National Team, which competed in dragon boat competitions abroad. Due to dragon boat training and competitions taking up much of her time in college, she dropped out of her computer engineering course. She spent two years as a non-major at the university, until she was admitted in the College of Human Kinetics. Aside from mountaineering and dragon boat paddling, she also participated in local adventure races and triathlons. In 2004, while still completing her studies, Wenceslao was invited to join the first Philippine Mount Everest Expedition organized by then Transportation and Communications undersecretary Art Valdez. As one of the top female adventure racers in the country, she was a natural choice for the organizers.