Nepal Avalanche on Himlung Himal Leaves Two Dead as Rescuers Race to Find 12 Missing

Rescue teams in Nepal resumed a desperate search on Monday for a dozen expedition workers who remain unaccounted for after a powerful avalanche tore through a camp on Mount Himlung, killing at least two people and injuring or stranding others in one of the country's most remote climbing regions.

The avalanche struck on Sunday on Himlung Himal, a 7,126-metre (23,380-foot) peak in north-central Nepal, as a team of Nepali support staff was preparing a base camp for foreign clients expected to arrive for the autumn climbing season. According to Tul Singh Gurung, president of the Nepal National Mountain Guide Association, the bodies of two victims were recovered as rescuers worked until 6pm local time (12:30 GMT) on Sunday evening, but the operation was suspended overnight because of dangerous conditions.

Gurung told the AFP news agency that the search would continue for 14 expedition workers who were still missing at the time of his statement. A team of eight mountain guides has been deployed to comb the avalanche debris, according to the guide association. The confirmed death toll stands at two, while at least 10 people have been pulled from the snow alive, according to authorities and rescue officials.

The two bodies were airlifted to Kathmandu on Monday and taken to Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital, where grieving family members and friends of the Nepali climbers gathered at the morgue. Photographs from the scene showed relatives waiting outside the facility as the recovered remains arrived in the capital.

All of those killed or missing are Nepali nationals, a detail that underscores the often-overlooked risks borne by local high-altitude workers who make international mountaineering possible. The workers were at base camp ahead of the arrival of paying foreign clients, part of the logistical scaffolding that supports Nepal's lucrative expedition industry during the autumn season, which began this month.

The avalanche was triggered amid a spell of severe weather that has battered the Himalayan nation in recent days. The Manang district administration, which oversees the area where Himlung Himal is located, reported flooding and landslides over the weekend, both driven by heavy rainfall. Those events compounded the hazards already present on the mountain, where unstable snowpack and rapidly changing conditions can turn a routine camp preparation into a catastrophe within seconds.

The disaster came as the government issued warnings of severe weather across the entire Himalayan country. Nepal's National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority (NDRRMA) said 21 other people were killed and five more were reported missing in different parts of the country between Thursday and Sunday, a grim tally that illustrates how widespread the current crisis has become.

The avalanche on Himlung Himal is the latest blow in a devastating season for Nepal, which is still reeling from catastrophic flooding in August that swept away entire villages and killed more than 1,400 people. According to the NDRRMA, approximately 5,500 people remain missing from those floods, while 13,795 have been rescued. The scale of that disaster has stretched national emergency resources thin and left many communities struggling to recover even as new emergencies emerge.

Scientists from the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group said in a report released last week that the August floods were not the product of a single extreme weather event but rather a "compound crisis" shaped by long-term warming, glacier retreat, permafrost thaw and underlying geological instability. That assessment carries direct implications for high-mountain regions such as Manang, where thawing permafrost and shrinking glaciers can destabilise slopes and increase the frequency of rockfalls, ice avalanches and other mass-movement events.

Experts who study the Himalayas say the convergence of heavy rainfall, melting ice and fragile terrain is creating conditions in which avalanches and landslides become more difficult to predict and more dangerous when they occur. Nepal's mountainous districts, which rely heavily on trekking and expedition tourism, face a dual burden: the economic imperative to keep climbing seasons running and the mounting safety risks that climate-driven instability imposes on guides, porters and visitors alike.

The autumn climbing season is a critical source of income for thousands of Nepali families, particularly in regions where alternative employment is scarce. Expedition workers — many of them from ethnic communities with generations of high-altitude experience — typically earn far less than the foreign clients they support, yet they absorb a disproportionate share of the physical danger. The Himlung avalanche has renewed attention on the protections, insurance and rescue infrastructure available to these workers when disaster strikes far from major population centres.

Search and recovery operations at such altitudes are inherently perilous. Rescuers must contend with the continued threat of secondary avalanches, crevasses hidden beneath fresh snow, thin air and rapidly shifting weather. Helicopters, which are essential for reaching remote peaks and evacuating casualties, can be grounded by high winds, cloud cover and poor visibility, delaying critical hours in the window when survivors might still be found.

As the search resumed on Monday, the immediate priority remained locating the missing workers and bringing closure to their families. Beyond the current operation, the events on Himlung Himal are likely to intensify debate in Nepal about how to manage the risks of a climbing industry that operates in an increasingly unpredictable environment, and how to ensure that the local workers who carry its heaviest burdens are not left to bear its worst consequences alone.