This is a developing story. Last updated 31 July 2026.
Four climbers are dead and six are still missing on Broad Peak in Pakistan after an avalanche swept a summit push on Thursday morning. Two of the dead have been identified.
Among the missing is Nirmal “Nims” Purja, the Nepali-British mountaineer whose speed record on the world’s fourteen 8,000m peaks became a Netflix documentary. He was leading his Elite Exped team and had turned 43 five days before the avalanche.
Helicopter operations were suspended on Friday because of volatile weather, according to the BBC, and are due to resume on Saturday. Nobody from the group has been heard from since the slide came down.
The Key Facts
- Thursday 30 July, just before 9.30am local an avalanche hit ten climbers at 6,600m
- Four bodies recovered two identified as Nadhira Al Harthy and Pur Bahadur Gurung
- Six still missing including Nims Purja, Sohail Sakhi and Mallory Geis
- Around 13 hours passed before base camp raised the alarm
- K2 expeditions cancelled teams have come down to support the recovery
What happened on Broad Peak
The avalanche came down just before 9.30am local time on Thursday 30 July, catching the group at around 6,600m as they moved between Camp 2 and Camp 3. Their InReach trackers recorded a rapid fall of hundreds of metres. Some devices came to rest close to base camp.
Conditions had been deteriorating for a fortnight. American climber Ian Overton read the forecast and walked off the mountain on 25 July, five days before the slide, and described a snowpack that was already coming apart on the lower sections.
“everything below Camp 2 was unconsolidated and melting out quickly”
Ian Overton — ExplorersWeb, 31 Jul 2026
Tracker analysis compiled by Samson Sharaf in Pakistan shows how far the climbers were carried. Purja’s track records a fall of around 800m. Nadhira Al Harthy’s carried her almost to the foot of the mountain, a drop Everest Live puts at more than 5,000ft.
The climbers caught in the slide
Nadhira Al Harthy became the first Omani woman to summit Everest in 2019, and went on to climb K2, Nanga Parbat, Manaslu and Ama Dablam. She was on Broad Peak with Seven Summit Treks, working towards all fourteen 8,000m peaks, and was a public speaker and a well-known figure in Oman.
Pur Bahadur Gurung, known across the industry as Yukta, was an IFMGA-certified guide working with Elite Exped. Ben Ayers reports he held ten Everest summits, two ascents of K2 and 28 successful 8,000m summits, and had been on the north side of Everest with the National Geographic team that skied the Hornbein Couloir.
Eight climbers have not been identified. Six of them remain missing on the mountain, and two are among the bodies recovered on Friday but not yet named. They are:
- Nirmal “Nims” Purja, Nepal, leading the Elite Exped team
- Sohail Sakhi, Pakistan, a Hunza guide who had summited all five of his country’s 8,000ers
- Mallory Geis, United States, on her first 8,000m expedition, guided by Sakhi
- Wang Zhong, China
- Kili “Kilu” Pemba Sherpa, Nepal, part of the 2021 first winter ascent of K2
- Nima Sherpa, Nepal
- Nawang Thindu Sherpa, Nepal
- Gyalu Sherpa, Nepal, guiding with Seven Summit Treks
Four separate teams were on the mountain that morning: Purja’s Elite Exped group, Sakhi with his American client, an Imagine Nepal team and a Seven Summit Treks group. Between them they included some of the most experienced high-altitude guides working in Nepal and Pakistan.
Thirteen hours before the alarm went out
The avalanche struck mid-morning. The call for an aerial rescue did not go out until close to 10pm. Naila Kiani of the Alpine Club of Pakistan told ExplorersWeb that base camp simply did not know what had happened, despite each team keeping staff there through the summit push.
That gap cost the whole of Thursday’s daylight, which was the window in which helicopters could have reached 6,600m. Two aircraft finally left at around 8am on Friday carrying Pakistani climbers Sirbaz Khan and Sherzad Karim to fly the aerial search, alongside a ground party that reached the debris at the foot of the slide.
The entire team has been out of communication since the avalanche.
Nepal’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Friday afternoon that its embassy in Islamabad is coordinating with Pakistani authorities and the Alpine Club of Pakistan on the search. Six of the ten climbers caught were Nepali.
The tracker signals, and why they are not proof of life
Two separate reports of tracker movement have circulated since Thursday night, and both have been widely misread. Karakorum Expeditions said the team monitoring one of its own climbers’ InReach devices picked up a slight movement signal. Separately, movement has been reported on Purja’s tracker.
Ben Ayers urged caution on both. Garmin units in the high Himalaya glitch routinely, and a fixed position can appear to drift for hours without anyone touching the device. He was careful not to close the door on Purja either.
“if there’s anybody that we don’t want to write off, it’s Nimsdai”
Ben Ayers — Everest Live, 31 Jul 2026
What this means if you are heading to the Karakoram
Broad Peak was not in Purja’s original plan. He came to Pakistan for Gasherbrum II, summited it without oxygen on 21 July, then ran the numbers and realised Broad Peak would leave only Cho Oyu between him and becoming the first person to climb all fourteen 8,000ers twice without bottled oxygen.
Expeditions on K2 have been called off for the rest of the season, with climbers and guides coming down to support the Pakistan Army-led recovery. If you have a Karakoram expedition or a Baltoro trek booked for August, expect your operator to be running a reduced ground team and expect delays.
It is also worth knowing where the UK advice sits, because most people booking a Baltoro trek never check. The FCDO advises against all but essential travel to Gilgit-Baltistan, which covers the whole Baltoro and every 8,000m peak in Pakistan.
That matters for your insurance. Travelling against FCDO advice invalidates most standard policies, so you need specialist cover that names the region. Check it explicitly covers mountaineering above your planned altitude and includes helicopter evacuation, which is the only realistic rescue option on the Baltoro.
Permits are the other thing people leave too late. Foreign nationals must register with local authorities in Gilgit-Baltistan, peaks above 6,000m need a permit, and the process can run to two months. Going without the right paperwork can void your cover on its own.
We will update this piece as the search resumes. For now our thoughts are with the families of everyone caught on the mountain on Thursday, and with the guiding communities in Nepal, Pakistan and Oman who have lost some of their most experienced people.
