A world-renowned and highly experienced American ski mountaineer is missing after plunging off the side of a mountain in Nepal's Himalayas.
Hilaree Nelson, 49, descended from the 27,000ft Manaslu mountain on skis on Monday when she crashed just below the summit.
“The duo reached the true summit of Manaslu at 11.30am local time and about 15 minutes later I got a call from our staff at Base Camp that her ski blade skidded off and [she] fell off the other side of the peak,” Jiban Ghimire, managing director of Shangri-La Nepal Trek, the guiding company that was working with Nelson told Outside Magazine.
Also on Monday, an avalanche lower down the same mountain killed a Nepali climber and injured 14, according to Nepal’s tourism department.
Manaslu in Nepal is the world’s eighth highest mountain and the search for the mother of two from Telluride, Colorado, has been very tricky due to poor weather conditions with helicopters unable to fly.
“Summit success!” Ms Nelson and her partner Jim Morrison said crying and hugging with their three Sherpa guides as they reached the summit.
But as they started the descend on skis problems began to arise.
In a somewhat foreboding Instagram post, Ms Nelson wrote four days ago: "I haven’t felt as sure-footed on Manaslu as I have on past adventures into the thin atmosphere of the high Himalaya.
"These past weeks have tested my resilience in new ways. The constant monsoon with its incessant rain and humidity has made me hopelessly homesick."
North Face, the outdoor clothing brand that sponsors her, said on its website that witnesses had reported her falling into a crevasse 25m deep and disappearing.
Mr Morrison then skied safely to base camp and raised the alarm of his partner's disappearance.
It took him close to five hours to reach the base camp from the summit.
North Face describe her as “the most prolific ski mountaineer of her generation."
In 2012, Ms Nelson became the first woman to summit the highest mountain in the world, Everest, and its adjacent Lhotse within 24 hours.
And in 2017 the couple attempted the first ski descent of the 21,165-foot mountain known as the Peak of Evil which is a 3,000-foot, 60-degree ski descent with almost no visibility.
“Based on the briefings and difficult terrain, it’s really hard to say whether we will be able to rescue her [Ms Nelson] alive,” said Bigyan Koirala, a government tourism department official.
In 2019, an avalanche on Manaslu killed nine climbers.
