Chinese rescuers on Monday evacuated hundreds of hikers who remained on the eastern slopes of Mount Everest, the eastern slope of the world’s finest mountain, after heavy snow was covered in campsites over the weekend.
Already nearly 350 hikers have moved safely at the rendezvous point in the small town of Kudan, with rescuers in contact with more than 200 remaining hikers “gradually arriving at the rendezvous point,” according to state broadcaster CCTV.
Local news outlets initially reported that nearly 1,000 people were affected by the blizzard. Local rescue personnel were unable to immediately comment on the inconsistency.
No casualties have been reported, local media said.
“On about a third of the trekking, the rain continued to get heavy,” Chen Ge-shuan, a 28-year-old astrophotography who began climbing on Saturday afternoon but decided to retreat on Sunday, told NBC News in an online video interview.
“Later, it turned into a sleet and eventually a full-on blizzard.”
The social media videos shown by NBC News confirmed social media videos showed some lined up in the snowstorm for violating vision, while others hikers robbed the snow from their tents in the snowstorm.
According to a report by Jimu News, the hiker was trapped near 16,000 feet.
Mount Everest, 29,000 feet, is considered the highest mountain in the world, measured from sea level.
The unusually heavy snowfall began on Friday night and continued until Saturday in Gama Valley in Tinli County, Tibet’s autonomous region.
Within hours, several members of Chen’s team had shown signs of mild hypothermia and cold stress, she said. By Saturday night, the storm had intensified with lightning nearly every minute.
“It was a nervous night,” she said. “When I woke up this morning, the snow was very deep, about a metre, reaching my thighs.”
The group decided to retreat and arrived at the foot of the mountain on a Sunday evening. Nearby Nepal was hit by heavy rain, which killed at least 44 people from landslides and floods.
According to CCTV, there was a weekly national day in China and a weekly public holiday, including the Midwest Festival on Monday, resulting in a severe weather event as more than 299 million people were expected to travel to the region on Sunday.
Ticket sales and entry to the Everest Scenic area were suspended late Saturday, according to a notification on the official WeChat account of the local Tinli County Tourist Company.
Mount Everest, known as Mount Qomolangma in Chinese, stretches along the border between Tibet and Nepal, with climbers from both countries trying to expand their peak along different slopes.
Nepal has seen a boom in tourism and large investments related to Everest, but Tibetan is particularly far away.
Reuters and Peter Guo contributed.
