Hundreds gather to remember guides killed in Mount Everest avalanche

Hundreds of mountaineers and Sherpas in Nepal paid emotional tribute yesterday to 16 of their fellow guides who died in an avalanche on Everest a year ago, suspending climbing for the day.

The avalanche tore through a group of Sherpas who were hauling gear up the mountain on the morning of April 18, 2014, sending shock waves through the climbing community.

The disaster triggered an unprecedented shutdown of the 8,848-metre mountain, fuelling demands for better compensation as well as higher death and injury benefit payouts to the Sherpas' families.

"All teams here have decided not to climb today to mourn the friends we lost last year," Pasang Sherpa, a mountaineering guide at Everest base camp, said. "My heart races when I look at the icefall. It is a sad day for us," added Sherpa, who was at the camp when the avalanche hit last year.

Monks in Kathmandu chanted prayers and played traditional music in a monastery surrounded by family members of one of the avalanche victims, Ang Kaji Sherpa, who had five children.

"There is a vacuum in our family, no one to guide or scold us. We are on our own," his 20-year-old daughter, Chhechi Sherpa, said with tears in her eyes.