At the end of September 2012, the extreme sports community received the sad news of a disastrous avalanche on the 8156-metre-high Manaslu, the eighth highest mountain in the world. Due to mountain closures in Tibet, numerous expeditions, some of them with well-known names such as Greg Hill, Glen Plake, Benedikt Böhm and many more, attempted the difficult eight-thousander until an avalanche hit camp three.
More than a dozen climbers, including a German and well-known extreme skier, did not survive the accident. Due to the media presence of the famous mountaineers, the accident is amazingly well documented. Some of the athletes in particular provide impressive insights into their sad experiences.
Video compilation of the Dynafit/Gore-Tex team
Avalanche disaster on Manaslu from Outdoor Times on Vimeo.
Excerpts from Greg Hill's moving blog
"Disaster Strikes on ManasluIn all mountain travel there is an assumed risk, one that we take since we are searching for adventure. The perception of this risk usually changes with the objective, quite often becoming clouded as the objectives get personally more important.I am not really even sure where to start. I will begin part way through our expedition. (...)For 10 days we weathered rain and snow, day after day of it. So the upper mountain was getting loaded with the weight of new snow. When it finally cleared it was obvious that most of the mountain had gone through many avalanche cycles. There were crown lines, and avalanche debris everywhere. Though the slopes that we needed to climb had not slid. We waited a few more days for the snow to stabilize some more before venturing onto them."Picture: Crowds of people climbingPicture: The avalanche at a glance"The blast of wind from the avalanche sent our tents flapping and soon enough we could hear people yelling for each other. Lights from headlamps accompanied many voices and we knew that disaster had struck. (...)Skinning up, our headlamps lit up a down boot, and we knew that the tents had been hit. Tents, clothes, sleeping bags, lone boots, everything lay partially buried everywhere. Within minutes we were helping people get warm and digging others out of the snow. It was hard to tell how many people where involved so we focused on those that where above the snow. Knowing that those who were buried had very little chance of surviving.Immediately our group started helping out, digging out those that we could. (...)
At one point I sat and openly cried for those that had died. (...)
The line was so thin today, many survived by pure luck,while their friends passed away. With adventure comes risk. But I wonder how many people who died yesterday fully understood the personal risk they were taking. Obsessed with the possibility of climbing one of the world's highest mountains, our vision becomes clouded and we perceive the risk we want instead of the reality of what is around us."
Read the full blog post at: www.greghill.ca
Interview with Glen Plake
Interview with Glen Plake, whose partner Remy Lecluse (his tent neighbor) and Greg Costa did not survive the avalanche, talks to CNN about his near-death experience.