Body of U.S. Mountaineer, Hilaree Nelson, Found After Avalanche in Nepal

Two weeks after returning to the United States, they climbed the Cassin Ridge, a highly technical route on Denali in Alaska, skiing down the mountain’s Messner face in what has been lauded as one of North America’s top ski mountaineering feats.

Mountaineering experts said that feat had redeemed Ms. Nelson in the eyes of the alpinist community after she led a failed North Face expedition in 2014 to climb Hkakabo Razi, Myanmar’s tallest mountain at 19,295 feet. Ms. Nelson and the other five climbers, who were making a documentary, nearly lost their lives after they ran out of food.

This week, Ms. Nelson and Mr. Morrison were pushing the limits again on Manaslu, regarded among mountain researchers and climbers as among the more dangerous of the world’s 14 8,000-meter peaks because of its propensity for avalanches.

On Monday, an avalanche lower down on Manaslu killed a Sherpa guide and injured 13 others on a separate climbing expedition.

Dozens of people have died over the hundreds of recorded attempts to reach Manaslu’s summit. In 2012, an avalanche on the mountain killed nine climbers.

Unlike Everest, where about a third of the deaths have been of Sherpa guides, most of the fatalities on Manaslu have been of foreign climbers.

A team of Japanese climbers first reached the summit in 1956. That ascent prompted many others to try their luck. After an avalanche in 1972 killed 15 members of a South Korean expedition, then one of the worst disasters in Himalayan climbing history, even veteran climbers showed reluctance to take on Manaslu, researchers said.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/28/world/asia/hilaree-nelson-death-avalanche.html