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A British police officer who survived the freak Nepalese storm and avalanche which claimed at least 29 lives said guides were telling trekkers to continue onwards even when weather conditions began to deteriorate. 

Paul Sheridan from Doncaster was trekking on the slopes of the Annapurna range in northern Nepal earlier this week when the area was hit by heavy storms.

He said his fellow walkers were left stumbling through 'an abyss of nothing' as they struggled through waist-high snow falls looking for shelter. He said guides should have known the conditions were going to turn and prevented them from going higher up the mountain and further away from safety. 

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Rescuers braved treacherous conditions in a bid to recover bodies from the Thorung La pass, 100 miles west of Kathmandu 

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Hundreds of trekkers were caught out on the exposed mountain pass when the tail end of a cyclone from the Indian ocean struck 

Specialist teams of researchers recovered bodies buried in the heavy snow and removed them down the mountain by helicopter 

Mr Sheridan told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that he had walked into  'an absolute position of fear and sheer terror' as he tried to descend the mountain.

He said: 'Somebody shouted - and I believe it was one of the guides - "Move forwards! Move forwards!" But as we moved forwards, conditions worsened and we became involved in blacked-out conditions where the ground became the same colour as the sky and it was difficult to see which way was up and which way was down.

'The queue became larger and larger and slower and slower. I pushed my forwards through the snow, gasping for air. I pushed and pushed past the people who were orderly queuing and I managed to join a group of people who were making progress that I believed to be down the hill, though I didn't know for certain.'

'As I descended this abyss of nothing, I realised that the people I was following didn't know where they were. It was at that point that I realised I had gone from a place of safety into an absolute position of fear and sheer terror.

'I looked around and I saw a Nepalese boy and his face was frozen. There was sheer glass ice hanging on his cheek. I went across to him and I said "Your face is frozen" and he said "I know" and he began to cry and we both began to cry. I didn't know whether or not this Nepalese boy was going to survive. The injuries to his face were horrific.

'There was a Spanish woman stood next to me who looked as horrified as I did and I looked at her and put my arm on her and said "Don't worry, we're not going to die, we're going to live today. We're all going to live". She grabbed me and we all cried together in a huddle on the side of the mountain.'

Officials confirmed that at least 29 foreign and local trekkers died during the blizzards which struck northern Nepal earlier this week. 

Authorities said they have recovered the bodies of Canadian, Indian, Nepalese and Slovakian hikers, however they expect the death-toll to rise further as rescuers search more remote areas.  

Mr Sheridan said things were very chaotic when the weather closed in.  'At that point the wind came again and we were all forced to the floor to prevent ourselves from being blown away.

'I recognised there was a Nepalese chap there and as people were at this point in disorientation and running around, I realised that he also was in disorientation and I said into his ear "Just keep calm, just calm down. Is there anything you recognise?"

'As we looked around, there was just blankness. But fortunately there was a brief respite and I saw a pole. These poles were our way to safety.

'So what I did was I worked with the guide and we worked together and I led the way to the pole. I said to the people I was with "Make sure you can always see the person in front and the person behind and if you can't, somehow make as many people aware as you can".

'We picked our way down for two hours through this maze of poles that sometimes we couldn't see for minutes on end, but it seemed to bring some sort of calmness and order to affairs.

'My experience of walking in the hills not only saved my life but at least 10 other people who I thought were with me.

'As we dropped and went further down, I realised it wasn't just 10 people, it was probably 150 people. Because of the density and intensity of the weather and the wind and the fog, I hadn't realised how many people had been attached to this particular group. I just stopped and I looked and I cried.

'It was around that time that I heard the rumble of an avalanche and I heard the large thunder and roar of snow falling and I just knew, due to the number of people, that there were going to be fatalities. It was horrific.'

Mr Sheridan added: 'My view is that this incident could have been prevented. I knew the weather forecast before I set off.

'Having spoken to my guide, who wasn't there but obviously has been there, they say that the weight that the porters carry is so great that they leave their own personal safety equipment behind to lighten their load. That to me is an absolute disgusting folly.

'All they are doing is leading people to a certain death, and themselves.

'If someone had taken the responsibility just to stop people going up there, I'm sure the fatalities would have been a lot less. They were herded up that mountain to their death, and something needs to be done to address those facts.'   

Hundreds of trekkers are stranded in high altitude locations across the Annapurna circuit in Nepal with dozens still reported missing 

Many survivors waited patiently as a Nepalese helicopter flew them down from the mountain as heavy snowfalls and made many of the trails virtually impassable making it difficult to descend on foot after surviving the bleak conditions for more than 72 hours 

British police officer Paul Sheridan, who survived the storm said the trekkers should never have been allowed onto the mountain in those conditions and the guides were not carrying the appropriate survival equipment to reduce the weight of their backpacks 

Dozens of people have been rescued already today but dozens more were still stranded and scattered across the popular high-altitude hiking trails. 

The government has formed a high-level committee to coordinate rescue efforts following criticism that officials were not doing enough to help the hikers.

With weather conditions improving, helicopters expanded their search area, looking for people who took shelter in small lodges and huts dotted along the Annapurna trail, where deep snow has made movement on the ground extremely difficult, said Baburam Bhandari, the top government official of the Mustang district.

Helicopters rescued 40 trekkers Friday, and received information about another 50 people stranded but safe in another village, he said.

Authorities rescued 78 trekkers from Mustang and 157 from the neighboring Manang district on Wednesday and Thursday.

Information Minister Minendra Risal said the new committee, ordered by the prime minister, would directly monitor the rescue operation and help wherever needed. The committee would coordinate among the army, police, local administrations and the private operators now involved in the rescues. 

Rescuers have so far recovered 230 trekkers since Wednesday. It is hoped that other survivors may be waiting in lodges and huts for conditions to improve.  

Army medics in Kathmandu are busy treating survivors of the disaster who are suffering from frostbite and exposure related injuries

24 climbers die in Nepalese mountains due to blizzard

 A group of Israeli trekkers managed to survive the storm by finding refuge in a tea shop, where they were able to stay warm, while only yards away, people lost in the blizzard died.  

Israeli survivor Maya Ora said she and some friends managed to find shelter in a hut, but once the storm subsided they could see dozens of bodies of other friends and guides in the snow. 

Ms Ora said she and six friends managed to find shelter in a hut but decided to try and descend the mountain at 8am on Monday.

She said: 'We couldn't see the way. There's no path. There's 150cm of snow. Then we were walking between the bodies and bags, and we could see our dead friends and the bodies of the guides. I don't know how many, twenties of them. They are buried under the snow. It will be difficult to find them. It was horrible, a horror,' she added. 

Linor Kajan from Israel said she had been stuck in waist-deep snow: 'I was sure I was going to die on the way to the pass because I lost my group, I lost all the people I was with and I could not see anything.'

'One Nepalese guide who knows the way saw me and asked me to stay with him. And he dragged me, really dragged me to the tea shop. And everybody there was really frightened,' she said.

Another Israeli survivor, Yakov Megreli, said they tried to stay awake in the tea shop to stay warm.

'We tried not to sleep. We tried not to get hypothermia. It was a very frightening and awful situation,' he said.

The blizzard is believed to have been the tail end of a cyclone which hit the Indian coast earlier in the week. 

The heavy snowfalls caused an avalanche in Phu village in the Manang district.

The Nepalese government has created a special committee to co-ordinate rescue efforts following the storm

Rescuers from the Nepalese Army began the process of recovering dead bodies from the trail soon after conditions improved 

The Nepal government was criticised for not helping enough after its initial assistance was limited to two army helicopters.

The Annapurna trekking route, 100 miles northwest of the capital, Katmandu, was filled with foreign hikers during the peak October trekking season, when the air is generally clear and cool. There were also many Nepalese on the trails because of local festivals.

Trekkers, unaware the weather would change dramatically, were largely caught off-guard.

Gombu Sherpa, who was guiding a group of Germans, said clear skies quickly gave way to a blizzard earlier this week.

'We could hardly see anyone, even within a couple of feet. The wind was blowing snow and visibility was almost zero,' He said many people lost their way in the storm, but everyone in his group survived.

One of his assistants, who was behind the group when the storm hit, was missing for an entire night.

He said: 'We found him the next morning wondering in the snow. It is a miracle that he is alive.'

Israeli survivors Yakov Megreli, left, Maya Ora, centre, and Linor Cajan, right, managed to find shelter in a hut to avoid the worst of the storm but when they resurfaced on Wednesday they could see the dead bodies of some of their friends and guides outside

Samten Sherpa of the guiding company Snow Leopard Trek said dozens of foreign trekkers were stranded at Tilicho lake, a picturesque hiking destination at 5,000 metres, a little off the Annapurna trail. No one has been able to contact them for two days, and he said only two small lodges were at the lake.

The blizzard, the tail end of a cyclone that hit the Indian coast a few days earlier, appeared to contribute to an avalanche that killed at least eight people in Phu village in neighboring Manang district. The dead included three Indian and four Canadian trekkers as well as three villagers, said government official Devendra Lamichane. Three Canadian trekkers who survived the avalanche were taken by helicopter to a shelter in a nearby town.

Five climbers were killed in a separate avalanche about 45 miles to the west, at the base camp for Mount Dhaulagiri. The climbers, two Slovaks and three Nepali guides, were preparing to scale the 8,167-metre peak, the world's seventh tallest. 

HOW DID CYCLONE HUDHUD BECOME SUCH A DEVASTATING FORCE?

Pictured is Cyclone Hudhud on October 9th in the Bay of Bengal. The storms that form in this region have a reputation for being unusually destructive

India's east coast has been in the path of a powerful cyclone, Hudhud, that has engulfed the area in winds of up to 135mph (217 km per hour).

Weather experts claim it is the strongest tropical cyclone of this year within the North Indian Ocean.

The cyclone, named after the Arabic Hoopoe, formed in the Northern Indian Ocean with satellite pictures now showing it moving away from Nepal towards China.

While tropical cyclones are less likely to form in this region than in the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean basins, the storms that do form have a reputation for being unusually destructive.

Eight of the ten deadliest tropical cyclones in history are believed to be Bay of Bengal storms, with all of these storms causing well over 100,000 deaths.

A number of factors contribute to the destructiveness of Indian Ocean storms, including simple geography.

For instance, the Bay of Bengal is semi-enclosed, which means storms that form there are quite likely to strike land where much of the coastline is densely populated and low-lying.

The storm went through a period of rapid intensification as it approached the India coast, with Nasa suggesting this may be due to increasing sea surface temperatures.

Hudhud intensified into a cyclonic storm on October 8 and as a Severe Cyclonic Storm on October 9. It then gathered pace and was classified as a Very Severe Cyclonic Storm.

Shortly before landfall near Visakhapatnam, Hudhud reached its peak strength with three minute wind speeds of 109mph (175 km/h) and a minimum central pressure of 960 mbar (28.35 inHg).

The bad weather hit a resting place 4,500m (14,800ft) above sea level, not far below popular Annapurna trek's highest point, the Thong La pass.

After bringing damaging winds and flooding to parts of eastern and northern India, the tail end of Tropical Cyclone Hudhud hit the Himalayas resulting in an intense blizzard. 

'The blizzards in the more elevated locations of northern India and Nepal are as a result of the warm moist air associated with Cyclone Hudhud travelling inland and cooling as it reaches higher latitude and higher altitude,' Julian Heming Tropical Prediction Scientist Met Office told MailOnline.

'This initially produces heavy rain, but at higher elevations the near surface temperature is cool enough for this to fall as snow.'

Pictured is the rainfall analysis of Cyclone Hudhud from October 7-14 showed heavy rainfall in many areas. Up to 550 mm (~22 inches, dark red) over ocean and over land, the highest totals are 200 to 250 mm (~8 to 12 inches, green) and 50 to 100 mm (~2 to 4 inches, blue)

Many of the victims were stranded near the highest point of the Annapurna circuit in Nepal, at a height of 5,416 metres 

Normally trekkers follow special poles which mark out the safe route through the mountains, but as conditions worsened and visibility decreased, many got disorientated and froze to death in the snow