Kathmandu:
Huddled in their sleeping bags, the climbers first heard the avalanche roar towards them and then the sound of screaming before being swept hundreds of metres down the slopes of "Killer Mountain".
Survivors of the weekend tragedy on Nepal's Manaslu mountain, which killed at least nine people, said the scene resembled a war zone, with an entire camp destroyed by the wall of snow.
"I woke up to a huge roar... Then the avalanche came down and crushed our tents. We were swept 100 metres down with our tents -- others were carried 300 metres," said 26-year-old German Andreas Reiter, who had fractured his spine.
"I was not buried under the avalanche, I was carried with it. It was very high and so many tents were falling down. But I couldn't move and couldn't help people who were screaming for help and dying," Mr Reiter told AFP from his Kathmandu hospital bed.
Mr Reiter, who was on his first visit to Nepal, said his group had already planned to return to camp two, further down the mountain, and attempt the final push later, because of bad weather and the possibility of avalanches.
Talking about what motivated him initially to scale the peak, he said: "I wanted to challenge myself that it was possible to climb such a big mountain.
"I feel now it was too risky to climb such a high mountain. But I don't think the timing was wrong.
"I talked to other people and they suggested it would be better for the final push at the summit when autumn began."
Mr Reiter was among a group of European adventurers who were near the peak of the 8,156-metre (26,759-foot) Manaslu when the avalanche struck at 4:00 am on Sunday (10:45 pm GMT on Saturday).
Pravin Nepal, Mr Reiter's surgeon at the Norvic Hospital, told AFP another German was being treated at the hospital for frostbite.
Rescuers scaled down the search on Monday for two French climbers and a Canadian still missing on Manaslu, the world's eighth-highest peak and one of the most challenging.
Also among the survivors was Glen Plake, 48, a three-time freestyle skiing world champion from California. He described the site of the avalanche as "a war zone".
"It was a major, major accident... There were 25 tents at camp three and all of them were destroyed," he told the Epic TV video subscription service.
"Twelve tents at camp two were banged up and moved around."
Mr Plake told the company's blog he was reading when he and a companion with whom he was sharing his tent heard a roar.
"Greg looked at me and said 'that was a big gust of wind', then a second later, 'No, that was an avalanche'.
"Then it hit us. I was swept 300 metres over a serac and down the mountain and came to a stop still in my sleeping bag, still inside the tent, still with my headlamp on."
Christian Trommsdorff, of France's national union of mountain guides, said the avalanche happened at about 7,400 metres and carried away part of camp number three at 6,800 metres.
Expedition leader Garrett Madison said he and his team were sleeping at camp two, when they were awoken by "snow, wind and ice penetrating our tents".
"Fortunately everybody in our group was okay. However when we climbed up to camp three shortly after to investigate we discovered the debris from a massive avalanche and found many climbers in distress," Madison wrote on the Alpine Ascents blog.
"During the rescue and recovery in the following hours we were able to coordinate and assist evacuating over a dozen climbers on 10 helicopter flights from just below camp three."
Manaslu is nicknamed "Killer Mountain" by locals because a series of snowslides have claimed the lives of scores of mountaineers since it was first conquered in 1956.
The latest deaths mean at least 62 people have died, according to an AFP tally.
It saw its worst disaster when a South Korean expedition was buried by snow while attempting to climb the northeast face in 1972. The 15 dead included 10 Sherpas and the Korean expedition leader.