These dramatic picture show the moment a huge avalanche swept down Mount Everest, killing at least 13 climbers.
The ice avalanche on Thursday was the world’s highest peak’s deadliest disaster, with 13 Nepalese sherpas confirmed dead and a further three still missing.
The photographs released today show the wall of snow and ice barrelling down the mountainside, at a perilous passage called the Khumbu Icefall – one of the most dangerous points on the mountain which is riddled with crevasses.
The sherpas caught in the avalanche were taking equipment from Base Camp to Camp 1.
The search for those who are still missing continued today with sherpas and helicopters, as some of the victims’ families spoke about their tragic loss.
Phinjum Sherpa, 17, was waiting for the body of her uncle Tenji who, like many other climbing guides, takes huge risks to earn up to $5,000 for a two-month expedition – around 10 times the average annual pay in Nepal.
She said: “He was the only bread winner in the family.
“I am shaken now the family has no one to support it. We have no one to take care of us.”
Around 100 climbers, including Westerners, had already passed through the Khumbu Icefall and gathered at the base camp ahead of their attempt to scale the mountain when the avalanche happened.
But Tim Rippel, of Peak Freaks Expeditions, wrote in a blog: “I sat and counted 13 helicopter lifts – 12 were dead bodies flying overhead suspended by a long line from a helicopter
“Everyone is shaken here at Base Camp. Some climbers are packing up and calling it quits, they want nothing to do with this. Reality has set in.”
It was first major avalanche of this year’s climbing season on Everest, which has been scaled by more than 4,000 climbers.
