Mountaineer Hilaree Nelson has been found dead after going missing while skiing at Manaslu in Samagaun, Nepal.
The world-renowned climber had been descending from the 27,000ft Manaslu mountain on skis on Monday when she is said to have crashed near the summit.
“The search team that left this morning on a helicopter spotted her body and is bringing her back,” Jiban Ghimire of Shangri-La Nepal Trek, which organised the expedition, told AFP.
Rescuers searching by helicopter located Ms Nelson's body on Wednesday after failing to find her on Monday and Tuesday, when bad weather hampered their search.
Mr Ghimire said that the body was brought to the peak’s base camp and will later be flown to Kathmandu. Also on Monday, an avalanche at a lower elevation on the same mountain killed a Nepalese man and injured several other climbers.
Hundreds of climbers and their local guides were attempting to reach the summit during Nepal's autumn climbing season.
On Monday, Ms Nelson, 49, slipped and appeared to fall into a 2,000ft (600m) gap in the ice, known as a crevasse, only 15 minutes after reaching the summit of the 26,781ft peak.
Ms Nelson had earlier in the day scaled the summit of Mount Manaslu — the world’s eigth tallest peak — in Nepal with her partner Jim Morrison.
The couple had taken photos with their three Sherpa guides, who used a satellite phone to share the good news with Jiban Ghimire, the outfitter that organized their expedition, reported The New York Times. After climbing the summit, they made their way down from the 8,163-metre (26,781-foot) peak.
Ms Nelson previously wrote on her Instagram page: “These past weeks have tested my resilience in new ways.
“The constant monsoon with its incessant rain and humidity has made me hopelessly homesick. I am challenged to find the peace and inspiration from the mountain when it’s been constantly shrouded in mist.
“Yesterday we ended our summit bid when we decided it was too dangerous to move from C3 to C4.
“We subsequently decided to ski down from C3 knowing that would mean carrying our skis all the way back up the mountain again if, big if here, we try again for a summit. It was the best thing we could’ve done.”
The mother of two is described by her sponsor, The North Face, as “the most prolific ski mountaineer of her generation”. The outdoor recreation brand issued a statement on Monday confirming the mountaineer was missing.
The statement added: “We are in touch with Hilaree’s family and supporting search and rescue efforts in every way we can.”
A decade ago, she became the first woman to summit both the highest mountain in the world, Everest, and the adjacent Lhotse peak within the span of 24 hours. In 2018, she returned to Lhotse and made the first ski descent of the mountain, which earned her the National Geographic Adventurer of the Year award.
