After two days of searching the slopes of Nepal’s Manaslu peak, the corpse of top American ski mountaineer Hilaree Nelson was found and brought down from the Himalayas on Wednesday.
Nelson and her hiking partner, Jim Morrison, successfully summited the world’s eighth-highest mountain on Monday, but Nelson disappeared while skiing down the mountain.
Morrison, in charge of the search, had flown out Wednesday morning to resume the search for her.
Jiban Ghimire of Shangri-La Nepal Trek, which organised the expedition, told AFP that the search team that went that morning via helicopter had located her body and was bringing her back.
According to Ghimire, the body has been transported to the mountain’s base camp and will be airlifted to Kathmandu soon.
Nelson, 49, is considered “the most prolific ski mountaineer of her generation” by her sponsor, The North Face.
Ten years ago, she made history by becoming the first woman to reach the top of both Everest and the neighbouring Lhotse peak in a single day.
When she went back to Lhotse in 2018, she created history by skiing down the mountain for the first time, earning her the title of National Geographic Adventurer of the Year.
Recently, Nelson said on Instagram that the “incessant rain” and perilous weather made her most recent ascent extremely difficult.
“I haven’t felt as sure-footed on Manaslu as I have on past adventures into the thin atmosphere of the high Himalaya,” Nelson wrote in a post on Thursday. “These past weeks have tested my resilience in new ways.”
Earlier, mountaineers and well-wishers had posted social media messages of encouragement, praying for Nelson’s safe return.
A North Face athlete, Fernanda Maciel, who is presently at the Manaslu base camp, posted on Instagram on Tuesday, “Let’s pray for Hilaree.”
There have been 404 paying climbers trying to reach the peak of Manaslu this year, and they have been met with constant rain and snow.
A dozen climbers were injured and later rescued after an avalanche occurred between Camps 3 and 4 on the 8,163-meter (26,781-foot) summit. The avalanche killed Nepali climber Anup Rai.
Nelson and Rai’s deaths are the first known to have occurred during Nepal’s autumn climbing season.
Eight of the world’s fourteen tallest peaks are located in Nepal, making mountain tourism a lucrative industry for the country. Since the coronavirus pandemic of 2020, the industry almost completely shut down, but last year the government reopened its peaks to mountaineers.
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