An avalanche on Nepal's Mount Himlung killed at least four people and left a dozen missing as rescue teams searched Monday amid severe weather warnings across the country.
Rescue crews worked Monday to find survivors after an avalanche tore through a base camp on Mount Himlung, a 23,380-foot peak in north-central Nepal, CBS News reported.
At least four people died. A dozen more remained unaccounted for. Helicopters brought 10 people down safely from the mountain.
All of those killed or missing were Nepali nationals. They had been at the base camp preparing for foreign clients as the autumn climbing season got underway this month.
Two bodies were found Sunday, the day the avalanche hit. Rescuers recovered two more bodies Monday.
The remains of the two found Sunday were airlifted to Kathmandu airport and taken to Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital.
The mountain sits in Manang district. Heavy rainfall over the weekend had already brought flooding and landslides to the same district, the local district administration office said.
The avalanche struck as Nepal's government warned of severe weather across the Himalayan nation.
The Himlung disaster did not stand alone. Nepal's disaster management agency said 21 other people were killed and five more went missing in different parts of the country between Thursday and Sunday.
That toll came on top of a far larger catastrophe earlier in the year. August flooding swept away several villages, leaving more than 1,400 people dead and nearly 6,000 missing.
In early September, rescuers still pulled survivors from that disaster's wreckage. One man was found alive inside a 738-foot hydropower tunnel. A woman was found alive in a house in the town of Nuwakot, both of them 10 days after the floods.
Those earlier rescues showed how long recovery can drag on when water and earth turn violent in the mountains. Monday's search on Himlung fit the same hard pattern: crews in the air, bodies coming down, and families still waiting on names that had not yet been released.
Autumn is prime season for Himalayan expeditions. Base camps fill with staff who stage gear and routes for foreign climbers willing to pay for a shot at high peaks.
Himlung's camp became a trap instead. The avalanche hit people on the ground, not tourists on a summit push. The dead and missing were local workers doing the prep work that makes those climbs possible.
No personal names of the victims had been released in the initial reporting. No expedition operator was identified. Officials gave counts, not biographies.
What was clear was the sequence. Severe weather warnings went out nationwide. Rain hammered Manang district. Floods and landslides followed. Then the snow came down the mountain and buried a camp full of people getting ready for paying clients.
Helicopters handled both mercy and recovery, lifting out the 10 who lived and ferrying the dead toward Kathmandu for identification and whatever reckoning comes next for their families.
Mountain work has always carried risk. Doing that work under a blanket of official severe-weather warnings raises the cost in plain sight. When the snowpack lets go, the first bill is paid by the crew on the ground.
Nature does not grade on a curve, and neither should anyone who sends workers up a 23,000-foot peak while the government is warning the whole country to watch the sky.
