By Brian Clark Howard

Photo gallery by Mallory BenedictPhotographer and mountain guide Dave Morton was visiting the rural Sherpa village of Thame in eastern Nepal when the earthquake struck on Saturday.

He was having lunch with a Sherpa family when everything started to shake violently. Morton followed the family outside, only to watch its modest home crumble. Over the next few days, Morton documented destruction in Thame and other villages in the Khumbu Valley, even as the aftershocks kept coming. (Read more about mountain villages flattened by the quake.)

He was struck by the resilience of the mountain communities, as Nepalese people banded together to rescue neighbors from rubble, clear away debris, and begin rebuilding. Most villagers intend to rebuild, Mortson says, a process that could take years and that will mean living in tents or temporary shelters for the foreseeable future. (See 20 heartbreaking pictures that reveal Nepal's devastation.)

Morton says these pictures offer a "snapshot of what's going on in mountain villages all over Nepal.”

(nationalgeographic.com)