MONTREAL -- A Quebec doctor is among four people missing after an avalanche killed at least nine climbers in Nepal on Sunday.

Another Canadian, Greg Hill, a well-known skier from Revelstoke, B.C., survived the avalanche, media in that province say.

The missing man is Dominique Ouimet, a cardiologist who worked at a hospital in Saint-Jerome, about 60 km north of Montreal.

Chantale Fortin, who works at the foundation for the hospital, said Ouimet was climbing the world's eighth-highest mountain to raise money for the hospital's cardiology unit.

"We have spoken with his family," Fortin told QMI Agency. "They, like us, are trying to get more information. We are all in shock. We don't have any more news on his condition, but we are hoping he is safe."

According to the climbing blog, expes.com, Ouimet was part of a team that included 15 other climbers as well as two European and six Nepali guides.

Ouimet and Hill were on separate expeditions on the 8,163-metre Mount Manaslu.

Nepalese officials confirmed earlier that the dead included climbers from Nepal, Germany and Spain, and they said four people were missing. Five injured climbers were rescued by helicopters and flown to the capital Kathmandu.

Ouimet had been on eight previous climbing trips since 2004.

On Sunday, the Revelstoke Times Review reported that Hill was part of a speed climbing team which was trying to set a record for climbing the mountain.

The Review's website reported that Hill wrote on his Facebook that "a huge avalanche swept through camp 3 at 4:45 a.m. on Manaslu, catching lots of people in their sleeping bags, many dead, and injured."

German climber Andreas Reitero, 26, was sleeping in his tent when the avalanche struck at about 4 a.m. local time. His camp was about 7,000 meters above sea level.

"It was a big sound. I was afraid," Reitero told Reuters from hospital in Kathmandu after being rescued by a helicopter from the mountain, 100 km northwest of the capital.

"I was so confused that I can't say how far I was swept away or how many people were there in the camp at the time of avalanche," said the climber, who is being treated for a back injury. "I had luck. I did not go far enough and was (left) outside ... not buried under snow."

Police inspector Basant Mishra said the bodies of a German climber and a Nepali guide were recovered from the snow on Mount Manaslu, which is about 100 km northwest of the Nepali capital, Kathmandu.

The accident took place at 7,000 metres making it difficult for land rescue teams to reach the scene.

Helicopters were dispatched to the remote area to look for those missing after the early morning accident, but cloud and fog complicated rescue efforts, Mishra said.

Hundreds of foreign climbers flock every year to Himalayan peaks in Nepal, which has eight of the world's 14 highest mountains, including Mount Everest. September marks the beginning of the autumn climbing season which runs through November.

At least 42 people, including 17 foreigners, were killed in heavy snowfall in the Mount Everest region in 1995.