Nepal's Manaslu, the eighth-highest mountain in the world and the star attraction of the autumn Himalaya season, has hit turbulence before anyone has even reached the top. An avalanche swept down a snow slope just below Camp 4, burying a stretch of freshly fixed ropes hours before the rope-fixing team was due to pass through. Luckily, filmmaker Dandu Sherpa caught the slide on camera from Camp 4 at around 1:30 pm, and no one was hurt.
The route disruption matters because everything on the mountain was poised for a summit push. After more than a week of snowfall, the rope-fixing crew appointed by the Expedition Operators' Association of Nepal had to halt their plan. A second Sherpa team has since climbed up to Camp 3 carrying 1,300 metres of replacement rope, with the aim of reaching the summit imminently and reopening the way for everyone else.
Even before the avalanche, the season was showing strain. Manaslu is more crowded than ever: 466 foreign climbers hold permits this autumn, and with more than 500 local guides and support staff, over 1,000 people are on the mountain. The first traffic jams have already appeared on the fixed lines between Camp 1 and Camp 2, particularly at the serac section, as hundreds rotated through Camp 3 for acclimatisation. Halung Dorchi Sherpa of Summit Force warns that permit numbers may top 500, calling that enormous pressure for the narrow true summit. He has even raised the idea of climbers stopping at the false summit, or at least operators coordinating their summit dates to spread out the flow, though he admits that is hard when everyone is racing the same short weather window.
That window looks set for September 21-23, and the biggest operators, Seven Summit Treks and 14 Peaks Expeditions, plan to send their clients up during it. Expect queues on the steep final ridge to the genuine top, a passage that in recent years many climbers have skipped, claiming the false summit instead.
There has been tragedy too. A 50-year-old Singaporean climber, Lau Wee Seng, died of suspected altitude sickness near 6,000 metres while descending from Camp 2 during acclimatisation. He is the second fatality of the autumn, following Tashi Sherpa, a 20-year-old porter found dead in his tent at Base Camp the previous week.
For anyone with a Manaslu expedition booked, the takeaways are sobering. Shorter, cost-optimised itineraries funnel everyone into the same few good-weather days, so ask your operator how they handle crowding and whether their itineraries reach the true summit. The season will go on, but patience on the ropes looks unavoidable this year.