Manaslu's Trekking Trail Washed Out This September, So Climbers Are Flying to Base Camp Instead

I've walked into Samagaon on foot a dozen autumns running, past the mani walls and the barley terraces below Manaslu's south face. This year, most of the teams heading up for the climbing season didn't walk in at all. A flash flood tore out the main crossing near Namrung in the first week of September, and for climbers already on the ground, the fastest way to Base Camp stopped being the trail.

Autumn is Manaslu's real season. Unlike Everest, which peaks in spring, the world's eighth-highest mountain is mostly climbed in September and October, so the flood hit right as the first big expeditions were mobilising — about as disruptive a moment as there is on the calendar.

Namrung is a working village on the Budhi Gandaki, a day's walk below Samagaon, and the two suspension bridges the flood took out there were the only way in on foot. Local authorities in Chumnubri Rural Municipality told trekkers booked for the Larkya Pass crossing to hold off, and outfitters running climbing expeditions on 8,163m Manaslu switched almost overnight to helicopters, flying teams directly to Samagaon at 3,530m to start acclimatisation rather than lose days waiting for a foot crossing to reopen.

That's a genuinely different logistics chain than the one most teams budgeted for. Walking in from Soti Khola to Samagaon normally takes six or seven days and does double duty as acclimatisation; skip it by helicopter and a team arrives at altitude fast, with less time for the body to adjust before pushing higher toward Base Camp. Guides I've spoken with this week are adding extra rest days at Samagaon specifically to cover that gap.

A temporary wooden bridge went up at Namrung within days, built from local timber under the rural municipality rather than waiting on a contractor, and foot traffic on the lower trail has started moving again in short stretches. That isn't the same as the Manaslu Circuit being open end to end. The Larkya Pass side, which is what makes this a genuine circuit rather than an out-and-back to Base Camp, is the section still waiting on a proper rebuild, and that's exactly the stretch most trekking itineraries are built around.

What this means for trekkers

This is also worth knowing if you're choosing between routes this autumn. Both the Manaslu Circuit with Tsum Valley and the shorter 14-day Manaslu Circuit cross the same Namrung and Larkya Pass sections, so neither is a way around the closure, only a longer or shorter version of it. We're tracking the rebuild directly through contacts in Samagaon and will update our own departures the moment the pass side is confirmed clear, rather than repeat an open claim we haven't verified ourselves.

Source: Explorersweb, 'Manaslu Trail Flooded, Halting Treks and Forcing Climbers to Fly to Base Camp.'

Cover photo: Ben Tubby via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).