Nepalese officials closed a section of a popular Himalayan trekking route Sunday after rescuers, overwhelmed with last week’s snowstorms that killed at least 38 people, had to save new hikers who set out after the blizzards on the same deadly trails.

A rescue helicopter spotted nine more bodies Saturday on a trekking trail in northern Nepal, bringing the death toll to 38 from this week’s series of snow storms and avalanches in the worst hiking disaster in the Himalayan nation.

Search teams in army helicopters rescued dozens of stranded foreign trekkers and recovered more bodies of victims of a blizzard and avalanches in Nepal’s northern mountains Thursday, raising the death toll to 27.