Deadly Everest avalanche triggered by Nepal earthquake

Climbers at the Mount Everest base camp – and others trapped higher on its slopes – were locked in a desperate effort to treat injured colleagues caught in a devastating avalanche that swept through the encampment after being triggered by Saturday’s powerful earthquake.

With at least 17 people believed to have been killed on Everest, and 61 injured, climbers in the camp sent frantic messages calling for helicopter assistance to evacuate the most badly wounded.

There are around 100 climbers at camps 1 and 2 on Mount Everest, above base camp, and all are safe after an earthquake set off an avalanche, the head of the Nepal Mountaineering Association said on Sunday.

Twenty-two of the most seriously injured at the base camp were taken by helicopter to Pheriche village, the nearest medical facility, Ang Tshering said on Sunday. However, bad weather and communications were hampering more helicopter sorties.

It will also be difficult to evacuate the climbers above base camp as the route back through the Khumbu Icefall was blocked, Tshering told Reuters.

The route through the Khumbu Icefall – which is fixed annually with ropes and ladders and gives access to the higher slopes – appeared to have been badly damaged.

Romanian climber Alex Gavan, who was in the base camp and survived by running from his tent, posted a desperate appeal on Twitter on Saturday.

“Huge disaster. Helped searched [sic] and rescued victims through huge debris area. Many dead. Much more badly injured. More to die if not heli[copter] asap.”

Earlier, Gavan had described his own close call, writing there had been a “huge avalanche” and “many, many” people were up on the mountain. “Running for life from my tent,” Gavan said.

At least 300 foreign climbers and hundreds more Sherpas had been on the mountain, or close to it, when the disaster struck.

The avalanche began Saturday on Mount Kumori, a 7,000-metre (22,966-foot) mountain just a few kilometers from Everest, gathering strength as it headed toward the base camp, where climbing expeditions have been preparing to make their summit attempts in the coming weeks, Tshering said.

All of the dead and injured found by Sunday were at the base camp.

Gordon Janow, the director of programs for the Washington-based guiding outfit Alpine Ascents International, said from Seattle that his team had come through the avalanche unscathed.

Their first goal was to deal with the devastation at base camp, he said, and they would then try to create new routes to help climbers stuck above the Khumbu Icefall.

“Everybody’s pretty much in rescue mode, but this is different from some independent climbing accident where people can be rescued and taken somewhere else,” Janow said. “I don’t know where ‘somewhere else’ is.”

Pictures from Everest’s south side base camp showed flattened tents and blocks of rock scattered around a site deep in snow. The avalanche appeared to have swept through the middle section of the strung-out camp.

Gyanendra Shrestha, of the tourism ministry in Kathmandu, said two tents at the camp had been filled with injured people. “The toll could go up, it may include foreigners as well as Sherpas,” he said.

Carsten Lillelund Pedersen, a Dane who is climbing Everest with Belgian Jelle Veyt, said on his Facebook page that they were on the icefall when the earthquake hit.

He said they had started to take care of the injured, including one person with severe injuries.

“He was blown away by the avalanche and broke both legs. For the camps closer to where the avalanche hit, our Sherpas believe that a lot of people may have been buried in their tents,” he wrote.

“There is now a steady flow of people fleeing base camp in hope of more security further down the mountain.”

The nationalities of base camp victims were unclear as climbers described chaotic attempts to treat the injured amid fears of more landslides and aftershocks that continue to rattle the region. Chinese media reported that a Chinese climber and two Sherpa guides were among the dead.

Daniel Mazur, a well-known Bristol-based climber and guide, who has joint US-British nationality, was among those trapped higher on the mountain, at camp one, which is at about 6,000 metres up.

Mazur said base camp had been severely damaged and his team was trapped. “Please pray for everyone,” he wrote on Twitter.

A British army expedition – at advanced base camp at 6,500 metres – reported that all its members were safe and well.

Everest base camp is particularly vulnerable because it is on a shoulder of rocky glacial moraine below the Khumbu Icefall – a maze of crevasses and tottering glacial ice cliffs – through which climbers must navigate an often dangerous path.

Mazur reported later that the route through the icefall had been destroyed but that his team was unharmed, although they had felt the quake on the mountain’s north side.

The avalanche at base camp is the second serious incident in two years. Last year, 16 Sherpas were killed in an avalanche in the icefall.

Reports suggested there had been avalanches on the nearby mountain of Makalu, the fifth highest in the world, which other parties were climbing.

A large number of climbers had been at Makalu base camp and had begun acclimatisation climbs to higher camps in the past few days.

The mother of climber Arjun Vajpai told the Observer he had called to say he was safe in base camp.

However, British climber Gareth Douglas posted on the British Mountaineering Council’s Facebook page: “We are on the Makalu exped[ition] on the north side, all is well at base camp bar rock fall with no casualties. ABC [advanced base camp] is also OK but there was an avalanche off the north col resulting in one broken leg as far as we know.”

The quake was also felt strongly on Cho Oyu, the world’s sixth-highest peak, while parties had also been getting ready to climb Annapurna and Dhaulagiri, closer to the epicentre.

The earthquake struck in the midst of the spring season in Nepal, when most of the attempts to climb mountains in the region are made.

According to the Nepalese tourism department, which regulates climbing in the area, the bodies of eight people were recovered on Mount Everest on Saturday, although a spokesman cautioned that an unknown number of people remained missing or injured.

Dan Fredinburg, a Google executive who described himself as an adventurer, was among the dead, Google confirmed.

An Indian army mountaineering team said that it recovered at least 13 bodies.

Choti Sherpa, who works at the Everest Summiteers Association, said she had been unable to call her family and colleagues on the mountain. “Everyone is trying to contact each other, but we can’t,” she said. “We are all very worried.”