KATHMANDU: At least 12 Nepalese guides preparing routes up Mount Everest for commercial climbers were killed yesterday by an avalanche in the most deadly mountaineering accident ever on the world’s highest peak, officials and rescuers say.
The men were among a large party of Sherpas carrying tents, food and ropes who headed out in bright sunshine in an early morning expedition ahead of the main climbing season starting later this month.
Four of them are still missing, tourism officials said, while one rescuer at the scene said he expected the death toll to rise by at least three after other bodies were spotted but not retrieved.
The avalanche occurred at around 6.45 am (0100 GMT) at an altitude of about 5,800 metres in an area nicknamed the “popcorn field”, due to boulders of ice that lie on the route leading into the treacherous Khumbu icefall.
“We have retrieved 12 bodies from the snow,” Nepal tourism ministry official Dipendra Paudel said in Kathmandu.
He said that deteriorating weather conditions had forced rescuers to suspend searches for the missing climbers until this morning. “We do not want to risk another accident,” he said.
Assisted by rescue helicopters, at least seven people were plucked alive from the ice and snow on Friday with the injured sent by helicopter to a hospital in the capital.
Kathmandu-based expert Elizabeth Hawley, considered the world’s leading authority on Himalayan climbing, said the avalanche was the most deadly single accident in the history of mountaineering on the peak Everest.
The previous worst accident occurred in 1996 when eight people were killed during a rogue storm while attempting to summit the mountain, which was first conquered in 1953 by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay.
AFP
