Avalanche
Another massive avalanche struck the base camp of Mount Manaslu in Nepal on Sunday. Hundreds of tents were destroyed and buried by tons of snow and ice resulting in many climbers and sherpas going missing.
However, rescue operations are underway and various helicopter services are conducting aerial searches. Miraculously, no casualties have been reported so far.
On September 26, at least two climbers were killed and 11 others injured after a huge avalanche ripped through the base camp. On the same day, in a separate incident, American mountaineer Hilaree Nelson was caught in and killed by an avalanche on the slopes of Manaslu.
According to Wikipedia, Manaslu is the eighth-highest mountain in the world, at 8,163 meters (26,781 ft) above sea level, and is considered the fifth most dangerous peak. It is in the Mansiri Himal, part of the Nepalese Himalayas, in the west-central part of Nepal. The name Manaslu means “mountain of the spirit” and is derived from the Sanskrit word manasa, meaning “intellect” or “soul.” Manaslu was first climbed on May 9, 1956, by Toshio Imanishi and Gyalzen Norbu, members of a Japanese expedition. It is said that, given the many unsuccessful attempts by the British to climb Everest before New Zealander Edmund Hillary, “just as the British consider Everest their mountain, Manaslu has always been a Japanese mountain”.
Manaslu is the highest peak in the Gorkha District and is about 64 km (40 mi) east of Annapurna. The mountain’s long ridges and valley glaciers offer feasible approaches from all directions and culminate in a peak that towers steeply above its surrounding landscape and is a dominant feature when viewed from afar.
