Seven people are known to have died and another four are missing following an avalanche on Mount Yalung Ri in the Rolwaling Himal Mountain Range (part of the Wider Himalayas) in east-central Nepal, close to the Tibetan border. The event happened at about 8.30 am local time on Monday 3 November 2025, shortly after the party had left a base camp at 4900 m to ascend the 5630 m peak. The known dead comprise two Nepalese mountain guides, plus five foreign tourists, two Italians, a Canadian, a German, and a Frenchman. Four more Nepalese mountain guides, and another two French tourists (one of whom is understood to have been the wife of the deceased French national) survived, but had to be airlifted to a hospital in Kathmandu to be treated for a variety of injuries. All four of the missing climbers are described as experienced Nepalese mountain guides, familiar with high-altitude conditions.
Avalanches are caused by the mechanical failure of snowpacks; essentially when the weight of the snow above a certain point exceeds the carrying capacity of the snow at that point to support its weight. This can happen for two reasons, because more snow falls upslope, causing the weight to rise, or because snow begins to melt downslope, causing the carrying capacity to fall. Avalanches may also be triggered by other events, such as Earthquakes or rockfalls. Contrary to what is often seen in films and on television, avalanches are not usually triggered by loud noises. Because snow forms layers, with each layer typically occurring due to a different snowfall, and having different physical properties, multiple avalanches can occur at the same spot, with the failure of a weaker layer losing to the loss of the snow above it, but other layers below left in place - to potentially fail later.
Yalung Ri is generally considered to be a 'safe' mountain for inexperienced climbers, and the team hit by the avalanche had been scaling it as part of a training exercise ahead of an attempt on the more challenging, 6334 m Dorma Kang. However, Nepal has been hit by particularly high snowfalls this autumn, linked to Cyclone Montha, which hit the coast of Andhra Pradesh, India, on Tuesday 28 October. This has led to a series of snowfall related events, and has led many high-altitude communities in Nepal to move to lower locations temporarily. One of the surviving tourists on Yalung Ri has complained that, despite calling for help, rescue workers did not reach them till some time after the avalanche, something which rescue workers have attributed to poor weather conditions, which prevented a helicopter from approaching the mountain.
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