The Lift Line
“We cannot make the Himalayas safe. But we can make it better observed. And in a changing climate, observation is the first line of defence.” (Anurag Maloo and Ronak Sutaria, The Indian Express)
Why This Editorial Matters for Your Exam
This column in The Indian Express, published on 8 October 2026, is by Anurag Maloo, founder and CEO of The Voice of Glaciers Foundation (TVGF) and Orophile Ventures, who survived 72 hours trapped in a glacial crevasse at 6,000 metres on Annapurna in April 2023, and Ronak Sutaria, founder and CEO of Respirer Living Sciences. It reads a string of deadly avalanches as a warning about a warming cryosphere, and asks a practical question: who watches the Himalayan slopes, and who gets told when they move?
For background, we covered the Rasuwa flood in our 29 August report, and the case for cryosphere early warning in our editorials on the Himalayan cryosphere and early warning after the Nepal flood and on a tripartite mechanism for Himalayan glaciers. This piece adds what those did not cover: snow avalanches, the technology that can detect them, India’s avalanche forecasting set-up, and the question of who receives a warning.
GS Paper 3: Disaster and disaster management; conservation, environmental degradation and climate change; science and technology in everyday life. GS Paper 1: Important geophysical phenomena; salient features of the world’s physical geography. GS Paper 4: Voluntary and involuntary risk, and the state’s duty of care.
In the news: after deadly avalanches on Manaslu and at Himlung base camp in September, the authors ask for an open, cross-border network to watch 100 high-risk locations in the Himalaya.
New to this topic? Start here: the basics in plain words (revision card 1 of 7)
Background and Context
The events the column starts from
The authors list a run of deaths in the high Himalaya and the Karakoram. The figures below are theirs.
| When | Where | What happened (per the authors) |
|---|---|---|
| 30 July 2026 | Broad Peak, Karakoram | An avalanche killed Nirmal ‘Nims’ Purja, who had climbed all 14 eight-thousanders in 189 days, and nine other experienced climbers |
| 26 August 2026 | Rasuwa, Nepal | Rock and glacier ice broke away above the Lende Khola and sent a flood through Rasuwa and Nuwakot; “More than 1,500 people are dead, and over 5,500 are still missing” |
| 19 September 2026 | Camp III, Manaslu | An avalanche fell on a tent, killing a climber and his guide |
| 27 September 2026 | Himlung base camp | About four metres of snow buried the camp; sixteen Nepali guides and kitchen staff were in the tents, and none are believed to have survived |
Casualty counts for the Rasuwa flood changed as searches went on; the numbers in the table are the ones the authors give.
⚠️ Geography check: the Bhote Koshi of Rasuwa is the upper Trishuli. It flows into the Narayani (Gandaki) system, which enters India as the Gandak. It is not a tributary of the Koshi. Nepal has another Bhote Koshi, in Sindhupalchok, which does feed the Koshi. Our 29 August report explains the difference.
What an avalanche is
The National Disaster Management Authority’s guidelines on the Management of Landslides and Snow Avalanches (June 2009) define it plainly: “Snow Avalanche is a slide of snow mass down a mountainside. It is a rapid, down slope movement of large detached mass of snow, ice and associated debris such as rock fragments, soil and vegetation.”
| Point | What the NDMA guidelines say |
|---|---|
| Types | “There are two basic types of avalanches, loose snow avalanches and slab avalanches.” |
| The dangerous one | “Slab avalanches are often dangerous, unpredictable in behaviour, and account for most of the damage.” |
| Powder avalanches | Dry-snow slides that throw up a dust cloud are “called powder snow avalanches” and “most frequently originate as soft slabs.” |
| Ingredients | A steep slope, snow cover, a weak layer in the snow cover, and a trigger |
| Slope | “Most avalanches of dangerous size therefore originate on slopes with inclinations of between 30 degrees and 45 degrees.” Convex slopes are more susceptible than concave ones. |
| Release | “by an increase in stress (e.g., by fresh snow) and/or a decrease in strength (e.g., by warming or rain)” |
That last line is the bridge to the column: warming weakens the snowpack and the frozen ground that holds rock in place, so the same slope becomes less stable.
Who forecasts avalanches in India
In a written reply in the Lok Sabha in March 2025, the Ministry of Home Affairs set out the arrangement:
- The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is “a national level agency for avalanche forecasting” and runs daily operational avalanche forecasting for defence users.
- Its Defence Geoinformatics Research Establishment (DGRE), Chandigarh, is the nodal agency for studying and developing avalanche mitigation technologies.
- DGRE had installed 72 Snow Meteorological Observatories; 45 automatic weather stations (AWS) were operational, 100 under testing and 203 under installation.
- Forecasts are issued “at least 24 hour in advance”. The India Meteorological Department supplies six-hourly weather updates, and the NCMRWF sends forecasts to DGRE daily.
- “Regular operational avalanche warning is issued by DGRE to the Army and civilian population in the snow bound regions of north-west Himalayas.”
- In what the reply calls “a first in India”, an avalanche monitoring radar has been installed in North Sikkim; it “can detect avalanches within three seconds of trigger”.
The signal from the snow
ICIMOD (the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development) reported in its Snow Update Report 2026 that snow cover across the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) had “fallen to 27.8% below the long-term average, breaking last year’s record low and marking the fourth consecutive year below-normal snow persistence”. Ten of the 12 major river basins that rise in the HKH were below normal. The authors add that ICIMOD’s March assessment found glacier loss across the region accelerating since 2000.
How many avalanches are recorded
A 2023 review in the journal Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences built the HiAVAL database of avalanches in High Mountain Asia. It has 681 entries between 1972 and 2022; “In 116 events a total of 3131 people were killed”. By country, Afghanistan recorded the most avalanche deaths (1,057), followed by India (952) and Nepal (508). The review also found that 564 people lost their lives climbing peaks above 4,500 metres, one-third of them staff employed as guides or porters.
The column describes the 681 as avalanches “with recorded fatalities”; in the study itself, 681 is the number of avalanches recorded, and deaths were recorded in 116 of them.
The Analysis
1. The danger is growing inside the mountain. The authors quote Md Farooq Azam, Senior Cryosphere Intervention Manager at ICIMOD: “Higher elevations are warming faster, permafrost is thawing, and glaciers are thinning, which leaves ice and rock on steep faces less stable than they were a generation ago. Most of this happens inside the mountain, where no climber or villager can see it. Instruments can.” Permafrost, in the authors’ words, is “the frozen ground that acts as a geological adhesive in high-altitude terrain”; as it thaws, rock faces once treated as stable begin to shed.
2. What is not counted is not managed. “Most avalanches in the region are never recorded,” the authors write. They say that of the 63,700 glaciers in the HKH, only 38 have had any ground-based mass-balance monitoring, and just seven meet the standards of the World Glacier Monitoring Service. A region that cannot count its hazards cannot map its risk, and the HiAVAL figures above show how thin the record is.
3. The tools already exist. The column lists them: satellite radar (Sentinel-1 SAR) for wide, inaccessible areas; seismic sensor arrays that pick up ground vibrations; infrasound detectors for low-frequency sound; Doppler radars that track an avalanche’s movement and speed; ultrasonic snow-depth sensors; and automatic weather stations, combined with AI and deep learning in an “HKH Mountain Intelligence System”. Such a system would do three jobs: detect start zones, monitor pathways, and give early warning, which the authors note does not “necessarily forecast or predict” but can give people in the path the minutes they need.
4. Who gets the warning? Here the column’s sharpest claim needs a qualification. The authors say DGRE’s mandate “is primarily military, and its forecasts serve the armed forces and the Border Roads Organisation first”. The government’s own account to Parliament says DGRE’s regular warnings go to “the Army and civilian population in the snow bound regions of north-west Himalayas”. Read together, the gap is less about whether civilians are warned at all and more about reach: the eastern and central Himalaya, trekking routes, hydropower sites, and above all across borders. As ICIMOD noted, the Rasuwa collapse on the Nepali side lay outside the reach of China’s early warning system. “Rivers, glaciers, and avalanches pay no attention to the line on the map. Observation cannot either.”
5. The ask, and the ethics behind it. The authors propose “an avalanche-enabled weather station for every dangerous mountain corridor”, beginning with a Himalayan Cryosphere Observatory Network across 100 high-risk locations, “shared across borders and open to civilians”. Their moral case rests on who bears the risk: “Nims chose to climb, knowing the dangers. Soldiers at Siachen do not get that choice.” Nor, they add, did the kitchen staff at Himlung or the hydropower workers on the Bhote Koshi.
Data and Institutions Vault
Prelims-grade facts:
- Snow avalanche (NDMA guidelines, 2009): a rapid, down-slope movement of a large detached mass of snow, ice and debris.
- Two basic types: loose snow and slab avalanches; slab avalanches account for most of the damage.
- Danger slopes: most dangerous avalanches start on slopes of 30 to 45 degrees; convex slopes are more prone than concave.
- DRDO: a national-level agency for avalanche forecasting; its DGRE, Chandigarh, is the nodal agency for mitigation technology.
- DGRE network: 72 snow meteorological observatories; 45 AWS operational, 100 under testing, 203 under installation.
- North Sikkim: an avalanche monitoring radar, “a first in India” in the government’s words; detects an avalanche within three seconds of trigger.
- ICIMOD Snow Update 2026: HKH snow cover 27.8% below the long-term average; ten of 12 major basins below normal.
- HiAVAL (1972-2022): 681 avalanches recorded; 3,131 deaths in 116 events; Afghanistan 1,057, India 952, Nepal 508.
⚠️ Watch the trap: The Bhote Koshi of Rasuwa belongs to the Gandaki system (upper Trishuli, then Narayani, then Gandak in India), not the Koshi. 681 is the number of avalanches recorded in the HiAVAL database, not the number of fatal ones. And per the government’s account, DGRE’s avalanche warnings go to both the Army and civilians in the north-west Himalaya.
The Debate
| For the network | The cautions |
|---|---|
| The hazard is rising as the cryosphere warms, and most of it happens where people cannot see | Not every avalanche can be blamed on a warming climate, as ICIMOD’s own expert concedes |
| The sensors and the AI already exist: satellite radar already detects avalanches over large areas, and India has a radar working in North Sikkim | Instruments at high altitude are costly to install, power and maintain |
| Millions downstream, and workers who did not choose the risk, need warnings | An early warning buys minutes, not safety; evacuation routes and drills must follow |
| Hazards cross borders, so data must too | Border areas are militarily sensitive, which makes open sharing of sensor data hard |
| A network of 100 high-risk sites is a manageable start | India already runs a defence forecasting network; the case is for wider reach, not a parallel system |
How to Think About This
Break disaster risk into three parts: the hazard (the avalanche or collapse), the exposure (who is in its path), and the warning (whether those people are told in time). The column argues that warming raises the hazard, that the exposed now include porters, kitchen staff, workers and villages as well as soldiers and climbers, and that warnings stop at institutional mandates and national borders. A good answer names all three.
For GS4, use the authors’ contrast between voluntary and involuntary risk: a climber accepts danger by choice; a soldier at Siachen, a porter or a project worker does not. The state owes the second group a stronger duty of care, and an open warning system is one way to discharge it.
Diagram-in-Words
Why the Himalaya needs to be watched
A warming cryosphere, hazards no one can see, and warnings that stop at mandates and borders.
Takeaway Box
- The argument: the Himalaya cannot be made safe, but it can be better observed; observation is “the first line of defence”.
- The signal: HKH snow cover 27.8 per cent below the long-term average (ICIMOD, 2026); permafrost thawing and glaciers thinning.
- The gap: most avalanches go unrecorded; the HiAVAL database lists 681 avalanches and 3,131 deaths from 1972 to 2022.
- India’s system: DRDO forecasts avalanches; DGRE runs observatories and weather stations, and a radar in North Sikkim detects avalanches within three seconds.
- The ask: a Himalayan Cryosphere Observatory Network at 100 high-risk locations, shared across borders and open to civilians.
Revision Cards
UjiyariHow an avalanche starts: card 3 →UjiyariWho forecasts in India: card 4 →UjiyariTest yourself on card 5 →Show answer
Show answer
Show answer
UjiyariOn card 6: traps, recall and memory hooks →R1Which country recorded the most avalanche deaths in the HiAVAL database?
R2How far ahead does DGRE issue avalanche forecasts?
R3How fast does the North Sikkim radar detect an avalanche?
R4How many high-risk locations would the proposed network start with?
UjiyariWrite the Mains answer on card 7 →UjiyariNow take today’s quiz →Sources: The Indian Express, Anurag Maloo and Ronak Sutaria, “What does surviving an avalanche teach you?”; PIB, Ministry of Home Affairs, avalanche forecasting (Lok Sabha reply, March 2025); ICIMOD, Snow Update Report 2026 press release (April 2026); Acharya et al., Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, 2023; NDMA Guidelines, Management of Landslides and Snow Avalanches (June 2009)
Source: Himalayan Avalanches and Climate Change: Early Warning Gap — Ujiyari.com | Free UPSC & State PCS Editorial Analysis
