April 25--A powerful earthquake in Nepal on Saturday triggered an avalanche above the most popular Mount Everest base camp at the height of climbing season, killing at least 10 people and stranding others at the perilous Khumbu Icefall, Nepalese officials and climbers reported.
"Running for life from my tent," Romanian climber Alex Gavan said via Twitter, describing the avalanche as huge.
Climber Daniel Mazur tweeted from Everest Base Camp that it had been "severely damaged" and that his team was trapped. "Please pray for everyone," he said.
"Aftershock!" Mazur tweeted moments later. "#Everest team is in camp 1, hanging on. #Icefall route destroyed."
Ten bodies had been recovered from the avalanche and an unknown number of other climbers were still unaccounted for after their tents were inundated, Gyanendra Shrestha of the Nepal Tourism Ministry's mountaineering department told news agencies in Katmandu, the Nepalese capital.
There were at least 1,200 people at the base camp, including cooks, porters and guides, the Ekantipur website reported from Katmandu.
The Khumbu Icefall is the forward edge of a glacier just above the base camp that a year ago sheared off a wall of snow and ice, killing 16 Nepalese guides. The April 18, 2014, disaster was one of the worst in the modern history of the mountain that has been scaled by more than 4,000 people since New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay first reached the summit in 1953.
The tourism ministry was struggling to assess the damage and casualties on the climbing routes of the world's highest mountain because communications were knocked out in much of Katmandu, said Mohan Krishna Sapkota, a senior ministry official.
"The trekkers are scattered all around the base camp and some had even trekked further up," Sapkota said. "It is almost impossible to get in touch with anyone."
The avalanche struck between the base camp and the icefall on the most traveled route to the 29,035-foot summit, Ang Tshering of the Nepal Mountaineering Assn. reported.
Other expeditions took to social media to report that they were safe.
"Walking into Ebc was coincidentally filming when the avalanche struck," Danish climber Jelle Veyt wrote in his Twitter post that included images from the avalanche scene. "Our team is safe, waiting for news of others."
The Times of India quoted Saroj Kumari, the national police force officer attempting to be the first woman from the agency to reach Everest's summit, as saying her five-person team had escaped injury and found safe refuge.
