Jackson Wedding Photographer Returns After Nepal Earthquake

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — Communities throughout Nepal are still cleaning up the damage following last month's devastating earthquake and avalanche.

More than 7,700 people died after the 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck on April 25.

Charleton Churchill, a California native who lives in Jackson, was near Mount Everest when the earthquake hit. The photographer returned home this week, and says he can't wait to return to Mount Everest.

"It felt like a minute but it was probably only like 15 seconds or so but I was long enough," he said.

He's been on shaky ground before, it nothing like what he experienced when the earthquake hit.

"I've felt earthquakes but I never felt one this big," he said. "You hear a bunch of roaring and thundering sounds. I thought it was a bomb or something."

He was in Nepal when the ground began shifting violently. The earthquake shook people out of their homes in a village here he was staying, not far from Mount Everest.

"Everybody screaming. People jumping out of windows," he said.

He was in the tiny Asian country, hoping to take wedding pictures for a couple who traveled with him from the United States.

"We were supposed to photograph a wedding on the Mount Everest base camp. It's been my plan for the last two years," he said.

But no one planned for this.

Churchill says when the earth started shaking, his photography team was just days from trekking to the base camp where many lost their lives.

"Where the avalanche happened is where we were suppose to be camping," he said. "We were lucky not to be there."

The wedding was postponed, but it eventually happened before his team left the earthquake-stricken country. But he's not discouraged. He's looking for more photography adventures, and even hoping to return to Nepal.

"It takes a lot for me to give up so its still something I want to do," he said.