Two Sonoma County climbers survive avalanche on Mount Everest

Two Sonoma County residents attempting to ascend Mount Everest survived an avalanche unleashed by a powerful earthquake in Nepal on Saturday that slammed into a crowded mountaineering camp at the base of the peak, killing at least 17 climbers and guides.

Scott Holder, a Santa Rosa financial adviser, and Jon Reiter, a contractor from Kenwood making his third attempt at the summit, were not caught in the deadly avalanche, which injured at least 61.

“He said that the ground shook for a very long time and that avalanches were happening one right after another on the mountain,” Reiter’s wife, Susan, posted on his blog after speaking with her husband on a satellite phone. “He said that most of the base camp was damaged.”

About 800 people were staying at the Everest base camp, climbing guide Ang Sherpa told the New York Times. A helicopter rescue operation to the base camp was planned for this morning, he said, when a full tally of the dead and injured should become available.

Numerous climbers may now be cut off on routes leading to the top of the world’s highest peak.

The avalanches were triggered by a magnitude-7.8 earthquake northwest of Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, causing devastation throughout the mountainous nation. More than 1,900 people perished in the quake, and the death toll was expected to rise.

The avalanche began on Mount Kumori, a 22,966-foot-high mountain just a few miles from Everest, gathering strength as it headed toward the base camp where climbing expeditions have been preparing to make their summit attempts in the coming weeks, said Ang Tshering of the Nepal Mountaineering Association.

The avalanche - or series of avalanches, hidden in a massive white cloud - plowed into the sprawling seasonal village of climbers, guides and porters, flattening at least 30 tents, Tshering said. With communication very limited at Everest, it was not immediately clear how many of those injured and killed were at base camp, and how many were elsewhere on the mountain.

Survivors reached over Internet messaging services, however, described a scene of terror as the snow and ice roared through the nearby Khumbu Icefall and into base camp.

Azim Afif, the 27-year-old leader of a climbing team from University of Technology Malaysia, said in an interview on the service WhatsApp that his group was in a meal tent waiting for lunch when suddenly the table and everything around them began shaking.

When they ran outside, they saw “a wall of ice coming towards us,” and heard the cries of Sherpa guides shouting for people to run for their lives, he wrote. “We just think to find a place to hide and save our life.”

Some climbers were buried by the snow, and others were hit by flying rocks, Reiter told his wife. In the aftermath, Reiter was pressed into action as a medical aide by a doctor at base camp, working in two-hour shifts throughout the night. He was given medicines to administer to the injured climbers and instructed to write down their names in case they succumbed. “The doctor said, ‘Don’t worry, you are just comforting these people. Most of them are not going to survive,’?” Susan Reiter said in an interview late Saturday.

Holder escaped the carnage when he was forced off the mountain one day before the quake. He was at 21,000 feet on Everest, at Camp 2, when a severe head cold forced him to descend. Holder was in a teahouse in Lukla, a town of 3,000, when the shaker hit.

“I feel very lucky, very blessed,” Holder said in a telephone interview Saturday from Lukla, a small airport town at 9,383 feet. “God definitely had his hand in my survival. My cold took me out of the danger zone. I guess you could say God gave me a cold.”

The terrifying power of the quake was immediately recognizable, he said.

“I’m a California boy, but that scared me,” said Holder, who works as a financial adviser at Edward Jones. “It was 42 seconds long, 42 long seconds. To me there are two types of earthquakes. One jolts you out of bed. The other one feels like an ocean wave. This was an ocean wave.”

Not injured, Holder, 49, is hoping to fly out of Lukla on Monday to Kathmandu but is unsure, given that the airport in the Nepalese capital is closed.

The quake hit at 11:56 a.m. local time (12:41 a.m. PDT) at Lamjung, about 50?miles northwest of Kathmandu, at the height of the climbing season on Everest.

Dan Fredinburg, a Google executive who described himself as an adventurer, was among the dead, Google confirmed. Three other Google employees hiking Mount Everest were safe.

The first step for survivors is to deal with the devastation at base camp, said Gordon Janow, the director of programs for the Washington-based guiding outfit Alpine Ascents International, whose team came through the avalanche unscathed.

Next, they will try to create new routes to help climbers stuck above the treacherous Khumbu Icefall, which is located just above base camp and is a key route up the lower part of Everest.

“Everybody’s pretty much in rescue mode, but this is different from some independent climbing accident where people can be rescued and taken somewhere else,” Janow said. “I don’t know where somewhere else is.”

The quake struck just over a year after the deadliest avalanche on record hit Everest, killing 16 Sherpa guides on April 18, 2014.

Reiter was on the mountain during the 2014 avalanche. He returned this spring to complete his goal of climbing the highest peak on each continent.

More than 4,000 climbers have scaled the 29,035-foot summit since 1953, when it was first conquered by New Zealand climber Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay. The numbers have skyrocketed in recent years, with more than 800 climbers during the 2013 spring season.

Following the 2014 disaster, guides accused Nepal’s government of not doing enough for them despite making millions in permit fees from Western mountaineers who attempt to scale the Himalayan peaks. The guides protested by refusing to work on the mountain, leading to the cancellation of last year’s climbing season.

This story includes?information from Press Democrat columnist Bob Padecky, Staff Writer Mary Callahan and the Associated Press.