Heavy snow forces climbers to cancel expeditions on Nepal's Manaslu

Climbers began leaving Nepal's Mount Manaslu, the world's eighth-highest peak, as heavy snow and avalanches forced expeditions to cancel, organisers said on Thursday.

Nepal is bracing for heavy rainfall and has issued a nationwide high alert for four days, starting from Thursday.

The Himalayan country is already reeling from a devastating, tsunami-like flood on August 26 that killed more than 1,400 people and left over 6,000 missing.

A total of 480 climbers were attempting to reach Manaslu's 8,163-metre (26,781-feet) summit this season.

"Almost all teams have cancelled the expeditions this year. The weather has not been favourable for us to continue," Chhang Dawa Sherpa of expedition organiser Seven Summit Treks told AFP.

Mountaineer Mingma G Sherpa of Imagine Nepal said in a Facebook post on Wednesday that he had never experienced such weather in his years of climbing the mountain.

He said clients had begun leaving the Manaslu base camp and that their Nepali team would also descend to a "lower and safer valley".

There had already been four deaths on the mountain this season, including a 50-year-old Singaporean who died last week.

Nepal has issued 536 climbing permits for nine peaks, with Manaslu accounting for most of them.

Autumn expeditions on the Himalayas are less popular because of the shorter, colder days, snowy terrain and a narrow summit window compared to the busy spring.

Nepal is home to eight of the world's 14 highest peaks and foreign climbers who flock to its mountains are a major source of revenue for the largely rural country.