Manaslu 2026: Deadly Avalanches and Heavy Snow Bring a Brutal Season to an Early End

The 2026 autumn climbing season on Manaslu looked set to be one of the busiest in the mountain’s history.

Instead, it ended with hundreds of climbers abandoning their summit hopes, repeated avalanches sweeping the upper mountain and four people losing their lives.

At 8,163 metres, Manaslu is the eighth-highest mountain in the world and has become one of the most popular 8,000-metre peaks for commercial expeditions. It is frequently chosen by climbers looking for experience at extreme altitude before attempting Mount Everest.

That popularity reached a new level this autumn.

Figures released by Nepal’s Department of Tourism on 1 October show 500 climbers across 43 teams had received permits for Manaslu, comfortably making it the dominant mountain of Nepal’s autumn season.

For a time, everything appeared to be falling into place.

Expedition teams arrived at Base Camp and began their acclimatisation rotations while a specialist Sherpa team worked its way up the mountain installing fixed ropes.

But the warning signs were already there.

Avalanches Disrupt the Route

Heavy snow repeatedly complicated work on the upper mountain.

On 16 September, an avalanche above Camp III forced the rope-fixing team to retreat and delayed completion of the summit route. Nobody was injured, but sections of rope were buried beneath the snow.

Despite those difficulties, the fixing team returned to the mountain and nine climbers eventually reached Manaslu’s 8,163-metre summit late on 17 September, completing the fixed route and seemingly opening the way for the hundreds of climbers waiting below.

Normally, that would have been the signal for the season’s main summit pushes to begin.

Instead, conditions rapidly deteriorated.

Fresh snow continued to accumulate and avalanche activity increased around the higher camps. Fixed lines that had only just been installed began disappearing beneath the snow.

The mountain was changing faster than expedition teams could respond.

Four Lives Lost

The season had already suffered its first fatality when Tashi Sherpa, a 20-year-old Nepali member of the mountain support team, died at Base Camp.

Then, on 17 September, Lau Wee Seng, a 50-year-old climber from Singapore, died while descending at around 6,000 metres following an acclimatisation rotation to Camp II.

The most serious incident followed just days later.

During the night of 19-20 September, an avalanche struck Camp III.

Dhruba Jyoti Guha, a German national of Indian origin, and Nepali guide Phursemba Sherpa were inside their tent when it was buried beneath approximately seven feet of snow.

A rescue team was sent to Camp III after contact with the pair was lost. Both were subsequently found dead inside the buried tent. Their deaths took the season’s toll on Manaslu to four.

Six other members of their expedition had chosen to retreat from Camp II as conditions worsened. Guha and Sherpa had continued towards Camp III as part of an early summit attempt.

The tragedy was another reminder of Manaslu’s long history of avalanche danger.

Despite being regarded as one of the more achievable 8,000-metre mountains by modern expedition standards, its slopes can accumulate enormous quantities of unstable snow.

In 2012, an avalanche destroyed Camp III and killed 11 people, while the mountain has seen numerous further avalanche incidents in the years since.

Summit Hopes Disappear

Following the Camp III deaths, conditions continued to worsen.

By 22 September, climbers and guides were retreating from the upper camps as deep snow made progress increasingly dangerous.

Even the rope-fixing team was unable to reopen parts of the route. Fixed ropes installed only days earlier had become buried and avalanche danger prevented crews from safely continuing towards Camp IV.

The first major summit window effectively disappeared without the hundreds of waiting expedition climbers getting their opportunity.

Forecasts then predicted yet another prolonged period of rain and heavy snowfall across the Nepal Himalaya.

Individual climbers began leaving, followed by entire expedition teams.

Several major operators suspended or completely abandoned their Manaslu expeditions, while experienced Italian climber Simone Moro was among those deciding the risk was no longer worth taking.

The decision was increasingly straightforward: even if the weather eventually cleared, huge amounts of fresh snow would need time to settle and much of the route would have to be dug out or re-established.

By the end of September, the remaining hopes had gone.

Reports from the mountain described Base Camp tents buried beneath snow and confirmed that the few climbers who had considered waiting for another opportunity had also abandoned their attempts.

A Record Season With Almost No Reward

That makes the statistics from Manaslu 2026 particularly striking.

Five hundred climbers had permits.

The route-fixing team succeeded in reaching the summit.

Yet almost immediately afterwards, the mountain effectively closed the door.

For the commercial teams that had travelled to Nepal expecting a summit attempt, there was no usable window in which hundreds of climbers could safely move through the higher camps.

8K Expeditions, one of the major operators on the mountain, subsequently confirmed that its season had ended without any summit success among its expedition clients, apart from members of the rope-fixing operation.

Manaslu’s popularity is unlikely to disappear.

Its normal route remains attractive to climbers seeking their first experience above 8,000 metres and to those preparing for a future attempt on Everest.

But the events of 2026 provide an uncomfortable reminder of the problem with describing any 8,000-metre mountain as an “easy” one.

Technical difficulty is only one part of Himalayan climbing.

Weather, snowfall and avalanche conditions can render years of training, weeks of acclimatisation and an entire mountain full of fixed ropes almost irrelevant.

On Manaslu this autumn, the mountain ultimately made the decision.