CNN PRODUCER NOTE     iReporter J.Paul Robinson, a professor at Purdue University in Indiana, knows all too well the dangers of mountain climbing, having scaled Manaslu in Nepal in 2008. After news emerged of the deaths of several climbers on the mountain this weekend, he sent in these images of his own perilous climb, often fraught with avalanches. "There was tremendous snow - around 12 feet - over the period we were there," he said. "We lost two camps and a lot of gear. We never even found the remains of our Camp 3. We saw several avalanches, we would be sitting in base camp and every day and night we would hear these huge roars. We would race outside our tents and see it come down." Robinson says he knows someone currently at the mountain who, fortunately, was not present as the avalanche hit and it "really knocked him around" to hear of the disaster. But despite the dangers, he says climbing is worth the risk. "On the mountains it's very quiet, you can spend hours on your own, hundreds of yards behind the other climbers," he said. "It's a great solitude, it's one of the reasons why people climb."
- sarahbrowngb, CNN iReport producer