A Canadian survivor of a deadly avalanche that barrelled down on a group of Quebeckers trekking in Nepal says she is lucky to be alive after they were swept in a torrent of rocks and snow clumps the size of basketballs.
Four Canadians are missing and feared dead after a series of blizzards and avalanches killed as many as 27 people in the areas around the Annapurna range this week. Autumn is normally high season for trekking in Nepal but heavy rain and snowfall have lashed the region after tropical Cyclone Hudhud struck the Indian subcontinent.
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Murat Yukselir / The Globe and Mail
Sonia Lévesque was in a group of six hikers who had booked through a Montreal tour operator, Terra Ultima. On Tuesday, they were hiking near Phu, in the Manang district.
They were in a small trail, at about 4,000-metre altitude, Ms. Lévesque told Radio-Canada in a phone interview from Kathmandu on Thursday morning.
The group had seen and heard smaller avalanches previously 'but this one really took us by surprise. With the tuques and coats we couldn't hear very well. It took a fraction of second,' Ms. Lévesque said.
The group was stretched out on the trail but the avalanche was very broad, she said. 'It happened very quickly.'
She was swept off and carried away for about 10 metres. She found herself buried to the waist, her legs squeezed tightly by the debris. The snow was wet and sticky, balled up in clumps a foot-wide and mixed with rocks.
'We fought for our lives. We were lucky,' she said of the survivors.
Three from her group were missing: their tour guide, a 55-year-old Montreal woman, and two female travellers, a 59-year-old from a Montreal suburb and a 33-year-old from Quebec City.
La Presse identified the guide as Sylvie Marois. She is a freelance outdoors guide and teaches a class training adventure-tourism guides at Montreal's St-Laurent college.
The missing woman from Quebec City is Geneviève Adam, a nurse, her uncle, François, told The Globe and Mail.
Ms. Lévesque said the group's survivors tried to look for the three missing women but had little success because there was up to 20 metres of snow piled up at the bottom of the avalanche.
Cold and wet, they walked back for about an hour to shelter in a cabin.
There was a group of Dutch trekkers at the cabin who had remained there after deciding not to proceed further. The Dutch gave them dry clothes and hot soup.
The snow kept falling, but the next day, it warmed up and they could hear more avalanches. They couldn't either go further into the trail or back.
Ms. Lévesque said her group's Nepalese guide went back to the scene of the avalanche to take photos so that it would be easier later to locate the site The Nepalese guide also contacted rescue officials and a helicopter eventually airlifted them away.
Now resting in the capital, Kathmandu, Ms. Lévesque said she did not want to leave immediately because the group wanted to stay and comfort one of the survivors, whose wife was among the missing.
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Posted by Unknown on Thursday, October 16, 2014 - Rating: 4.5
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