Death toll from the Himlung Himal base camp avalanche in Nepal reaches fifteen expedition workers

2 October 2026

An avalanche struck the base camp of Himlung Himal, a 7,126-metre peak in Nepal's Manang district near the border with China, early on Sunday 27 September 2026. Nepali expedition workers were pitching tents and fixing ropes for later expeditions when the snow swept through, burying the camp under more than four metres of snow. Rescuers recovered eight more bodies on Thursday 2 October 2026, taking the confirmed toll to fifteen, with one worker still missing. Tul Singh Gurung, president of the Nepal National Mountain Guide Association, said an eleven-person rescue team of experienced guides carried out the recovery and that the missing worker's chances of survival were slim, with operations likely to be concluded. The search was led by the expedition operator Mingma G Sherpa of Imagine Nepal Trek and Expedition, whose team flew from Kathmandu and was taken by helicopter to base camp from Chame. No foreign climbers had reached the site when the avalanche struck. The toll makes it one of Nepal's worst recent mountaineering disasters, after the 2014 Everest avalanche in which sixteen people died.