Broad Peak Tragedy: Remembering Nimsdai and the Ten Climbers Lost in the Avalanche

The mountaineering world suffered one of its darkest days in recent years when an avalanche swept away ten climbers on Pakistan’s Broad Peak on 30 July 2026.

There were no survivors.

Among those killed was Nirmal “Nimsdai” Purja, one of the most recognisable mountaineers of the modern era and a climber whose record-breaking expeditions had transformed both his own career and the international profile of Nepalese high-altitude climbing.

But Nimsdai was not alone.

The avalanche took an entire international group containing highly experienced mountain guides, record-breaking climbers and aspiring 8,000-metre mountaineers from Nepal, Pakistan, Oman, China and the United States.

It became a tragedy whose impact was felt throughout the worldwide climbing community.

Avalanche Strikes Between Camps II and III

Broad Peak rises to 8,051 metres in Pakistan’s Karakoram, close to K2, and is the world’s 12th-highest mountain.

Conditions on the mountain had already been difficult. Significant snowfall during the previous week had loaded the upper slopes before a brief improvement in the weather encouraged climbers to begin moving upwards again.

On the morning of 30 July, the ten climbers were travelling between Camp II and Camp III when an avalanche struck at approximately 6,600 metres.

Communication with the entire group was lost.

Early information from GPS devices and trackers initially created hope that somebody might have survived. The scale of what had happened only became apparent as Pakistani authorities, climbers at Base Camp and rescue teams began trying to locate the group.

Helicopters were mobilised, while drones were used to search the avalanche debris in terrain where putting additional climbers at risk was itself an enormous decision.

Within a day, rescuers began locating bodies.

Soon afterwards came the devastating confirmation: none of the ten had survived.

The Broad Peak Ten

Those who died were:

• Nirmal “Nimsdai” Purja – Nepal/UK
• Pur Bahadur “Yukta” Gurung – Nepal
• Nima Sherpa – Nepal
• Kili Pemba “Kilu” Sherpa – Nepal
• Nawang Thindu Sherpa – Nepal
• Gyalu Sherpa – Nepal
• Nadhira Ahmed Abdullah Al Harthy – Oman
• Sohail Sakhi – Pakistan
• Wang Zhong – China
• Sarah Mallory Geis – United States

Elite Exped later published all ten names together in its memorial to those lost on Broad Peak.

There were remarkable stories throughout the group.

Nadhira Al Harthy had previously become the first Omani woman to summit Mount Everest. Pakistani mountaineer Sohail Sakhi had climbed K2, Nanga Parbat, Gasherbrum I and Gasherbrum II without supplemental oxygen and had become one of his country’s highly regarded high-altitude climbers.

American Mallory Geis was making her first attempt on an 8,000-metre mountain.

The Nepalese members included some of the highly experienced guides upon whom major Himalayan and Karakoram expeditions depend. Nawang Thindu Sherpa, despite being just 28, had already climbed Everest, Lhotse, Manaslu, Kangchenjunga and Makalu.

The attention inevitably focused heavily on Nimsdai because of his worldwide fame, but Broad Peak represented the loss of an extraordinary amount of mountaineering experience in a single morning.

A Remarkable Recovery Operation

What followed the avalanche was itself an extraordinary chapter of the tragedy.

Some of the strongest climbers in the Karakoram volunteered to enter the avalanche zone in an attempt first to find survivors and then, when the reality became clear, to recover their friends.

Among those heavily involved was Mingma Gyalje Sherpa – Mingma G, who travelled to the mountain and helped lead the recovery effort.

Drone reconnaissance identified several bodies scattered across the lower slopes. Rescue teams then climbed through unstable snow, crevasses and avalanche debris to reach them.

Nimsdai was found alongside several of the other climbers.

Mingma G later described the emotional moment he reached the bodies of Nims and Kilu Pemba Sherpa, climbers with whom he had shared some of the greatest moments of his career.

The risks did not disappear once the original avalanche had passed.

During an attempt to reach Nawang Thindu Sherpa, Pem Dorje Sherpa and Speed Dawa Sherpa climbed into an exposed avalanche couloir carrying hundreds of metres of rope. Another avalanche came down while they were attempting the recovery and caught the two rescuers themselves. They survived, but conditions eventually made reaching Nawang impossible.

The operation continued for days.

The bodies of Nimsdai and several of his companions were eventually brought to Base Camp and flown to Skardu before being returned to their families.

The mountain did not give up all of its victims easily.

Sohail Sakhi remained missing for almost two weeks before local volunteers from Shigar found his body on 13 August at around 5,600 metres.

Sarah Mallory Geis was finally recovered 22 days after the avalanche, following another search by local volunteers.

As of the latest detailed reporting in September, Nawang Thindu Sherpa remained on Broad Peak, his body located but in terrain considered too dangerous for another recovery attempt.

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The Death of Nimsdai

For the wider public, the most shocking name among the dead was Nirmal Purja.

Few climbers in recent decades had become as internationally recognisable.

A former Gurkha and member of the UK Special Boat Service, Nims left the military and eventually committed himself fully to high-altitude mountaineering.

Then came Project Possible.

In 2019, he set out to climb all 14 of the world’s mountains above 8,000 metres in seven months.

He did it in six months and six days – 189 days.

The achievement was subsequently brought to a worldwide audience through the hugely successful Netflix documentary 14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible.

It did more than establish Nims as a climbing celebrity. It drew enormous international attention towards Nepal’s elite high-altitude climbers and challenged a long history in which Western mountaineers often received the acclaim while their Nepalese partners received considerably less recognition.

His career did not slow down afterwards.

In January 2021, Nims joined nine other Nepalese climbers to complete the historic first winter ascent of K2, the last of the fourteen 8,000-metre mountains still unclimbed in winter.

Nims reached that summit without supplemental oxygen.

He continued accumulating 8,000-metre ascents at a remarkable rate.

During the spring of 2026 he summited Everest for the tenth time without supplemental oxygen and then climbed Lhotse, before adding another oxygen-free ascent of Makalu.

His final weeks followed the same pattern.

On 24 July, only six days before the Broad Peak avalanche, Nims reached the summit of K2 again.

Elite Exped records that by the end of his career he had accumulated 57 ascents of 8,000-metre mountains, 29 of them without supplemental oxygen.

He was 43.

A Career That Changed High-Altitude Mountaineering

Nimsdai was never a conventional mountaineer.

His approach was fast, ambitious, heavily publicised and built around a belief that perceived limits could be broken.

That occasionally divided opinion within a climbing world which has always contained different ideas about style, risk, records and commercial expeditions.

What cannot seriously be disputed is the size of his impact.

Project Possible altered assumptions about what could physically be achieved on the world’s highest mountains.

His prominence helped move elite Nepalese climbers from the background of expedition stories into the foreground.

And through Elite Exped, he became part of a generation that increasingly put Nepalese mountaineers in charge of major international expeditions rather than portraying them solely as support for foreign climbers.

His military career, Project Possible, winter K2 and 14 Peaks gave him an audience far beyond traditional mountaineering.

His death therefore felt different.

This was not simply the loss of another exceptionally accomplished climber in the mountains. For millions of people who knew very little about Himalayan climbing before watching 14 Peaks, Nimsdai was mountaineering.

The Mountain Community Responds

Tributes arrived from Nepal, Britain, Pakistan and throughout the international mountain community after his death was confirmed.

Elite Exped described Nims as someone who had encouraged others to challenge what they believed was possible and said the organisations he created would continue his work. At a memorial published in August, his team wrote that his legacy would live not simply through records, but through the climbers and Nepalese mountain communities he championed.

There were also tributes and vigils for the nine climbers who died alongside him.

For those involved in the recovery, however, Broad Peak was far more personal than the loss of a famous figure.

These were teammates and friends.

Mingma G later admitted that the experience had affected him so deeply that he was unsure what it meant for his own future in the mountains.

A Disaster the Mountain World Will Not Forget

Mountaineering has always lived with tragedy.

The world’s highest mountains offer no distinction between record holders and first-time 8,000-metre climbers, between guides and clients, or between those known around the world and those known mainly within their own climbing communities.

On 30 July 2026, ten people travelled together through the snow between Camps II and III on Broad Peak.

None returned.

The death of Nirmal Purja ensured that news of the disaster travelled far beyond the mountaineering world.

But the lasting story of Broad Peak 2026 belongs to all ten climbers who were lost, and to the friends and rescuers who subsequently risked their own lives trying to bring them home.