Michal Cherkasky's family held out hope for almost a week until they learned on Monday that rescue workers had found her body following a deadly snowstorm in Nepal last week. The team that found Cherkasky, 36, from Givatayim, was made up of Nepali soldiers and rescuers sent by the Harel Insurance Company. Cherkasky is the fourth Israeli among the 40 confirmed fatalities dead in the snowstorm. The other Israelis were Lt. Tamar Ariel, 24, from Kibbutz Masuot Yitzhak, Agam Luria, 23, from Kibbutz Yifat, and Nadav Shoham, 30, from Hoshaya. Seven Israelis have been flown home so far to receive further treatment, most of them suffering from frostbite to their extremities. Cherkasky's brother Lior Koren took to Facebook on Monday to mourn his sister. “The worst has happened. My beloved sister decided to leave the world from the mountain heights, close to the heavens. My heart breaks, thinking that I couldn't have saved her, she who was so young and so beloved,” he wrote. Koren told the press that his sister traveled to Nepal on her own and fell in with Israeli hikers she met on the trail. He learned that when the storm rolled in, the group broke apart, with some trying to descend to a lower altitude and others trying to climb higher to safety, and that along the way, her friends lost track of Michal. Cherkasky was found as search teams began to scale down their efforts, after nearly 600 people were rescued over the past week in the area. The search for survivors has been hampered by small avalanches. “Today is the last day of the search and rescue operation. After this we can only hope that those still missing will establish contact with their families,” Reuters quoted Kesa Paned of the Trekking Agencies' Association of Nepal as saying. He added that his organization does not believe that any tourists are still missing, but that some porters and guides have still not been accounted for. Those killed in the storm include a large number of local Nepali guides and porters, as well as tourists from Canada, Japan, India, Poland and Slovakia. The storm broke out suddenly on Tuesday as the tail end of a cyclone swept through India. The storm happened during what is usually the most pleasant time of the year, with the easiest conditions for hiking the circuit. The IDF Spokesman's Office announced Monday that the funeral for Ariel, an IAF navigator, will be held at 2 p.m. on Tuesday in the cemetery at her kibbutz, near Ashkelon. At 3:30 p.m., Agam Luria will be buried in a ceremony at his kibbutz, in the Jezreel Valley.
