Broad Peak:

Where the Mountain Kept Its Dead — and the World Came Looking

Ten climbers went into the Karakoram chasing the highest kind of adventure. A wall of snow came down. What followed was a race not to save lives, but to bring the dead home.

By Irfan Tariq

There are mountains that invite you to climb them.

And then there are mountains that seem to warn you not to.

Broad Peak, rising more than 8,000 metres above sea level in Pakistan's remote Karakoram range, belongs to the second kind.

On July 30, 2026, ten climbers disappeared into a world of snow, ice and silence when an avalanche struck between Camp 2 and Camp 3. They had come from different countries, carried different dreams and had spent years preparing for the same unforgiving test: to climb one of the highest mountains on Earth.

None came back alive.

What followed was one of the most difficult recovery operations in recent Pakistani mountaineering history — a mission in which rescuers climbed into the same deadly terrain that had already claimed the lives of those they were trying to bring home.

By August 13, Pakistani volunteers had recovered the body of Pakistani climber and guide Sohail Sakhi, bringing the number of recovered bodies to eight, according to the Associated Press and Pakistan's Alpine Club. The recovery came nearly two weeks after the avalanche. 

The tragedy had by then become more than a mountaineering disaster.

It had become a story about courage, grief, international solidarity — and the extraordinary lengths to which people will go to return a fallen climber to his family.

The mountain

At about 8,051 metres, Broad Peak is the world's 12th-highest mountain. It stands in Pakistan's Karakoram, close to K2, another of the world's most formidable peaks.

Pakistan is home to five of the world's fourteen mountains above 8,000 metres: K2, Nanga Parbat, Broad Peak, Gasherbrum I and Gasherbrum II.

These mountains draw the world's strongest climbers every summer.

But the Karakoram does not forgive mistakes.

At extreme altitude, a storm can erase a trail within minutes. Snow can shift without warning. A climber who is perfectly strong one moment can become helpless the next as oxygen thins and temperatures plunge.

The Broad Peak expedition encountered precisely that lethal combination.

Ten climbers disappear

The expedition was led by renowned British-Nepali mountaineer Nirmal "Nims" Purja, one of the most famous high-altitude climbers in the world.

When the avalanche struck, communications with the ten-member expedition were lost.

The climbers came from Nepal, Pakistan, China, Oman, the United Kingdom and the United States. The group included professional guides, elite high-altitude climbers and mountaineers with experience on some of the world's most dangerous peaks.

The avalanche transformed a climbing expedition into a desperate search.

At first, rescuers had to determine whether anyone had survived.

Soon, the mission changed.

They were searching for bodies.

Nirmal Purja: the man who raced the world's highest peaks

For many people outside the climbing world, Nirmal Purja was the name that made the Broad Peak tragedy instantly recognizable.

Known around the world as Nims Dai, the Nepal-born British climber became a global mountaineering phenomenon after completing the world's fourteen 8,000-metre peaks in record time.

He was not simply another climber attempting Broad Peak.

He was a man who had already conquered the highest mountain challenge that exists in conventional mountaineering.

His story had already reached millions through the Netflix documentary 14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible.

Purja had also served in the British military and was associated with Britain's elite special forces.

Yet on Broad Peak, experience and reputation offered no protection.

The mountain made no distinction between a legend and a newcomer.

Purja was gone.

The Sherpas who climbed into danger

Among the dead were several Nepali climbers and guides, including Nima Sherpa, Gyalu Sherpa, Kili "Kilu" Pemba Sherpa, Pur Bahadur "Yukta" Gurung and Nawang Thindu Sherpa.

Their deaths are particularly painful for Nepal's mountaineering community.

Sherpas are the invisible architecture of many Himalayan and Karakoram expeditions. They carry equipment, establish routes, fix ropes, guide teams through dangerous terrain and repeatedly climb into places where the margin between survival and death is measured in seconds.

Nawang Thindu Sherpa, 28, had already built an impressive high-altitude résumé. He had climbed Everest, Lhotse, Manaslu, Kangchenjunga and Makalu and had guided on other major Himalayan peaks. His last major summit was Makalu in spring 2026, only months before Broad Peak. (SnowBrains)

Kili Pemba "Kilu" Sherpa was another highly experienced figure and had been part of the historic Nepalese team involved in the first winter ascent of K2 in 2021. (Explorersweb)

These were not accidental tourists caught in bad weather.

They were professionals who knew exactly how dangerous the mountain could be.

That is what makes their deaths so haunting.

Wang Zhong: China's loss

Among the dead was Chinese climber Wang Zhong.

His body was among those recovered from the mountain and brought down to Broad Peak Base Camp before being transported toward Skardu. (The Washington Post)

His death also created an immediate diplomatic and humanitarian responsibility for Pakistan: to ensure that his remains could be returned safely and respectfully to China.

That responsibility became the subject of a direct diplomatic discussion in Islamabad.

Ishaq Dar and the Chinese ambassador

On August 14, Pakistan's Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar met Chinese Ambassador Jiang Zaidong at the Foreign Office in Islamabad.

The meeting carried a deeply human dimension.

Dar expressed condolences over the death of Chinese mountaineer Wang Zhong in the Broad Peak avalanche and assured the Chinese ambassador that Pakistan would provide full facilitation for the repatriation of his body to China.

The discussion marked an important transition in the tragedy: from a race to recover the dead from the mountain to the process of returning them to their families and countries.

For Pakistan, the mission was no longer simply rescue.

It was responsibility.

Nadhira Al Harthy: a pioneer from Oman

Among the victims was Nadhira Ahmed Abdullah Al Harthy, a prominent Omani climber.

She became the first Omani woman to summit Mount Everest in 2019 and had also climbed other major peaks, including K2 and Manaslu. (Explorersweb)

Her story represented something larger than a single expedition.

For women in the Arab world, reaching the world's highest mountains had become a symbol of possibility.

Broad Peak turned that story into tragedy.

Mallory Geis: a dangerous first

American climber Mallory Geis was also among those caught in the avalanche.

Broad Peak represented her first 8,000-metre expedition, although she had previous experience climbing high mountains in Nepal.

Her story illustrates one of mountaineering's cruelest truths: preparation can improve the odds, but it cannot eliminate nature's unpredictability.

Even experienced climbers can die.

And even a first attempt can be the final journey.

Sohail Sakhi: Pakistan's own loss

Amid the international grief was Pakistan's own.

Sohail Sakhi, a climber from Hunza, was among the ten.

He was an experienced high-altitude guide and knew the mountains of northern Pakistan intimately.

On August 13, local volunteers from Shigar searching on their own initiative discovered his remains at high altitude. They carried his body down toward Base Camp. The Alpine Club of Pakistan praised the volunteers for undertaking the search without being asked. (ABC News)

The recovery of Sakhi's body was more than another statistic.

For his family, it meant something profoundly simple:

They could finally bring him home.

The rescuers

The story of Broad Peak is also the story of those who went back up.

Pakistan's rescue teams and local mountaineers faced the same avalanche danger, extreme cold, unstable snow and thin air that had killed the climbers.

Military helicopters helped move recovered bodies from the mountain toward Skardu when weather allowed. The recovery operation was repeatedly complicated by poor weather and dangerous terrain. (ABC News)

At times, however, helicopters could not solve the problem.

Men had to climb.

They had to dig.

They had to carry.

And they had to continue knowing that the mountain could claim another life.

Pakistani mountaineer Sirbaz Khan was among those involved in the recovery effort. At a candlelight vigil in Islamabad, Nepal's ambassador to Pakistan, Rita Dhital, publicly acknowledged the courage of Pakistani rescuers and the wider mountaineering community. (AP News)

A mountain of grief

On August 11, Islamabad held a candlelight vigil for the climbers.

Mountaineers, diplomats and members of civil society gathered to remember people whose lives had ended thousands of metres above them.

The gathering was held despite heavy rain.

There was something almost poetic about that scene.

Far away, Broad Peak remained covered in snow.

In Islamabad, people stood beneath rain and held candles.

The mountain was silent.

The city remembered.

Bringing them home

For families, the recovery of a body is not the end of a tragedy.

It is the beginning of farewell.

The recovered remains were taken from Broad Peak toward Skardu and, where arrangements allowed, onward to Islamabad. Officials coordinated with the relevant embassies for identification, documentation and repatriation.

The remains of the Nepalese climbers were repatriated, while arrangements for other nationalities were handled through their respective diplomatic missions. (AP News)

The meeting between Ishaq Dar and China's ambassador added a diplomatic dimension to that humanitarian process.

A climber may begin a journey with a passport from one country and disappear into a mountain thousands of kilometres away.

But when he dies, the responsibility to bring him home crosses borders.

Broad Peak is not finished with its history

Broad Peak has its own long record of death.

The mountain has claimed climbers through falls, avalanches, exhaustion and disappearance. It is part of the same unforgiving Karakoram landscape that has made K2 and Nanga Parbat legendary — and lethal.

The tragedy of 2026 will now become another chapter in that history.

But statistics cannot tell the whole story.

A number does not tell you that Nims Purja had already rewritten the record books.

A number does not tell you that Nawang Thindu Sherpa was only 28.

A number does not tell you that Nadhira Al Harthy had opened a door for women climbers in Oman.

A number does not tell you that Mallory Geis had travelled to the Himalayas with a dream.

A number does not tell you that Wang Zhong's family was waiting for him in China.

And a number certainly does not tell you what Sohail Sakhi's family felt when volunteers finally carried his body down the mountain.

The final journey

There is a strange contradiction at the heart of mountaineering.

Climbers spend years preparing to reach places where almost nobody can survive for long.

They climb toward the sky knowing that the mountain can take everything from them.

They accept the risk because somewhere beyond fear lies something they cannot easily explain to those who remain below.

Perhaps it is the summit.

Perhaps it is freedom.

Perhaps it is simply the knowledge that, for a few moments, they stood where the world falls away beneath their feet.

Broad Peak took ten lives.

But the mountain could not take their stories.

Those stories will travel down from the Karakoram — to Nepal, Pakistan, China, Oman, Britain and the United States.

They will reach airports, embassies, family homes and memorials.

And eventually, the helicopters will stop flying.

The rescuers will come down.

The snow will cover the tracks.

The climbing season will end.

But Broad Peak will remain.

White against the sky.

Beautiful from a distance.

Terrifying up close.

And somewhere beneath its snow and ice will remain the memory of ten climbers who went looking for the summit — and instead became part of the mountain's history.

They climbed into the clouds chasing adventure.
They disappeared into the avalanche.
And the world came looking for them.