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Tusker Trail Adventures guide Melissa Kaida holds up a photo of the Sherpa team she works with following her interview about working in the Mount Everest region during last month's earthquake in Nepal at her office in Incline Village on May 5, 2015. Kaida and her group were only a couple of hours away by foot from Everest base camp when the earthquake and subsequent avalanches struck the region.(Photo: Jason Bean/RGJ)
RENO, Nev. — Moments before a magnitude 7.8 earthquake rocked Nepal on April 25, killing an estimated 7,000 people, the mood among Melissa Kaida's Everest Base Camp trekking group was one of upbeat anticipation.
Kaida, 33, of Incline Village, and Erik Forsythe, 46, of Crested Butte, Colo., both guides with Nevada-based Tusker Trail Adventures, had spent the previous 10 days leading a group of 14 clients from Phakding, elevation 8,702 feet, in the Khumbu region of Nepal to Gorak Shep, elevation 16,942.
They were a mere two hours' hike from Everest Base Camp, the next stop on their scheduled, 18-day trek. The plan was to top out at Kala Pattar, a peak with an elevation of 18,513 feet that would provide views of Everest, Lhotse and Nuptse before beginning the trek back down.
By the time they finished lunch on Day 11 there had only been some minor deviation from the schedule, just enough to delay them a few hours.
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Several inches of snow had fallen the previous evening, slowing the hiking, then there were some minor medical issues and a detour from the lodge to retrieve clean drinking water for lunch.
"Our group had kind of dispersed and half of us were in the lodge eating area, the other group had gone into their own personal bedrooms to start repacking for our trip to base camp," said Kaida, describing the last moments of relaxed normalcy before the quake struck.
Then the ground started to shake and everything changed.
The Tusker Trail Adventures group guided by Melissa Kaida, bottom row second from left, is seen in the days prior to the earthquake in Nepal. Kaida and her group were only a couple of hours away by foot from Everest base camp when the earthquake and subsequent avalanches struck the region.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: Jason Bean/RGJ)
The mud-and-brick lodge, which had been a place of refuge seconds earlier, became a potential trap. Guests and guides hustled outside into the open-air courtyard.
"Everybody in the lodge ended up running out of the building by the time it had stopped," said Kaida. "We did a big head count and made sure everybody was there."
Any relief the group felt was short-lived, though. That's because the quake shook loose an avalanche of ice, rock and wind from Mt. Pumori, elevation 23,490 feet, killing at least 20 people and overwhelming Everest Base Camp, elevation 17,585.
Kaida's group saw the powder cloud from the slide and realized it was heading for Gorak Shep.
The Tusker Trail Adventures group guided by Melissa Kaida is seen hiking in Nepal. Kaida and her group were only a couple of hours away by foot from Everest base camp when the earthquake and subsequent avalanches struck the region.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: Jason Bean/RGJ)
"The cloud was so high, it was probably hundreds of feet high. At that point everybody knew it was definitely going to hit us," Kaida said. "Everybody was running, like a mad rush to get back into the shelter."
The ensuing moments were a blur of "avalanche" screams and a rush to funnel through one small door leading back into the lodge.
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Kaida said a strong wind ahead of the powder cloud shook the building followed by a settling of fine snow that left a blanket of white over everything.
"I would say it was minutes between the earthquake happening and the powder cloud coming and then all of us basically hugging each other," she said.
Not much more time passed before Kaida and the rest of the group began to process what happened and how many people might have been injured or worse.
The Tusker Trail Adventures group guided by Melissa Kaida is seen loading onto a helicopter in Nepal. Kaida and her group were only a couple of hours away by foot from Everest base camp when the earthquake and subsequent avalanches struck the region.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: Jason Bean/RGJ)
Kaida's first thought was to confirm the safety of everybody in her group, then to wonder about the people ahead of them at Base Camp or on the mountain at camps One and Two.
Eventually, Kaida estimates it was within 30 minutes, people who were ahead of them on the trail to Base Camp began returning to Gorak Shep.
"People were completely covered in snow, some had scrapes and bruises just from the force of the air before the avalanche debris," she said. "At that point it kind of hit me this is a serious natural disaster."
Kaida, a certified wilderness first responder, and Forsythe, a paramedic/firefighter and EMS instructor, worked at patching up mostly minor injuries and helping to maintain a sense of calm and safety.
"For me, my game face was on. I didn't necessarily have the time to let the emotional side hit me," she said.
But one thought was hard to shake.
"If we were on schedule we should have been at Base Camp at the time we felt the earthquake happen," she said.
Tusker Trail Adventures guide Melissa Kaida looks outs the window following her interview about working in the Mount Everest region during last month's earthquake in Nepal at her office in Incline Village on May 5, 2015. Kaida and her group were only a couple of hours away by foot from Everest base camp when the earthquake and subsequent avalanches struck the region.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: Jason Bean/RGJ)
Back in Incline Village Andrew Springsteel, Tusker's operations director, Amy Frank, who co-owns Tusker with her husband, Eddie Frank, and the rest of the team went to work coordinating with Ripcord Travel Protection of San Mateo, Calif., to evacuate the group.
"With this it hits the news right off, everyone back here, a couple people, were completely freaked out," Springsteel said. "Upon hearing their relatives or friends are safe the freakout factor goes down but you are still managing that and it escalates what you have to manage."
Springsteel said he called emergency contacts for all 14 clients and, while working with Frank, Kaida and Ripcord to organize the evacuation, issued updates to families and the public via Facebook.
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Communication was a balancing act between providing information people needed to know to remain calm without going into detail on unknowns or revealing too much about the planned evacuation.
"There is also the secrecy factor in terms of having to keep our plan a little bit under wraps because there are thousands of people looking for the opportunity to get on that helicopter, trying to secure that same helicopter and our job is to look after the safety of our clients," he said.
Meanwhile Kaida was leading the group from Gorak Shep to Syangboche Airstrip, a three-day hike. From there they would take a helicopter to Kathmandu before flying home.
But first they would get a firsthand look at the devastation. It was especially poignant because while the guides and clients were heading out their Sherpa expedition partners and friends were just beginning to cope with personal losses.
At one point the group passed a home that had been demolished in the quake.
Mingma Sherpa, a Tusker guide for six years and lifelong resident of Namche in the Khumbu Valley, told Kaida the owner of the home was among those killed at Base Camp.
"It hit home that it was real and there are a lot of people who lost lives and friends and families and are really suffering right now in Nepal," she said. "It is easy for me to be here and be grateful that I'm alive and just try to go back to my daily life here but everybody in Nepal has so much to deal with."
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Kaida got another reminder when she saw all the destruction in Kathmandu and open space covered with countless tents and tarps to provide shelter for people who had lost homes.
The disaster highlighted the economic differences between Western guides and clients who visit Nepal and people who live in the country and make their livings by taking personal risk in support of adventure tourism.
The visitors are critical to the viability of the Nepalese economy. But the disaster, coming on the heels of an Everest slide in 2014 that killed 16 Sherpas, has all but blocked the route to the summit.
Even travel by groups like Kaida's, who were trekking through the region without climbing Everest, is greatly curtailed and the Nepalese are struggling to deal with the fallout.
"Right now what they need is supplies and the money to help start rebuilding," Kaida said. "I think those that stayed in the Khumbu and continued to trek were kind of just, they are like one more almost potential problem the government may have to deal with if there is another aftershock or something that causes those people to be in harm's way."
Still, she plans to return to the region and says reviving tourism will be important to help the Nepalese recover — eventually.
"They need to continue to work for these expeditions on Everest, that is their livelihood. But at the same time culturally and religiously Everest is talking to them and she is saying she doesn't want people on the mountain," Kaida said. "For them it is really hard to choose between their livelihood and listening to nature."
How to help Nepal
The April 25 earthquake in Nepal killed more 7,000 people and injured many thousands more. It also devastated the Himalayan nation's infrastructure, destroying homes and historic buildings. An effective way for outsiders to help the Nepalese people recover is to send money via reputable organizations.
Incline Village-based Tusker Trails, a guide service that offers an Everest Base Camp expedition, suggests using Global Giving's Nepal Earthquake Relief Fund. Click here to view.
Charity Navigator issued Global Giving a four-star rating and score of 96 out of 100 on a scale measuring financial performance, accountability and transparency.
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