Manaslu Avalanche Kills Indian-German Climber and His Nepali Guide, Season Toll Hits Four

An avalanche buried a tent at Camp 3 on Mount Manaslu overnight Saturday into Sunday, killing an Indian-origin climber and his Nepali guide, according to Mohan Lamsal, managing director of expedition organiser Makalu Adventure. The deaths are the third and fourth fatalities on the world's eighth-highest mountain this autumn season.

The climber, identified by the Times of India as Dhrubajyoti Guha, 47, was a longtime resident near Frankfurt, Germany. Other outlets, including India Today, the National Herald, and The Shillong Times, rendered his name slightly differently, as Dhruba Jyoti Guha or Dhruva Jyoti Guha, but all identify the same person. His guide, also 47, is identified across most outlets as Fursemba Sherpa, an NMA-registered mountain guide from Nepal's Makalu region. Everest Chronicle spelled the name Phursemba Sherpa.

According to the Times of India, Guha graduated in mechanical engineering from Bengal Engineering College, Shibpur, in 2002, and had worked at ABB, IBM, Pfizer and Nestlé. He was also an accomplished ultra-endurance athlete with 32 UTMB World Series race finishes, some over 100 kilometers. Sherpa had summited Everest nine times and had also climbed Kangchenjunga, Lhotse, Cho Oyu and Manaslu, per the same report.

What happened on the mountain

According to Xinhua, a group of 14 people, seven foreign climbers and seven Nepali guides, set out from base camp. Twelve of them, including six other foreign climbers, stopped at Camp 2 on Saturday as weather worsened. Guha and Sherpa pushed on alone to Camp 3, at roughly 6,300 meters, aiming for an early summit attempt, Lamsal said.

"Six other climbers from the company who decided to retreat from Camp 2 were safe, but the two who made the attempt in a hurry despite the bad weather condition met with the accident," Lamsal told PTI, as reported by India Today and the National Herald.

Contact with the pair was lost overnight. Lamsal told the Times of India he was alerted around 11:30 a.m. Sunday when the two stopped responding, and immediately dispatched four Sherpa climbers to Camp 3. Rescuers dug through snow and found both climbers dead inside their tent, buried under nearly seven feet of it, Lamsal said.

Continuing snowfall and avalanche danger kept rescuers from bringing the bodies down immediately. Lamsal told the Times of India he ordered the rescue team to descend to lower camps rather than risk staying at Camp 3. According to India Today and the National Herald, the bodies were expected to be brought to base camp and flown to Kathmandu on Monday, weather permitting.

A rough season on Manaslu

Sunday's deaths bring the season's toll on Manaslu to four. Everest Chronicle and The Himalayan Times both report that Tashi Sherpa, a 20-year-old Nepali high-altitude worker, was found dead inside a tent at base camp on September 5. Singaporean climber Lau Wee Seng, 50, died around 6,000 meters on September 17 while descending from Camp 2, according to Everest Chronicle. The Himalayan Times described it as occurring during an acclimatization rotation.

The Himalayan Times also reported that a nine-member rope-fixing team opened the summit route on September 17, but that operation was itself disrupted by a separate avalanche near Camp 3 that swept away roughly 1,200 meters of fixed rope and equipment. Heavy snowfall that began Friday evening continued through Sunday, with up to 60 centimeters recorded at base camp, per the Times of India.

Nepal's Department of Tourism has issued 493 climbing permits for Manaslu this autumn, 366 to men and 127 to women, according to The Himalayan Times, with more than 500 Nepali guides supporting the expeditions. Everest Chronicle described the season as drawing a "record 480 foreign climbers," a figure close to but not identical to the official permit count.

Everest Chronicle noted a legitimate safety concern: if a short weather window forces hundreds of climbers toward the summit at once, congestion on fixed ropes and narrow sections could itself become dangerous, independent of avalanche risk. That's a standard worry on crowded 8,000-meter peaks and isn't unique to Manaslu this season.

Expedition organizers are eyeing a possible weather window between September 21 and 23, according to The Himalayan Times, and some climbers had already begun moving toward higher camps Saturday to try to catch it. But Everest Chronicle reported that meteorologists have warned of another system, a cyclone developing over the Bay of Bengal, expected to affect the region around September 23, which could again disrupt summit attempts.

Whether that window opens as forecast, and how many of the nearly 500 permit holders still on the mountain choose to push for the top despite this week's deaths, remains to be seen.