An avalanche swept through the base camp of Himlung Himal, 7,126 metres, in Nepal’s upper Naar Phu valley on 27 September. Four Nepalese workers have been found dead and twelve people remain missing, all of them Nepalese. The accident occurred on one of Nepal’s most popular 7,000-metre peaks, often chosen as a first step into high-altitude mountaineering. The tragedy also raises questions over the location of the base camp: as early as 2014, French mountain guide Paulo Grobel had moved his base camp to the opposite side of the glacier after finding the usual site covered by avalanche debris. Sixteen people are now feared dead, and the search operation has been suspended.
The first images are terrible. Himlung base camp, at 4,900 metres, is literally buried beneath metres of snow: the deadly debris of a huge avalanche that struck on 27 September, itself covered by further snowfall brought by