Rescuers dig for 12 missing after Himlung base camp avalanche

Rescue teams dug through snow at the base camp of Mount Himlung in north-central Nepal on Monday, searching for a dozen people swept away by an avalanche that struck the camp on Sunday and killed at least four.

Rescuers from the Nepal National Mountain Guide Association, which is leading the effort, recovered two more bodies on Monday in addition to two found on Sunday, The Associated Press reported. Eight experienced mountain guides from the association took advantage of improving weather to dig through snow that had covered tents at the camp.

Ten people were rescued from the mountain and flown down by helicopter. All of those killed or missing were Nepali nationals. They were at base camp preparing for foreign clients to arrive and climb the 7,126-metre (23,380-foot) peak during the autumn climbing season, which began in September.

How the avalanche struck

A slab avalanche came down on the base camp in Narpa Bhumi Rural Municipality, in Manang district, in the early hours of Sunday, burying tents where expedition support staff were sleeping, according to Sherpa Legend, a mountaineering website. Mingma Gyalje Sherpa, who runs Imagine Nepal Trek and Expedition and is leading the rescue, told the site that many of those buried never realised what was happening.

The remains of the two found on Sunday were airlifted on Monday to Kathmandu airport and taken to the Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital, the AP reported. Family members and friends of the dead gathered at the hospital morgue in Kathmandu and did not comment.

Two climbing guides, Pasang Bhote and Chhebi Bhote, both from Sankhuwasabha, were confirmed dead, according to Sherpa Legend, which said their bodies were recovered from roughly 15 feet of snow and flown to Chame, the district headquarters of Manang.

Tul Singh Gurung, president of the Nepal National Mountain Guide Association, told the AFP news agency early Monday that the search was continuing for 14 expedition workers. The number fell to 12 when two more bodies, identified by the association as Birendra Gurung and Ghanshyam Rai, were recovered later that day.

Who was on the mountain

Fourteen kitchen and camp-support staff from two expedition companies working at Himlung, Himalayan Holidays Nepal and Imagine Nepal Treks, were unaccounted for, Sherpa Legend reported. The teams had been at base camp fixing ropes and pitching tents ahead of the arrival of foreign clients.

Barun Bhandari, general manager of one of the affected expedition companies, said staff were missing but that he could not confirm a figure, because contact could not be established after a brief call with one of his workers early Sunday morning, NationPress reported. He said more than 20 staff members from his company alone were part of the team deployed at base camp.

Bibhuti Chand Thakur, of Himalayan Holidays Trekking, told AFP that eight members of his expedition team had initially been reported missing, along with two from another company, IBTimes UK reported. Communication problems made it difficult for operators to account for everyone as the search developed. No foreign climbers were on the mountain when the avalanche struck, with clients expected to arrive in the following days.

Himalayan Holidays Nepal had been readying camps for a 14-member all-female student climbing team from the United Arab Emirates, due to fly into Kathmandu on October 1, according to Sherpa Legend.

Warnings issued before Sunday

The district administration office in Manang had prohibited trekking in several high-altitude areas from 25 to 27 September, citing forecasts of heavy to very heavy rainfall and snowfall across the upper Himalayan zones, NationPress reported. The restriction followed a decision by the District Security Committee, which flagged a potential risk to human life.

Nepal's government had issued severe weather warnings covering the entire Himalayan nation. Flooding and landslides were reported in Manang district over the weekend, all caused by heavy rainfall, the district administration office said. Rainfall has been continuous across several regions of the country since 24 September, with river levels rising sharply and authorities advising residents along river corridors to move to higher ground.

The avalanche came on the final day of that window, while the weather system that prompted it was still moving through Nepal's mountain districts.

Rain and snow in recent days have affected Nepal's mountain regions, forcing climbers to abandon Mount Manaslu, the world's eighth-highest peak, earlier in the week because of rising avalanche danger. Helicopters initially struggled to reach Himlung because of thick cloud and heavy snow, and a specialist rescue team of experienced mountaineers was flown from Kathmandu once conditions allowed.

Getting rescuers to the camp

Eleven certified mountain guides flew out of Kathmandu on Sunday afternoon, eight aboard a Prabhu Helicopter and three aboard a Kailash Helicopter, Sherpa Legend reported. Seven reached Himlung on the first flight. The other four were held back in Chame by deteriorating weather, and search teams called off operations overnight, descending to the Phu valley before returning to base camp on Monday.

Nepal's wider death toll

Nepal's National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority said 21 other people had been killed and five more were missing in different parts of the country between Thursday and Sunday.

Nepal is recovering from flooding in August that swept away several villages and killed more than 1,400 people. The disaster authority said 5,285 people were still missing and 13,795 had been rescued. The floods were triggered by a glacier collapse and landslide near the Nepal-China border, which sent water and debris down the Trishuli River valley, IBTimes UK reported.

Researchers from the World Weather Attribution group said in a report released on 17 September that the August disaster was not caused by a single extreme weather event but by a compound crisis shaped by long-term warming, glacier retreat, permafrost thaw and geological instability.

What has not been confirmed

Nepal Police Deputy Superintendent Shailendra Thapa said further details were still being gathered, addressing earlier speculation that foreign climbers may also have been caught in the avalanche. Police said the full extent of the damage and casualties had not been confirmed. Manang district saw multiple avalanches and landslides on Sunday, and authorities were also occupied with rescuing other tourists who may have been in the wider base camp area.

Rescuers who recovered the two bodies said it was very unlikely that the missing would be found alive, because the tents had been buried beneath more than 15 feet of snow. Ashish Gurung, a member of the rescue team, said hopes of finding them alive were fading.

Two of Mingma Gyalje Sherpa's own staff, a cook and his assistant, were among the missing, he said, and the rest of his team was safe. He asked people seeking information to check the association's official channels rather than call him, saying the phone calls he was receiving were disturbing.

We tried our best to convince them to leave Base Camp since Friday and move to the lower valley, but they did not take our warnings seriously and ignored them.

The Himlung avalanche came less than two months after an avalanche on Broad Peak in Pakistan on 30 July killed 10 climbers, six of them Nepali, among them the British-Nepali mountaineer Nirmal Purja. Mingma Gyalje Sherpa spent the following week leading the recovery there.

Tourism is one of Nepal's main sources of foreign income, and the autumn climbing season, which draws expeditions to peaks including Himlung Himal in the Nar Phu region of Manang, is among the most commercially important periods of the year, NationPress reported. Officials and expedition operators were expected to issue further updates as rescue helicopters reached the site and communications improved.