Nepal Trekkers Recall Hours Trapped by Heavy Snow, ‘Helicopter’ Winds

Nepal Trekkers Recall Hours Trapped by Heavy Snow, ‘Helicopter’ Winds

 

Dozens Remain Missing Days After Freak Storm in Himalayas

 

By Krishna Pokharel in the Wall Street Journal

KATMANDU, Nepal— Richard Rémy and eight Canadians who’d entrusted their lives to him arrived here late Friday, days after they were trapped by a massive snowstorm in the Himalayas that officials estimate left at least 29 people dead. Dozens are still missing.

The 48-year-old guide, eight trekkers and more than 15 Nepali support staff were headed toward the Saribung pass, a remote mountain route 19,000 feet above sea level, when light snow started to fall Monday evening.

The group awoke around midnight to the sound of wind and heavy snow whipping their tents. The noise, Mr. Rémy says, was “like being in a helicopter.”

‘I said to people at the time: ‘If you believe in something, now it’s time to talk to him.’’

For the next 30 hours or so, the trekkers nestled in their sleeping bags, ate Clif Bars and used their bodies to push the rapidly accumulating snow away from the sides of their tents so they wouldn’t cave in. “We had books, but no one read anything,” said Stéphane Sansfaçon, 56 years old. “We mainly listened.”

As rescue efforts continued in northern Nepal on Friday, groups of weary adventurers made their way down to the capital and were greeted by balmy weather that must have seemed impossible to them just a few days earlier.

More than 65 people were rescued by helicopter Friday in the districts on either side of Thorong La pass, nearly 18,000 feet above sea level on a popular hiking route, authorities said. Sagar Pandey, general secretary of the Trekking Agencies’ Association of Nepal, said 40 to 50 people were still believed to be missing.

As trekkers returned to Katmandu, some travel agencies complained that they hadn’t been adequately warned about the storm—the remnants of a cyclone that hit India last weekend and lashed northern Nepal.

Iswari Paudel, managing director of Himalayan Guides Nepal, a Katmandu-based trekking company that had two Australian clients near the pass when snow started to fall, said he has never received any communication from the government about possible weather hazards.

Mr. Paudel said he first heard about the blizzard Wednesday morning when he read about it online. “We don’t expect anything from the government,” Mr. Paudel said. “They do nothing for us.”

Surya Prasad Silwal, a secretary at Nepal’s ministry of home affairs, said the government did everything it could to warn visitors. “We were forecasting from the radio about the effect of Cyclone Hudhud,” Mr. Silwal said. “Despite that, people went.”

Still, he said, no one had anticipated that the cyclone would produce snow, and not just rain, in parts of Nepal. The area hadn’t seen such heavy snowstorms in autumn in five or six decades, Mr. Silwal said. “It was totally unexpected.”

Even seasoned trekkers like Mr. Rémy and his group said this week’s blizzard descended upon them like nothing they’d ever seen. Mr. Rémy said that when snow started falling, he expected it wouldn’t be a big deal.

He’d been to Nepal around 20 times before; early October was usually clear. Suddenly snowed in, the Canadians were in close quarters but remember feeling profoundly alone as they waited out the storm. Mr. Sansfaçon, a judge in Montreal, had brought along a copy of Gabriel García Márquez ’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude.”

“I’m not Buddhist or Christian,” Mr. Rémy says. “But I said to people at the time: ‘If you believe in something, now it’s time to talk to him.’ ”

Christine Chénard, 50, says she felt relief Wednesday morning when the winds had subsided and the weather was clear again. But, she said, “It wasn’t the sun that I noticed. It was the silence.”