Seven Climbers From Five Countries Died in Under a Minute on a Nepal Peak Almost No One Had Heard Of

At around mid-morning on November 3, 2025, an avalanche broke loose above a climbing camp on Yalung Ri, a 5,630-metre peak in the Rolwaling valley of Nepal's Dolakha district. Fifteen climbers were on the slope, acclimatizing before an attempt on the neighbouring 6,334-metre Dolma Kang. Within seconds, the snow had buried the camp. By the time rescue teams could reach the site — delayed for hours by cloud, fresh snowfall and the terrain itself — seven people were dead.

Dolakha's deputy superintendent of police, Gyan Kumar Mahato, told reporters the slope gave rescue teams almost no chance: 'The avalanche buried everyone on the slope. We got the information late, and the difficult weather delayed immediate response.' Poor visibility kept helicopters grounded for most of the day, forcing search teams to move on foot through fresh snow — the same conditions that triggered the slide in the first place.

Yalung Ri is not a household name, even among experienced trekkers. It sits in the Rolwaling valley, a quieter climbing region wedged between the Everest and Langtang massifs, popular with acclimatization parties precisely because it sees less traffic than the standard training peaks near the Everest region. That relative obscurity is part of the story: Rolwaling gets less trail-grooming and less real-time avalanche reporting than the busier trekking corridors, leaving climbing parties with a thinner picture of overnight snow loading before they set out.

It was not an isolated tragedy that week, either. The same storm system — the remnants of Cyclone Montha — dumped unseasonably heavy snow across Nepal's high mountains between October 27 and November 2, 2025, closing both the Nepali and Chinese sides of the Everest region to tourism and forcing the rescue of more than 1,500 trekkers from routes including Tilicho Lake. The avalanche danger it created was blamed for a string of separate incidents on other peaks in the same window — a reminder that a single weather system can turn deadly across an entire mountain range, not just one summit.

What this means for trekkers

For most travellers, the safer and still spectacular way to stand inside this landscape is on foot, on a trail, with a licensed guide — not on an acclimatization slope above 5,600 metres. Our own guided treks through the Everest region are built around exactly that distinction: established routes, daily weather calls, and NMA-certified guides who turn parties back rather than push through a storm.

Source: The Kathmandu Post

Cover photo: Namal Siriwardana via Pexels (Pexels License).