Two bodies recovered after Himlung Himal avalanche as eight remain missing

Rescuers recovered two bodies after an avalanche struck the Himlung Himal area of Nepal on Sunday, September 27. Eight people remained unaccounted for in a later update attributed to Nepal’s Armed Police Force, while poor weather complicated the search. The two people whose bodies were recovered had not been identified in the available report, and it was unclear whether they were included in that missing-person count.

The avalanche hit the mountain’s base camp area in Manang district, where Nepali climbers and support staff had gone ahead of foreign clients to prepare an expedition. The crew’s work included setting up camp, managing the route and fixing ropes. Himlung Himal rises to 7,126 metres in Nepal’s Nar Phu region.

How the missing-person count changed

Expedition organiser Bibhuti Chand Thakur initially reported that eight of a 22-member group could not be contacted, according to The Kathmandu Post. That reported number later rose to 14. Thakur said the people being sought were Nepali expedition members, including Sherpas and support staff; the foreign clients had not yet reached the mountain. He expected them to arrive in five to six days.

Thakur said a Sherpa on the mountain called a senior manager at Himalayan Holidays at about 9:40 a.m. on Sunday to request a helicopter after eight people could not be seen. Contact was lost again after a later call, he said. Those early reports described a rapidly developing situation, before rescuers had reached everyone in the affected area.

An earlier Nepal News report put the missing group at 10: eight members of Himalayan Holidays Nepal and two kitchen crew from Imagine Nepal Treks. That figure preceded the later accounts of recovered bodies and renewed contact from Phu village. No confirmed names or individual statuses for those still unaccounted for were given in the available reports.

Rescue teams face difficult access

The Kathmandu Post reported that a search-and-rescue team travelling from Kathmandu recovered the two bodies at the site on Sunday. Tul Singh Gurung, president of the Nepal National Mountain Guides Association, said his organisation had deployed an eight-member rescue team. He told the newspaper that guides were flown towards the Himlung area in two helicopters to assist the search.

Earlier in the day, Thakur said private helicopters were on standby in Kathmandu and Pokhara, but weather had prevented access. His team sought two helicopters and had secured one at the time of his account. Department of Tourism director general Ram Krishna Lamichhane told The Kathmandu Post that the government was also trying to arrange a helicopter and coordinating with relevant agencies, but could not dispatch it in the weather then prevailing.

The Kathmandu Post reported that ground rescuers had also been unable to reach the area during that earlier phase of the response. HimalPress put the base camp about a four-hour trek from Phu village. The BBC reported persistent rain and snow across Nepal’s mountain districts in recent days and said bad weather had hampered access to the avalanche site.

What remains unknown

The later report that 12 people had made contact helps explain why early missing-person estimates changed, but it does not establish a final toll. The available accounts do not say whether the two recovered bodies are already reflected in the Armed Police Force figure of eight unaccounted for. Their identities, the status of each person still missing, and the precise path and cause of the avalanche have not been established in the cited reporting.