A team of Indian mountaineers has launched a ground expedition on a dangerous Himalayan mountain to retrieve the bodies of five people believed to be part of a missing group of eight international climbers.

Last week, military helicopters tried several times to drop mountaineers down to where the bodies had been spotted at an altitude of about 5,000 metres (16,400ft), but high winds made it impossible to get close enough.

Conscious of the prolonged anguish of the climbers’ relatives, the Indian Mountaineering Foundation has sent a dozen members to Nanda Devi East in Uttarakhand.

The veteran British mountaineer Martin Moran led a team of four Britons, two Americans, an Australian and an Indian on the expedition. Moran’s company, based in Scotland, said contact with the team was lost on 26 May after an avalanche. All eight missing climbers are feared dead.

The foundation said the expedition had to be completed within 15 to 20 days before monsoon rains arrive. The operation was using the Pindari glacier side of the mountain to reach the site.

Maninder Singh Kohli, a member of the foundation, said: “It’s something the mountaineering fraternity does. You have to bring the bodies down so that the families can have closure. Since an air effort hasn’t worked, it has to be done on foot, but we only have a small window of opportunity before the monsoon hits this area of the eastern Himalayas.”

The challenge for the foundation volunteers, aged between 25 and 35, will be avalanches and the very steep rock faces of India’s second-highest peak. Amit Chowdhary, a spokesman for the foundation, said: “There is no doubt it is going to be very dangerous. The ridge from where the climbers fell off into a bowl is very prone to avalanches.”

The dozen mountaineers will start their trek on Wednesday morning and are expected to reach the site by about 18 or 19 June. Unlike some local officials, who said the bodies would now be covered by several feet of snow, making it hard to spot them, Chowdhary said he believed the snowfall had been more like a few inches, and will have melted by the time the group reaches the spot.

What to do with the bodies poses a greater problem. Winching them up into a helicopter may not work because of high winds. A second option is to move them a considerable distance down the almost perpendicular rock faces to a patch of flat space where a helicopter might be able to land.

If that proves impossible, Chowdhary proposed an even more challenging option. “The mountaineers will have to bring them all the way down the mountain after enlisting the help of porters and mules. We are going in prepared for every eventuality. I can’t say if we are going to succeed or not, but we have to make the very best effort,” he said.

If all three options fail, the operation will have to be tried again in mid-September, once the monsoon is over.

Associated Press contributed to this report