Himlung Himal Avalanche Buried the Kitchen Crew First

An avalanche buried Himlung Himal base camp on September 27, killing 15 Nepali support workers and leaving one man missing. None of the dead were paying climbers.

They were kitchen staff and two guides, asleep in tents at about 4,800 meters, opening the autumn season on a 7,126-meter peak sold as a training climb.

Fourteen Cooks and Two Guides

Twenty-seven Nepali workers were in camp when the snow came down in Narpa Bhumi Rural Municipality-5, in Manang’s Nar Phu valley near the Tibet border. The slide hit the kitchen and dining tents. It did not sweep people down the glacier. It buried them where they slept and cooked.

Himalayan Holidays had 21 people on site and Imagine Nepal Treks had six. Sixteen were buried, 14 of them kitchen staff and two of them climbing guides. Eleven lived because their tents sat slightly off the fall line, survivor Chheten Lama Bhote said. No foreign climbers were in camp.

WHO WAS IN CAMP

The two guides pulled from the snow on September 27 were Chhebi Bhote and Pasang Bhote, both from Sankhuwasabha. Among the kitchen crew later identified were Aash Gurung, 58, from Gorkha, and Kalam Budha, 57, from Rukum, along with Ghan Shyam Rai and Suraj Rai from Khotang and Birendra Gurung from Gorkha. The missing man is Pasang Nuri Sherpa, 38, of Okhaldhunga. Rescuers found his tent and his bedding. They did not find him.

These are the people who put rice on the stove and tents on the snow before any client walks in. They sit at the low end of the expedition payroll, and they were the ones still in camp.

Paying Clients Were Days From Arriving

Himalayan Holidays was getting the camp ready for a 14-member all-women group from a climbing school in the UAE, due in Kathmandu on October 1. Imagine Nepal had planned a Himlung trip after work on Manaslu. The paying teams were not yet on the mountain.

On Manaslu, about 50 miles west, operators pulled a record autumn crowd off the hill before the snow stacked up. Nepal’s Department of Tourism had issued 500 Manaslu permits this autumn, and expedition desks evacuated over 490 paying clients plus hundreds of mountain workers. At Himlung, the kitchen crews stayed.

Tul Singh Gurung, president of the Nepal National Mountain Guide Association, said several workers tried to leave Himlung base camp during the storm and turned back because the snow was too deep. The camp was already built. Food, gas, and rope were stacked. Walking away meant leaving a season’s kit on the glacier, and a missed autumn trip is lost pay for staff hired by the season.

Why Did Kitchen Crews Stay at Base Camp?

The weather was not a surprise. Around September 20, a low-pressure area formed over the northern Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal. Nepal’s Department of Hydrology and Meteorology and India’s weather office tracked it as it strengthened into a deep depression, came ashore near Kalingapatnam on India’s east coast late on September 23, and kept feeding moisture north. It never became a named cyclone. It still dumped heavy rain on the lowlands and heavy snow on the high camps.

THE STORM THAT BURIED CAMP

1. September 20-21: A low-pressure area forms over the Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal.
2. September 22-23: The system strengthens into a deep depression and moves toward India’s east coast.
3. September 24-28: Nepal issues alerts for heavy rain and for heavy snow in the Himalaya.
4. September 25-27: The worst weather hits; Dhaulagiri climbers later described nearly seven feet of new snow at that mountain’s base camp.
5. September 27: Before dawn, a slab comes down on Himlung’s kitchen tents.

Forecast models had pointed to 400 to 600 millimetres of rain in places over four days. Expedition groups circulated urgent notices asking operators, climbers, guides, and mountain workers to take precautions. Many teams on other peaks dropped to villages. At Himlung, the people still in the kitchen tents were the ones whose job was to keep the camp standing.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The forecast: Heavy snow warnings for the high Himalaya ran from September 24 through September 28.
• The attempt to leave: Gurung said some Himlung workers tried to walk out during the storm and had to turn back.
• The tents: The 16 who died were caught inside camp fabric, not on a summit ridge.
• The clients: Foreign climbers had not yet reached base camp.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The order: Public files still do not show which company officer told staff to stay or go.
• The missing man: Pasang Nuri Sherpa has not been found, even after searchers opened his tent.

From inside the camp the upper slopes sat in cloud for three days. Witnesses said the slide arrived with very little noise. If you had been standing in that kitchen tent, the choice to stay would have looked like holding a job, not walking into a known death trap.

Fifteen Bodies, and One Worker Still Missing

Mingma Gyalje Sherpa, known as Mingma G, managing director of Imagine Nepal and an IFMGA guide, flew in with an eight-member NNMGA team. Two of his own kitchen staff were among the buried. This was his second mass-casualty avalanche of 2026; in late July he had worked the recovery on Broad Peak in Pakistan, where 10 climbers died, including Nirmal “Nims” Purja.

The avalanche was enormous. No one had believed that Himlung Base Camp could experience something of that scale.

Mingma Gyalje Sherpa, Imagine Nepal, Instagram, September 28

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The first team dug out four bodies in two days, then stopped. Snow stood 14 to 15 feet deep, Gurung said, and eight people on scene could not keep cutting. “Finding four bodies confirmed that we wouldn’t find any survivors,” he said. “So we decided to postpone the search until later.”

Families and Himalayan Holidays asked for a second try. Pasang Kaji Sherpa and Bikram Karki took a larger crew back and dug tunnels. They found three more bodies on September 30, taking the total to seven, then eight more on October 1. Assistant Chief District Officer Krishna Prasad Paudel said four came out in the morning and four in the afternoon. Helicopters from Prabhu Helicopter and Heli Kailash lifted the dead toward Phu, Chame, and Kathmandu. On October 2 the NNMGA said the second phase was done. Pasang Nuri Sherpa was still missing.

THE 16 BURIED ON SEPTEMBER 27

• The guides: Chhebi Bhote and Pasang Bhote, both from Sankhuwasabha.
• The kitchen majority: Fourteen cooks and camp staff, including men from Gorkha, Khotang, Rukum, Dolakha, and Okhaldhunga.
• The oldest recovered: Aash Gurung, 58, and Kalam Budha, 57.
• Still missing: Pasang Nuri Sherpa, 38, whose tent was found empty of him.

The people doing the digging were mountain guides looking for workers in the same trade. They were not searching for clients.

The Moderate Peak on the Nepal-Tibet Border

Himlung Himal is one of Nepal’s busier 7,000-meter hills, a four-hour walk from Phu village, used in October and November as a step toward Everest and other 8,000-meter climbs. A Japanese team led by Akio Koizumi made the first ascent on October 3, 1992. Commercial sheets grade it an Alpine PD+ non-technical 7,000-meter peak, with glacier travel, fixed ropes, and camps near 5,450 meters, 6,000 meters, and 6,350 meters. Autumn royalty is about $250 a climber, and guided packages often run $5,500 to $9,500.

Imagine Nepal tells clients that climbing from Camp II to the summit is “suitable for climbers of all grades.” 8K Expeditions calls the mountain an “isolated tranquil peak” and “a perfect blend of beauty, adventure, and learning experience for aspiring mountaineers.” The danger that killed 16 people was not the summit ridge. It was the kitchen line at 4,800 meters, on a peak sold as the gentle 7,000.

Operators Sent New Crews up the Trail

By October 5, eight days after the slide, expedition desks were already pushing the route back open. A rope-fixing crew that had been sent in about two weeks earlier was stuck in Koto after rain wrecked trails and bridges. A new team left Kathmandu on Saturday, October 3, to repair the walk from Koto toward the buried camp, the Expedition Operators Association Nepal said.

“Himlung expedition is still on,” Dawa Sherpa Lama, the association’s treasurer, said. “Snow conditions will always be unknown unless we go to the mountain and assess them. There is a strong possibility of running the expedition.” The government had issued 34 Himlung climbing permits as of that Monday.

Manaslu, by contrast, was finished for the autumn after snow swallowed its base camp. Nepal had sold 648 climbing permits this autumn across 20 peaks and 69 countries, 485 of them to men and 163 to women, and collected $1,571,659 in royalties, the Department of Tourism said. Himlung is a smaller line item than Manaslu. It is still a line item, and the people walking back up from Koto are again the staff who open the trail.

That is the pattern the death count makes hard to miss. Clients can be pulled to Kathmandu when a Bay of Bengal system is on the map. Kitchen crews are the ones who remain with the tents, and then the ones sent back to stitch the path for the next group.

A $15,000 Ceiling for Workers’ Families

The Juniper Fund, set up by American climbers David Morton and Melissa Arnot Reid, launched an online fund for Himlung avalanche families. The group exists to support families of lost Himalayan workers when a season’s wage disappears with a breadwinner. Its own briefing on the trade says families receive a maximum of $15,000 in government insurance, much of it absorbed by funeral costs, and that about 1,500 high-altitude mountain workers are hired in a given year.

The count of 16 Nepali workers dead in one slide matches the Khumbu Icefall disaster of April 18, 2014, when 16 Nepali route-fixers were killed on Everest while opening the path for foreign teams. Nepal’s first official offer then was about $400 per family for funeral costs, a figure so small that workers at base camp threatened to stop the season. Insurance floors later rose toward $15,000. Kitchen staff at a 7,000-meter training peak are still inside that same ceiling.

Gurung has already said he fears the year’s run of disasters will hit Nepal’s tourism books. Ten climbers died on Broad Peak in July. In August, floods along the Bhote Khosi and Trishuli killed 1,400 people and left 6,000 missing, many of them tied to the tourism workforce. In mid-September, four people died on Manaslu, two of them in an avalanche. “The most important thing climbers can do is to hire experienced, qualified manpower, even if it costs more,” Gurung said. “The mountains will always be there, but if we make poor decisions, our lives won’t.”

On Himlung, the poor-decision question is not a client’s summit bid. It is why the cooks were still in those tents, and why, with one man still under the snow, new crews are already walking in from Koto. Pasang Nuri Sherpa has not been found.