Hundreds of people are still being evacuated from Mount Everest after a freak blizzard trapped climbers at a campsite in Tibet over the weekend.
Late on Sunday, about 350 hikers had reached a meeting point in Tingri, Tibet, and rescuers were in contact with another 200, reported China’s state broadcaster CCTV. One person has died.
There was no immediate update on the rescue mission on Monday, The Associated Press said.
Hikers, whose path was blocked by heavy snowfall that began on Friday, were trapped at an elevation of more than 4,900 metres (16,000 feet), according to a report from Chinese digital news site Jimu News.
Mount Everest is about 8,850 metres tall.
A hiker who made it down the mountain before the snowfall told Jimu News that people still on the mountain reported that the snow was one metre deep and had buried tents.
Hundreds of locals headed up the mountain Sunday to clear a path so that trapped climbers could come down, the Jimu report said.
According to the AP, footage filmed by a local villager showed a long line of rescuers, accompanied by horses and oxen, following a winding path carved through deep snow.
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Those still trapped are in contact with authorities, the BBC says.
The freak blizzard struck during China’s Golden Week holiday, which marks the start of a busy tourist season on Everest, typically characterized by clear skies and comfortable temperatures at this time of year.
Nature photographer Dong Shuchang told the BBC that he was one of hundreds of tourists to visit Everest over the holiday season. He said he intended to capture the mountain from Tibet, but the snowstorm hit shortly after his trek began, he told the British outlet.
“The lightning and thunderstorms [on Saturday] would not stop. The snowfall was so heavy I could hardly sleep,” Dong said, adding that his group climbed to an elevation of 4,600 metres before turning around.
“Our windbreakers and raincoats were no match for the snow. We were all drenched,” Dong said, adding that signs of hypothermia were showing in several members of the group he was with.
Bright yellow tents seen at the south base camp on Mount Everest in Nepal.
Elena Slepitskaya/Getty Images
Dong said he had been to the Himalayas on more than a dozen occasions, but that he had never faced such extreme conditions as the ones he those on the weekend.
“Everyone was moving slowly. The route was very slippery. I kept falling because of the ice,” he told the BBC.
Another woman told the outlet that her husband, an experienced hiker who had been stranded in the snowstorm, was making his way down the mountain, but progress was slow due to the amount of snow that had fallen.
“Even for rescuers, it’s not easy,” the woman, who did not give her name, said. “They need to clear snow to make a path.
“I hope my husband’s team reaches [the rescue team] safely.”
She said her husband had barely slept because he was scared of his tent collapsing in the snow.
The mountain range has recently been affected by a severe bout of extreme weather.
Heavy rains this week left more than 40 Nepalese villagers dead after landslides swept them away. In January, an earthquake killed at least 126 people in the same area.
— With files from The Associated Press
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
