Rescuers on Wednesday recovered the body of the famed American ski climber Hilaree Nelson at 6,300 metres on Mt Manaslu, two days after she fell off from near the summit of the world's eighth-highest mountain.

Hilaree Nelson, 49, was skiing down the 8,163-metre summit with her partner Jim Morrison when she fell off the mountain on Monday.

Bigyan Koirala, an official at the Department of Tourism, the government agency that issues climbing permits, said two high-altitude Sherpa guides and Morrison were sent to the higher reaches to search for the body on Wednesday morning.

They found the body at 11 am, he said.

“It took an hour and a half to retrieve the body that was buried half in the snow,” said Surendra Poudel, a Simrik Air captain, who was involved in the rescue mission.

The Simrik Air chopper landed at 6,500 metres. “We landed exactly at the same location where we had spotted some clothes and ski gear. The body was around 50 metres below our landing point,” said Poudel.

The body has been brought to the Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital in Kathmandu for postmortem.

Hilaree was the first female to link two 8,000-metre peaks, Everest and Lhotse, in one 24-hour push in May 2012.

In 2018, she made a daredevil ski from the summit of Lhotse, the fourth highest mountain in the world at 8,516 metres.

In 2018, she was named captain of The North Face Athlete Team, a title only one other athlete has held: Conrad Anker.