RAMSBOTTOM mountaineer Melanie Southworth, who survived the avalanche on Mount Everest triggered by last month's devastating earthquake in Nepal, has spoken about her grief.

The 47-year-old had been near Everest's base camp, in preparation for a planned assault on the world's highest mountain, when tragedy struck.

In this personal account written for the Bury Times, Melanie tells how she helped in the aftermath and how the avalanche, which claimed 18 lives, has forced her to postpone her bid to conquer the 29,029ft mountain for the second successive year.

"FIRST of all, I am still thankfully alive. I was an hour’s walk south of Everest base camp (EBC) on my way there when the earthquake and avalanche hit on April 25.

Needless to say, many people fled base camp after the avalanche, in light of the fact that we were still getting a lot of aftershocks and the amphitheatre of mountains surrounding camp was loaded with snow and ice.

EBC rapidly became a ghost town with only a handful of Sherpas packing away the season's gear, and less than a dozen western climbers, myself included. Despite what was broadcast in the media, Everest 2015 is closed.

I am now back in Kathmandu, trying to come to terms with everything that has happened to this country over the past few weeks — the loss of life, the destruction of most of its Unesco World Heritage sites and the loss, a second year running, of a dream. I decided to stay on at EBC, post avalanche, as virtually everyone, quite rightly, fled.

Why? Because EBC looked like a bomb had hit it and there was no way that the Nepali government, hampered as they were by the deaths of thousands of people, were ever going to get to this remote, high altitude location to clean up.

Not one person from any authority contacted or even came to Everest base camp for more than eight days, leaving in excess of a 1,000-strong community clueless as to what was going on.

I was the only person left at my camp, sleeping on the dining tent floor throughout a week of aftershocks and avalanches, my heart in my mouth at every rumble, and the only British woman left in the mountains.

As you know, I love the Everest area immensely and couldn’t walk away leaving such death and destruction without doing something about it.

So, I teamed up with the only Everest expedition remaining — a 30 person-strong Indian Army Everest team and two other western climbers, to try to tidy up what we could. We went out each day across the glacier to collect debris and what was left of people’s possessions — many of which had been looted.

The loss of life, continuing tremors and sheer destruction in the rest of the country, left a tremendous pall at Everest base camp, despite how beautiful and benign that deadly environment can look on a stunning moonlit night.

I stayed as long as I could as the camp was dismantled around me, did as much as two middle-aged hands are capable of doing, and then walked three days back down to Lukhla for the scariest flight imaginable back to poor, traumatised Kathmandu.

I’ll now take some time here to grieve on every level imaginable before finally heading home to Ramsbottom. But not until I exhaust possibilities for helping in any way I can with getting building supplies to remote communities before the monsoon rains start in four or five weeks.

I grieve for those lost, for the destruction of the ancient buildings in this incredible if complex city and, on a personal level, for possibly the end of a lifelong dream.

But, to keep things in perspective, I shall walk away from Everest this year with only shattered dreams. But my heart aches for those who lost their loved ones or their homes — both at Everest base camp and around the country — who shall remain here in Nepal with shattered lives."