KATHMANDU, Nepal (AFP) – Rescuers were scouring the Himalayas by helicopter on Wednesday as they resumed the search for missing US ski mountaineer Hilaree Nelson on the slopes of Nepal’s Manaslu peak.
Nelson slipped and disappeared while skiing down the world’s eighth-highest mountain, after a successful summit with her partner Jim Morrison on Monday.
“Jim and others have left for an aerial search to find her. It is difficult to land or take off in the area,” Jiban Ghimire of Shangri-La Nepal Trek, which organized the expedition, told AFP.
Helicopters were unable to fly Monday and their search on Tuesday ended without success.
Nelson, 49, has had a career spanning two decades and is described as “the most prolific ski mountaineer of her generation” on the website of The North Face, her sponsor.
A decade ago, she became the first woman to summit both the highest mountain in the world, Everest, and the adjacent Lhotse peak within the span of 24 hours.
In 2018, she returned to Lhotse and made the first ski descent of the mountain, which earned her the National Geographic Adventurer of the Year award.
In an Instagram post last week, Nelson said her latest climb had been deeply challenging because of “incessant rain” and dangerous conditions.
“I haven’t felt as sure-footed on Manaslu as I have on past adventure into the thin atmosphere of the high Himalaya,” Nelson said in a post on Thursday.
“These past weeks have tested my resilience in new ways.”
– ‘Let’s pray for Hilaree’ –
Mountaineers and well-wishers shared messages of support on social media, hoping for Nelson’s safe return.
“Let’s pray for Hilaree,” fellow The North Face athlete Fernanda Maciel, currently at the Manaslu base camp, wrote on Instagram.
Constant rain and snow have been a challenge for the 404 paying climbers attempting to reach the summit of Manaslu this year.
On the same day as Nelson’s accident, an avalanche hit between Camps 3 and 4 on the 8,163-metre (26,781-foot) mountain, killing a Nepali climber and injuring a dozen others who were later rescued.
The death was the first confirmed casualty of the autumn climbing season in Nepal.
Nepal is home to eight of the world’s 14 highest peaks and foreign climbers that flock to its mountains are a major source of revenue for the country.
The industry was almost completely shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, but the country reopened its peaks to mountaineers last year.
© Agence France-Presse