Uttarkashi, Oct 7 (PTI) Bodies of four people, including ace mountaineer Savita Kanswal, who died in the avalanche in Uttarkashi were handed over to their families on Friday, officials said.

A large crowd gathered outside the district hospital as the bodies were brought in ambulances from the Army helipad in Harsil where they had arrived earlier in an Army helicopter from the advance base camp at Dokrani.

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A post mortem of the bodies was conducted at the hospital.

With the recovery of 10 more bodies from the site of the avalanche, the death toll has risen to 26, the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering (NIM) said on Friday.

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Kanswal had set a national record by climbing Mount Everest and Mount Makalu within a span of 15 days earlier this year.

As the young mountaineer's body was brought in a coffin, several people from her village of Lonthru broke down.

Kanswal had accompanied the team of mountaineering trainees to the peak as an instructor.

Apart from Kanswal, the other three bodies were those of Naumi Rawat, Ajay Bisht and Shivam Kainthola.

Naumi too was an instructor who had gone with the team while Bisht from Kumaon and Kainthola from Himachal Pradesh were the trainees.

According to the NIM, the advance training course team consisted of 42 members out of which 29 had got stranded in the wake of the avalanche.

Bodies of 26 out of them have been recovered and search is on for the remaining three, the NIM said.

The avalanche occurred at a height of 17,000 feet on Tuesday when a team of the NIM was returning after summiting Draupadi Ka Danda II peak.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)