Mount Manaslu, Nepal – A pre-dawn avalanche that struck sleeping mountaineers in Nepal on Sunday morning spared the lives of skiing icon Glen Plake and backcountry ski legend Greg Hill.

More than two dozen climbers were sleeping at Camp 3 at an elevation of 22,960 feet on 26,760-foot Mount Manaslu, the world’s eighth highest peak, when the avalanche struck their camp at around 4 a.m. on Sunday morning, wiping tents and their occupants from the mountainside. Official reports indicate that at least nine were killed and six remain missing, while numerous others were flown to area hospitals with various injuries. Unofficial reports place the death toll as high as 11.

Plake and Hill were among those located at Camp 3 on Sunday morning. Plake’s sponsor Salewa confirms that the skier, best known for his appearances in ski films such as Greg Stump’s The Blizzard of Aahhhs as well as his trademark mohawk haircut, is among those who have been rescued from the mountainside, while two of Plake’s ski mountaineering companions, Greg Costa and Remy Lecluse, remain among the missing. The three were on a quest to be the first to ski Manaslu without supplemental oxygen when the tragedy struck.

Plake indicates that he’s missing some teeth and is sporting a black eye, but is otherwise unharmed. He said that the tent he was sharing with Costa was swept 900 feet down the mountainside and that he came to rest still within his tent and sleeping bag, but Costa was nowhere to be found.

The slide, estimated at up to 2,000 feet wide, also reached Camp 2 at 20,669 feet, where Hill was spending the night. Hill, known for logging two million vertical feet on skis in 2010, was on a ski mountaineering expedition sponsored by Dynafit.

“Please be informed that the Dynafit Team and its crew is safe,” the binding manufacturer indicated in a statement. “Many other mountaineers are victims of the avalanche.”

Like Plake, Hill assisted in a fruitless effort to locate the missing that has since been discontinued due to weather conditions on the mountain.

The dead have been confirmed as citizens of France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Nepal.