Qualla: 2016 Siachen Glacier Avalanche

2016 Siachen Glacier Avalanche: Introduction

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Lance Naik Hanumanthappa Koppad had been buried for six days. Thirty-five feet of snow separated the 32-year-old soldier from the rescue teams working above, in temperatures that had plunged to minus 45 degrees Celsius. When they finally reached him on February 8, 2016, he was alive -- comatose, hypothermic, oxygen-starved, but breathing. For a country accustomed to grim news from the Siachen Glacier, his survival felt like something approaching a miracle.

2016 Siachen Glacier Avalanche: The World's Highest Battlefield

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Siachen Glacier sits at the northern tip of the Kashmir region, a frozen wilderness where India and Pakistan have maintained military positions since 1984. That year, India launched Operation Meghdoot, airlifting troops to the glacier's strategic heights to preempt a Pakistan...

2016 Siachen Glacier Avalanche: February Third

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The avalanche struck the Indian Army post in the glacier's northern sector on February 3, 2016. It hit with the kind of force that these mountains produce routinely and indifferently -- a mass of snow and ice that obliterated the camp and buried all ten soldiers stationed there. ...

2016 Siachen Glacier Avalanche: Thirty-Five Feet Down

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

When rescuers pulled Koppad from the snow on February 8, they found a man who had defied what medicine would predict. CT scans at the military hospital in New Delhi revealed oxygen deprivation to his brain. Both lungs were ravaged by pneumonia. His liver and kidneys were failing....

2016 Siachen Glacier Avalanche: A Nation Holds Its Breath

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Hanumanthappa Koppad died at 11:45 on the morning of February 11, 2016, from multiple organ failure. He was three days short of a week since his rescue. The celebration that had briefly electrified his family and his country turned to mourning -- but a mourning laced with somethi...

2016 Siachen Glacier Avalanche: The Cost of Holding On

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Siachen Glacier remains one of the most inhospitable places on Earth where soldiers stand watch. The 2016 avalanche was neither the first nor the last disaster to claim lives there, but Koppad's story -- the impossible rescue, the agonizing vigil, the final loss -- gave a sin...