Renowned mountaineer and skier, Hilaree Nelson, has gone missing on Nepal’s Manaslu mountain on the same day that an avalanche killed a Nepali climber on the slopes, on Monday 27 September.
Picture: Samdesherpa/ Wikimedia Commons
Nelson was the first female climber to summit two 8 000 m peaks in a 24-hour period in 2012 and in 2018 she completed the first ski descent of “Dream Line,” the Lhotse Couloir summit in the Himalayas. She was also named one of “The Most 25 Adventurous Women of the Past 25 Years”.
She successfully summited Mount Manaslu, the world’s eighth highest peak a day before she was declared missing. She had an accident when skiing down the descent and appeared to fall down a 600m crevice on the slope.
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On the same day, an avalanche hit camps 3 and 4 on the summit, injuring 14 and killing a Nepalese climber, the first confirmed casualty of the autumn climbing season in Nepal.
Bad weather has hampered rescue efforts, preventing a helicopter from flying on Monday. The weather has fortunately cleared, and a search party is underway. Nelson’s husband managed to descend the summit safely and is part of the search party.
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