SDRF escorts 6,500 pilgrims past a rockfall on the Kedarnath track

More than 6,500 pilgrims and 600 to 700 horses and mules were escorted on Monday across a damaged stretch of the Kedarnath trek near the Chirbasa helipad, about 2.5 kilometres above Gaurikund in Rudraprayag district.

The State Disaster Response Force said a landslide on Sunday morning partially wrecked the Gaurikund-Kedarnath track and closed it to ordinary trekking. Stones kept falling through the day, which stopped the Public Works Department from clearing the debris on Sunday. Pilgrims stacked up on both sides of the break. Those going up were held at Sonprayag. Those coming down after darshan waited above the slide.

On Monday morning the weather improved and the slope stopped shedding rock. SDRF teams then walked groups across the broken section in phases.

Who ran the crossing

The Sonprayag SDRF post sent a team under sub-inspector Ashish Dimri on the orders of commandant Arpan Yaduvanshi. Police, the District Disaster Response Force and the local administration worked the same corridor. Yaduvanshi said the route stayed partly restricted even after the escort began.

One person died on Sunday. Madan Mohan Tiwari, 65, a mule operator from Pathali village in Ukhimath, was struck by falling rock near Chirbasa. Police recorded him as a local, not a pilgrim. The distinction matters for how the district writes its incident report. It does not change the fact that the same hillside killed a man who worked the track for a living.

PWD crews started lifting stones once the fall paused. Police said restoration is slow because the hillside is still loose. Continuous rain on Sunday had been the trigger.

Why this stretch keeps failing

Chirbasa sits on the last steep approach to Kedarnath. The helipad is a landmark rather than a solution. Most yatris still walk. Mules take the rest. When the slope above the path lets go, there is no parallel track. The only choices are to wait, to turn around, or to be walked through by people who accept the residual risk.

Monsoon rockfall on this route is not new. What Monday added is a counted evacuation large enough to show the density of late-season traffic. 6,500 people and several hundred animals moved across a damaged cut in a single day. That is a festival-scale queue on a mountain path that had been closed the day before.

The Adi Kailash yatra in Pithoragarh was separately postponed until 20 September because of weather and road closures. The two decisions belong to the same week of Himalayan instability. Kedarnath stayed open with escorts. Adi Kailash did not.

What remains open

District officials had not declared a full season closure. They regulated movement. That is a narrower call and a more fragile one. If the hillside starts again, the phased crossing stops. If PWD can cut a usable ledge, ordinary walking resumes. Neither outcome was settled on Monday evening.

Pilgrims who completed darshan and were walked down on Monday are already off the mountain. Those still above Chirbasa depend on the same SDRF corridor. The mule teams that lost Tiwari are working the same slope that killed him.

The practical question for the rest of the week is whether Rudraprayag keeps the path as an escorted crossing or shuts it when the next band of rain arrives. The 6,500 figure is a measure of how many people the district chose not to leave on the wrong side of a rockfall overnight.