Tragedy on skis
Mountaineer Hilaree Nelson was found dead on Wednesday September 28 on the south face of Mount Manaslu, Nepal, two days after she went missing. According to her companion Jim Morrison, the American triggered a small avalanche during her descent on skis from the summit, located at 8,163 meters, before being carried over 1,500 meters. A week earlier, the skier, the first woman to reach the summit of Everest in 24 hours in 2012, posted a post on her Instagram account explaining that she had given up on reaching the last camp due to rain. and humidity. The day of his disappearance, an avalanche on a camp located at 6,800 meters altitude killed a mountaineer and injured a dozen people, according to the Nepalese ministry of tourism. On October 2, another avalanche killed a climber and caused extensive material damage.
Crowd on the slopes
With more than 400 climbing permits granted against 171 last year, the eighth highest mountain in the world is breaking attendance records. Many mountaineers denounce a business attracting novices lured by the promise of an 8,000 meters presented as a health walk and reached with a battalion of Sherpas, an excessive use of oxygen and helicopters. A heresy for purists but above all a danger on these slopes among the most avalanche-prone in the Himalayas. “Selling Manaslu as easy is a lie that risks ending in an even bigger drama. Imagine a serac fall with 50 people clinging behind it,” fulminates Eric Bonnem, founder of the Secret Place agency, which offers expeditions in the Himalayas. Nepal has no quotas. This fall, the Manaslu brought in 368,000 euros to the government.
Change of crown
After years of controversy, the real summit of Manaslu is validated in September 2021 thanks to drone images filmed by Australian blogger Jackson Groves. We see a group displaying the flags where the fixed ropes stop, while Mingma G. Sherpa, a Nepalese mountaineer, deviates by another slope to go 30 meters higher on the real peak. In 2019, two studies already showed, with supporting photos, that the ascents stopped before the main summit. ” You could see that the summit was located at the end of an unstable ridge, impossible to reach by commercial expeditions. commented mountaineering journalist Thomas Vennin. As of this fall, the authoritative Himalayan Database grants ascent only to those who reach the true peak. This partly explains the boom in the number of candidates wanting to reach the top.
Japanese at the top
In the chain of the Himalayas, each nation has its privileged summit. While the French attempted the ascent of Annapurna, the English of Everest, the Italians of K2, the Japanese, they attacked Manaslu in the 1950s. After several expeditions, they reached the summit (the true) in 1956. On May 4, 1974, a Japanese expedition of thirteen women mountaineers led by General Kyoko Sato succeeded in the first female ascent of an 8,000 m. . His body is never found. In September 2012, the deadliest avalanche in the history of Manaslu destroyed the base camp of a group of Western mountaineers, killing eleven people, including five French. A dreaded scenario this year because of the heavy snowfall and the crowds present at the start.