EVEREST AVALANCHE

At least a dozen guides are dead and more are missing in the deadliest disaster on the world’s tallest peak.

KATMANDU, Nepal — The world’s tallest mountain turned on the people who know it best and make their living on its dangerous slopes, killing 12 Nepalese guides Friday in a sudden avalanche.

It was the deadliest disaster ever seen on Mount Everest, where more than 4,000 people have perished while trying to reach its 29,035-foot summit. Four more Sherpas, the ethnic group that assists most climbing expeditions, were missing.

The Sherpa guides had gone early in the morning to fix ropes for other climbers when the avalanche hit them at about 6:30 a.m., Nepal Tourism Ministry official Krishna Lamsal said from the base camp where he is monitoring rescue efforts.

An injured survivor told his relatives that the path up the mountain was unstable just before the avalanche. As soon as the avalanche hit, rescuers and climbers rushed to help.

Rescue workers pulled out 12 bodies from under mounds of snow and ice and were searching for the four missing guides, Lamsal said.

The avalanche hit an area nicknamed the “popcorn field” for its bulging chucks of ice and is just below Camp 2, Ang Tshering of the Nepal Mountaineering Association said. Camp 2 sits at an elevation of 21,000 feet.

Survivor Dawa Tashi was airlifted to Katmandu and was in the intensive care unit at Grande Hospital in Katmandu. Doctors said he suffered several broken ribs and would be in the hospital for a few days.

Tashi told his visiting relatives that the Sherpa guides woke up early and were on their way to fix ropes to the higher camps but were delayed because of the unsteady path. Suddenly the avalanche fell on the group and buried many of them, according to Tashi’s sister-in-law Dawa Yanju.

Hundreds of climbers, guides and support crews are at Everest’s base camp preparing to climb to the summit when weather conditions will be at their most favorable early next month.

The Sherpa people inhabit Nepal’s alpine region and are acclimated to the elevation. Sherpas may climb the mountain more than once each year while guiding adventurers hoping to reach the summit.

Before Friday, the worst recorded disaster on Everest had been a snowstorm on May 11, 1996, that caused the deaths of eight climbers. That tragedy was described in the book “Into Thin Air.”