The Australian woman missing after avalanches in the Himalayas was an experienced mountaineer and a “remarkable person” who had been planning the climb for several years, her husband says.

Ruth McCance, from Sydney, is one of eight climbers who went missing while climbing a mountain in the Himalayas after reports of a heavy avalanche.

Along with four people from Britain, two from the US, and one from India, McCance had been preparing to climb the Nanda Devi, India’s second-highest mountain, on a previously unclimbed route after reaching 4,870 metres on 22 May.

Her husband, Trent Goldsack, told Guardian Australia mountain climbing was “part of who she was”.

“She had been planning on doing something like this ever since I have known her, more than 20 years,” he said.

“For her it’s not about ticking a box of being the highest or fastest or hardest, for her it was about a personal exploration, extending yourself, but also being out in those wild places, it meant a lot to her.

“This wasn’t some whim, she didn’t just say ‘I’m going to try mountain climbing’ like some of the other people on Everest. She’d been preparing for a long time. It was a well-planned, well-prepared trip. She was a mountaineer, not a tourist. I think she earned that title.”

Indian air force helicopters were searching around the Nanda Devi mountain on Sunday but the operation had to be suspended because of poor weather. It will take days to trek to the last known location of the group and hopes that they will be discovered are slim.

“The first aerial recce has concluded and one tent was spotted, but there were no signs of human movement,” Vijay Kumar Jogdanda, the top civil servant in the Pithoragarh district of Uttarakhand state, told the Guardian on Sunday.

Goldsack’s last contact with McCance was via a text message he received from her about a week ago that read: “OK at base camp.”

He said he was “very emotional” after being informed McCance was missing on Saturday, but praised the efforts of the Indian government, saying they been “generous and proactive” in their search for the missing climbers.

In a statement, the family of the expedition leader, Martin Moran, said they were calling for the search area to be widened, and wished it to continue until there was clear evidence of the wellbeing or otherwise of all those in the climbing group.

Goldsack said that McCance’s priority had not been climbing an unclaimed peak, but “more personal”.

The group poses for a photo before leaving for their expedition in Munsiyari. Australian woman Ruth McCance is second from the right in the back row. Photograph: Reuters

“The mission for her wasn’t necessarily to climb an unnamed peak, that was part of the trip but it wasn’t like that was her goal in life. It was to be in those wild places,” he said.

McCance, an executive coach from Sydney’s lower north shore, wrote in her blog in 2016 that she stopped climbing at the age of 30 before beginning again at the age of 47.

“As much as I loved it and saw others climbing safely and well, I became overwhelmed by the risks involved, so I stopped,” she wrote at the time.

Goldsack told Guardian Australia his wife – who he married in 2006 after meeting about 20 years ago – resumed climbing because “she realised how important a part of her being it was”.

“She decided to honour that, that she was a climber, a mountaineer,” he said.

“She didn’t want to break herself, she wanted to extend herself, it was all part of her personal journey.”

He said his wife was “deeply spiritual”, and “deeply wise” with “a vast intellect”.

“It’s rare to find all of those things in one person,” he said. “She was remarkable.”

The eight were part of a larger contingent of 12 climbers who began their ascent on 13 May from the village of Munsiyari, in the hill state of Uttarakhand in northern India, near the western Nepalese border.

The group said it had trekked into the heart of the Nanda Devi sanctuary “with the ambition of summiting a virgin peak”. The trip was expected to take about 24 days.

According to an update on 22 May, the group had reached their second base camp at 4,870m and were due to make a summit attempt on an unclimbed peak at 6,477m.

However, by last Saturday – 25 May – the expedition’s British deputy leader, Mark Thomas, had returned to the second base camp with three others.

He was in radio contact with the group of eight that pushed higher but when Thomas did not hear from the group by last Sunday he went up to look for them. He reportedly found a single unoccupied tent. There was evidence of a large avalanche beyond that.