KATHMANDU: Climbers began leaving Nepal’s Mount Manaslu, the world’s eighth-highest peak, as heavy snow and avalanches forced expeditions to be cancelled, organisers said on Thursday (Sept 24).
Nepal is bracing itself for heavy rainfall and has issued a nationwide high alert for four days, starting from Sept 24.
The Himalayan country is already reeling from a devastating, tsunami-like flood on Aug 26 that killed more than 1,400 people and left over 6,000 missing.
A total of 480 climbers were attempting to reach Manaslu’s 8,163m summit this season.
“Almost all teams have cancelled the expeditions this year. The weather has not been favourable for us to continue,” Chhang Dawa Sherpa of expedition organiser Seven Summit Treks told AFP news agency.
Mountaineer Mingma G. Sherpa of Imagine Nepal said in a Facebook post on Sept 23 that he had never experienced such weather in his years of climbing the mountain.
He said clients had begun leaving the Manaslu base camp and that their Nepali team would also descend to a “lower and safer valley”.
There had already been four deaths on the mountain this season, including a 50-year-old Singaporean who died last week.
Nepal has issued 536 climbing permits for nine peaks, with Manaslu accounting for most of them.
Autumn expeditions on the Himalayas are less popular because of the shorter, colder days, snowy terrain and a narrow summit window compared with the busy spring season.
Nepal is home to eight of the world’s 14 highest peaks and foreign climbers who flock to its mountains are a major source of revenue for the largely rural country. - AFP
