Avalanche Hits Nepal's Himlung Base Camp, Up to 14 Missing

An avalanche struck the base camp of Himlung Himal, a 7,126-metre peak in Nepal's Manang district, early on Sunday, killing two mountain guides and leaving between 10 and 14 climbers, guides and support staff missing, according to Nepali officials and expedition companies.¹²³⁷

Confusion over the missing count

Reports on the scale of the disaster have varied. The BBC, The Hindu, outlookindia.com and The Pioneer reported a missing toll of 10, noting that contact was lost with eight employees of Himalayan Holidays Nepal along with two workers from Imagine Nepal Treks once the avalanche hit.¹⁷⁶¹¹

Other outlets, including Deutsche Welle, ExplorersWeb, the South China Morning Post and Nation Press, reported that 14 expedition workers, described as kitchen staff and climbing guides, remained unaccounted for. Al Jazeera cited Nepal National Mountain Guide Association president Tul Singh Gurung as saying the search continued for a group described elsewhere as a dozen swept away by the snow.²⁴⁸³

The Expedition Operators Association Nepal said the identities of the missing had not yet been ascertained.⁷

Search under way

Two climbing guides have been recovered and confirmed dead, the Nepal National Mountain Guide Association said. Tul Singh Gurung said rescuers worked until 6pm the previous evening and that an eight-member team of mountain guides was involved in the search operation.²³

Bibhuti Chand Thakur, a representative of Himalaya Holidays Trekking, said a confirmed count of the missing and rescued was not yet possible given the site's isolation and lack of communication access, but added that survival odds stayed favorable due to the fresh snow.²

Barun Bhandari, general manager of Himalayan Holidays, said contact with one staff member was briefly established early on Sunday morning before being lost, and that more than half a dozen of the company's staff were reported missing, though the figure could not be confirmed. Manang's Chief District Officer, Mukti Prasad Khanal, confirmed helicopters were dispatched to the site, while noting that officials had not yet verified precisely how many people were missing.⁵¹⁰

Weather disrupts rescue and climbing season

According to The Hindu and ExplorersWeb, persistent rain and snow across Nepal's mountainous districts have slowed rescue work, occasionally keeping helicopters grounded due to poor weather. Officials at the District Administration Office had banned trekking above certain elevations for the three-day span of September 25 to 27, as meteorologists cautioned that intense rain and snow were expected across the upper Himalayan region.⁷⁴⁵

The avalanche came as Nepal's autumn climbing season, one of the country's most commercially significant periods with more than 500 permits issued, was under way. In the wake of the disaster, climbing was suspended on Manaslu—ranked eighth among the world's tallest mountains—even as six climbers stayed behind at Dhaulagiri's base camp digging out from the snow.⁵⁴

A landslide also struck above a village near Samagaon at 3am on Sunday, jolting trekkers and climbers in the area with tremors and a loud roar, according to ExplorersWeb.⁴

Part of a wider run of disasters

This comes after an August 26 flood, which Nepali officials likened to a tsunami in its force, claimed over 1,400 lives and left more than 6,000 people unaccounted for, per reporting from the BBC and the Peninsula Qatar. Al Jazeera and outlookindia.com reported that 5,500 people remain missing from the August flooding, with 13,795 rescued.¹⁹³⁶

The BBC noted that more than 50 people were also killed by extreme weather in Uttar Pradesh, and that six Nepali climbers died on Broad Peak in Pakistan less than two months before the Himlung avalanche.¹