The avalanche hit around midday on Thursday, on a mountain that had not made international news in years.
Broad Peak is 8,051 metres — the world's twelfth-highest — in the Karakoram range of Gilgit-Baltistan, northern Pakistan. It is considered one of the country's hardest climbs and it is not on most people's list. Ten climbers were on it. All ten were swept away.
Nirmal Purja's company has said he and nine others were killed.
The team
The name in every headline is Purja's, and that is understandable. But the composition of the rope is the part worth sitting with, because it says something about who is on these mountains now.
Nadhira Al Harthy, of Oman. In 2019 she became the first Omani woman to summit Everest, and later the first Omani to climb K2. She held a master's degree in geography and had served as director of the Citizenship Department at Oman's Ministry of Education. Her body was recovered on Friday.
Pur Bahadur Gurung, of Nepal, known to friends as Yukta. He had summited Everest ten times — more than anyone else from the Gurung community — and climbed twelve of the world's fourteen 8,000-metre peaks. He held a record for summiting K2 within 24 hours, and he was regularly part of rescue operations for climbers stranded in the mountains. His body was recovered on Friday.
Sarah Mallory Geis, 39, of San Antonio, Texas. It was her first attempt at an 8,000-metre peak in Pakistan. Earlier this year she announced on social media that she was closing her Pilates studio to take "a giant leap of faith into the unknown to see where life goes."
She added: "I have a sneaking suspicion there will be lots of helmets, harnesses, and crampons involved."
Her body was recovered on Friday.
Sohail Sakhi, of Pakistan, was a guide for the company — also a geographer and high-altitude photographer who had climbed several major peaks. The expedition also included a Chinese climber identified only as Wang and, per the Alpine Club of Pakistan, five Nepali climbers in total and one further foreign climber.
A woman who had stood on top of Everest and K2, a man who had made ten Everest summits and spent his career pulling other people off mountains, and a woman on her first 8,000-metre climb six months after leaving a fitness studio in Texas. The avalanche did not distinguish between them.
Purja
He was 43, born in Nepal, and his route to mountaineering was not the usual one. He served in the British Army — a Gurkha who went on to pass selection for the UK's Special Boat Service — before turning to high-altitude climbing full time.
In 2019 he climbed all fourteen 8,000-metre peaks in 189 days. The previous benchmark was measured in years. The attempt, which he called Project Possible, became the Netflix documentary 14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible, and made him the most recognisable figure in a sport that had not had a mainstream celebrity in decades.
His record was surpassed in 2023, which is worth stating plainly rather than omitting. Records in this discipline fall, often to people who learned it was possible by watching someone else do it first.
He was leading the Broad Peak expedition.
What is still unresolved
As of the most recent reporting, four bodies had been located and three recovered. The fourth had not been publicly identified. Recovery work was continuing for the remaining climbers.
Sajid Hussain, deputy director of the tourism department in Gilgit-Baltistan, described the search area as "remote and difficult." Weather has repeatedly grounded helicopters.
Nepal's Prime Minister Balendra Shah offered condolences over the deaths.
The scale of the thing
Of the world's fourteen 8,000-metre peaks, eight are in Nepal, five in Pakistan, one in Tibet. Climbing experts estimate that barely more than three dozen people have completed all fourteen — a group small enough to name, and one that lost a member on Thursday alongside people who were still working toward it.
This is a developing story. Recovery operations are ongoing and identifications are being confirmed by Pakistani authorities.
