Nepalese Army members pull bodies of trekkers from the Thorung La mountain pass on the Annapurna Circuit, near Muktinath, in Mustang district on Thursday. Search has resumed for missing trekkers in a snowstorm triggered by Cyclone Hudhud in India that brought unexpected rainfall and storms two days earlier.
AFP/Kathmandu
Workers using helicopters and battling waist-deep snow rescued over 150 people including foreign trekkers left stranded in Nepal's Himalayas on Thursday, two days after a major snowstorm that triggered avalanches and killed more than 30 people.
Local officials said 23 bodies have been found on the popular Annapurna circuit trekking route, while five climbers who were staying at a mountain base camp when it was hit by an avalanche could not be found and were presumed dead.
Three Nepalese yak herders were also killed when severe weather triggered by the tail end of Cyclone Hudhud hit the picturesque Annapurna region in central Nepal.
But the majority of victims were tourists - among them Canadians, Israelis and Indians - and their guides and porters.
"We have made a lot of progress today: we have airlifted 154 people to safety, including 76 foreigners," said Ganesh Rai, the police official in charge of the rescue effort.
As dusk fell, strong winds picked up in the affected districts of Manang and Mustang, making it too risky for pilots to continue scanning the snow-blanketed slopes for signs of victims, officials said.
Thousands of people head to the Annapurna region every October, when weather conditions are usually clear and cool, and 168 foreign tourists were registered to hike in the affected districts this week.
Israelis Yakov Megreli and Maya Ora were 10 days into their trek when the storm hit, forcing them to stop overnight at a freezing teashop.
"We tried not to sleep so that we wouldn't get hypothermia. It was very frightening, awful," Megreli, 24, told AFP.
"All the time I thought I was going to die," said Ora, 21, before Nepalese troops found the pair and brought them to a military hospital in Kathmandu to be treated for frostbite.
A US hiker told AFP he sought refuge at a Manang guesthouse, along with 21 tourists and four Nepalese guides and porters, after finding himself in the grip of the snowstorm.
"We left our hotel in Thorong Phedi at 0630 am on Tuesday, with hotel staff telling us it was totally safe to go up," said Max Weinstein, 18, by phone from the guesthouse in Thorong High Camp, at an altitude of 4800 metres.
As he and a 66-year-old woman he was trekking with hiked on, visibility worsened as more and more snow began to come down.
"The snow kept getting heavier, we couldn't see anything, and soon these big rocks began falling down," he said.
Weinstein said he would never have headed out on Tuesday if he had been given prior warnings.
"Whoever is in charge of communicating weather warnings to trekkers has been totally negligent," he said.
Keshav Pandey, vice president of the Trekking Agencies' Association of Nepal (TAAN), an industry body, said the Himalayan nation has no warning systems in place to inform trekkers of severe weather conditions.
"We don't expect this kind of storm in October, but we also have no warning system to help us prepare for it," Pandey said.
Rescuers were searching for two Slovakian mountaineers and three Nepalese guides who went missing after an avalanche struck teams stationed at the base camp of 8,167-metre Mount Dhaulagiri on Tuesday night.
They have retrieved the bodies of three Israelis, three Poles, one Vietnamese, one Slovak and seven Nepalese, while the bodies of four Canadians and three Indians remain buried in snow.
The nationality of three others found was unknown, he said.
