Two Climbers Died When an Avalanche Buried Their Tent at Manaslu Camp III, and It Is the Fourth Death This Autumn

Two climbers died on Manaslu this weekend when an avalanche struck their tent at Camp III, according to Nepal's Radio Nepal and the District Police Office in Gorkha. Their bodies were scheduled to be flown to Kathmandu by helicopter on Monday.

What happened

Guha and Phursemba Sherpa were on an expedition run by Makalu Adventure. They were at Camp III, at roughly 6,800 metres, on Saturday evening for an early summit attempt. Contact with the expedition team was lost the next day. Operator Mohan Lamsal told Adventure Mountain that the tent was struck by an avalanche and buried more than two metres deep. Four Sherpas were sent up to search and found both men dead, buried by around seven feet of snow inside the tent.

Reports describe Phursemba Sherpa as an experienced Makalu-region guide registered with the Nepal Mountaineering Association who had climbed Everest several times. The spelling of his name varies between outlets, so we have used the Radio Nepal version.

Most other teams had already abandoned their summit attempts because of heavy snowfall and avalanche danger, and retreated to base camp, Adventure Mountain reported.

A small slab, directly above the tents

The avalanche that killed them appears to have been small, and that is exactly what makes it a warning. Drone footage taken at 4:38pm on Sunday showed what the Everest Chronicle described as a small area of disturbed snow above Camp III — a broken slab rather than a large slide. Mingma Gyalje Sherpa, one of the most experienced guides on the mountain, told the paper it was “a small slab avalanche, but the media made it into bigger news”. The same area had already avalanched on 16 September.

A small slab is enough when a tent sits directly beneath it. Only two members of the team were at Camp III; the other six were lower on the mountain. Four Sherpa climbers dug the two men out. Their expedition organiser has since cancelled the expedition, and its foreign clients are returning by helicopter, the Everest Chronicle reported on 22 September.

Calls for caution from the mountain’s veterans

Some of the most experienced people on Manaslu are urging climbers to wait. The Italian mountaineer Simone Moro, on the mountain for the seventh time, turned back from Camp III on Saturday with more snow forecast, and urged the roughly 400 people at base camp to put safety first, according to ExplorersWeb. Reinhold Messner publicly backed him the next day.

“No amount of money — and no summit — is worth risking a life,” Messner wrote. The pressure runs the other way too: a storm system is forecast to bring heavy rain to Nepal from 24 September, which leaves climbers a short window and a strong temptation to use it. We follow how teams are responding in Manaslu climbers are racing a storm to the summit.

A hard season on a busy mountain

This autumn Nepal issued a record number of Manaslu permits. Radio Nepal puts it at 480 mountaineers, while another report cites 493, so treat the exact figure as approximate. Either way it is the most crowded Manaslu has been.

The earlier two deaths were reported as altitude-related, which is a different kind of risk from an avalanche in a tent. We covered the first foreign death in our report on the Singaporean climber.

What to do next

If you are planning the circuit later this autumn, the useful questions are about the trail, not the summit: what is the state of the path between Soti Khola and Samagaon, which alternative days are built in, and how would a helicopter evacuation work if a landslide closed the trail. Our 14-day Manaslu Circuit has spare days in the schedule for exactly this reason.

A note on the people in this story. Guides like Phursemba Sherpa carry much of the risk on every expedition, and they are often the people who go up to look when something goes wrong. Four Sherpas made that climb to Camp III on Sunday.

Sources: Radio Nepal (20 September 2026), Adventure Mountain (abenteuer-berg.de), Kenyans.co.ke, National Herald India.

Cover photo: Martin via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0). Section photos: Jenish Bajracharya via Pexels (Pexels licence); K S ARAVINDA Kashyap via Pexels (Pexels licence); Tito Zzzz via Pexels (Pexels licence); Sagar Gnawali via Pexels (Pexels licence); Abdul Kayum via Pexels (Pexels licence). Section photos: Jenish Bajracharya via Pexels (Pexels licence); fish socks via Pexels (Pexels licence); Tito Zzzz via Pexels (Pexels licence); Sagar Gnawali via Pexels (Pexels licence); Abdul Kayum via Pexels (Pexels licence).