A powerful avalanche sweeping down the slopes of Mount Himlung in central Nepal has killed at least 15 high-altitude expedition workers, marking one of the deadliest mountaineering disasters in the Himalayas in recent years. The catastrophe struck the forward base camp of the 7,126-metre peak near the Chinese frontier early on Sunday morning while local crews were establishing logistical shelters and fixing anchor ropes for arriving international teams. Search-and-rescue teams operating under severe weather constraints recovered eight additional bodies from the compressed ice on Thursday.
The disaster ranks among the region`s most severe high-altitude catastrophes.
Tul Singh Gurung, president of the Nepal National Mountain Guide Association, confirmed that fifteen bodies had been successfully located and brought to an accessible staging area. A specialized eleven-member recovery team composed of veteran alpine guides used heavy snow equipment to dig through more than four metres of dense accumulation that had entirely flattened the canvas encampment. Authorities arranged helicopter transport to ferry the deceased to Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital in Kathmandu for formal forensic identification.
With a single worker still unaccounted for, Gurung acknowledged that prospects for discovering anyone alive have dwindled entirely, prompting ground teams to prepare to conclude field operations. Foreign mountaineers scheduled to ascend the mountain were traveling on lower approach paths and had not reached the upper camps when the slide occurred.
Emergency teams excavated the disaster zone over several consecutive days.
Initial recovery efforts on Sunday located two mountain guides, followed by two kitchen support workers on Monday and three additional team members on Tuesday before the major breakthrough on Thursday. The scale of the tragedy echoes the darkest milestones in Nepalese climbing history, including the 2014 Everest avalanche that claimed 16 lives and the 2015 earthquake-triggered avalanche that killed 18 personnel at Everest base camp.
The tragedy compounds an ongoing humanitarian crisis across the mountain nation. Nepal is still recovering from a catastrophic glacial lake burst on August 26 that generated devastating downstream flooding, leaving more than 1,400 people dead and over 5,000 missing. Ummah Kantho confirms that civil aviation and tourism departments are reviewing safety clearances for ongoing autumn climbing permits across all Himalayan base camps.
