This is a developing story. Last updated 2 August 2026.

All ten climbers swept off Broad Peak by an avalanche on Thursday 30 July are dead. The body of Nirmal “Nims” Purja was brought down from around 5,700m on Sunday, three days after the slide came through the slope between Camp 2 and Camp 3.

The ten came from five countries and four separate expedition teams, and included several of the most experienced high-altitude guides working anywhere in the world. Six of them were Nepali.

The Broad Peak avalanche recovery has now brought eight of the ten off the mountain. One body lies above 6,000m in ground the rescue team judged too dangerous to reach, and one climber has still not been found at all.

Where the recovery operation stands

A team of ten Nepali and Pakistani climbers reached Broad Peak base camp on Sunday morning. Eight of them went up to Camp 1, and five, led by Mingma Gyalje Sherpa of Imagine Nepal, carried on to the avalanche site itself.

They brought down four bodies from around 5,700m: Purja, Kili Pemba Sherpa, Nima Sherpa and Wang Zhong of China. Officials coordinating the operation said all four were being moved to the Concordia side of the mountain for a helicopter lift to Skardu.

Gyalu Sherpa had already been brought down from lower on the mountain. Seven Summit Treks put him and Nawang Thindu Sherpa at around 5,900m when they were first located, while later reports of the recovery place Gyalu lower. The bodies of Nadhira Al Harthy, Pur Bahadur Gurung and Mallory Geis were recovered on Friday, which brings the total off the mountain to eight of the ten.

The ground team watched two further avalanches come down while they worked. That is why the operation stopped where it did rather than pushing higher.

The two climbers still on the mountain

Nawang Thindu Sherpa was located above 6,000m, in a position the rescue team judged too dangerous to approach after the second slide came down. His body has not been brought off the mountain, and no attempt is planned while conditions stay as they are.

Sohail Sakhi has not been found at all. Searchers recovered his backpack and a broken Garmin device from the debris field, and on Saturday Mingma G said nine of the ten had been located and that the team was still working to find him.

Mingma G asked the public to stop speculating while families waited for confirmation:

Mingma G posted the update while unverified claims about tracker movement were circulating. Read the full piece

Our report from the first 48 hours of the search covers the alarm delay and the tracker data in full.

The warning Sohail Sakhi gave a year ago

Sakhi came from the Hunza Valley and trained as a mathematician before turning to guiding full time. In 2025 he was the only climber to summit two of Pakistan’s 8,000m peaks in one season without bottled oxygen, and he founded his own outfitter, Moving Mountains, to hire from his own community.

In August 2025 he told ExplorersWeb what he believed the Karakoram was missing. He wanted a funded rescue team that every expedition reaching base camp paid into, and he was blunt about what existed in its place.

Sakhi set out the case for a funded Karakoram rescue team a year before the avalanche. Read the full piece

He was guiding Mallory Geis, an American on her first 8,000m peak, when the slope released. A year after he described rescue in these mountains as nearly impossible, he is the one climber of the ten that the recovery has not been able to reach.

The team that went back for them

Mingma G flew across from K2, where his Imagine Nepal team had been on a summit push, to lead the search on foot. Kili Pemba Sherpa, known across the industry as Kilu, was his lead guide and was climbing with Wang Zhong when the avalanche hit.

In January 2021, Mingma G, Kilu and Purja were part of the ten-man Nepali team that made the first winter ascent of K2, walking the final metres to the summit arm in arm. This week Mingma G brought two of them down off Broad Peak.

Mingma David Sherpa, a member of Nepal’s House of Representatives and Purja’s business partner at Elite Exped, flew to Skardu as a long-line rescue specialist. Sirbaz Khan and Sherzad Karim of Pakistan flew the aerial search.

Who the ten climbers were

Purja had turned 43 five days before the avalanche. A former Gurkha and the first Nepali accepted into the Special Boat Service, he climbed all fourteen 8,000m peaks in six months and six days in 2019, a run Netflix filmed as 14 Peaks.

Elite Exped said Broad Peak was a late addition to his season and would have been his thirteenth 8,000er climbed for a second time without oxygen, leaving only Cho Oyu. He posted about the change of plan three days before the avalanche.

Broad Peak, I ask for nothing but safe passage up and back down.

— Nirmal Purja MBE (@nimsdai) July 27, 2026

Purja set out his revised plan publicly on 27 July, framing Broad Peak as the second to last mountain of the project. View on X

Pur Bahadur Gurung, known as Yukta, was an IFMGA-certified guide with ten Everest summits and 28 successful 8,000m ascents, and had supported the first ski descent of the Hornbein Couloir. Nadhira Al Harthy was the first Omani woman to summit Everest, and Oman’s foreign ministry issued a public tribute.

Nima Sherpa, Kili Pemba Sherpa, Nawang Thindu Sherpa and Gyalu Sherpa were all working guides. Wang Zhong of China and Mallory Geis of the United States were clients. Several of the same names appear in our round-up of the 2026 Everest season.

Ben Ayers of Everest Live has been reporting the casualty figures and tracker analysis from contacts at base camp since the first hours:

@everest.live

Breaking dispatch on the ten climbers missing after the avalanche on Broad Peak.

30 Jul 2026

Everest Live broke the identities of the climbers caught in the slide and has been correcting the recovery numbers as they moved. View on TikTok

Why the mountain was loaded

Heavy snow began falling on Broad Peak around 22 July and kept coming. Most teams at base camp packed up and walked out. The Hungarian climber David Klein and the American Ian Overton left on 25 July, five days before the avalanche, having read the same forecast.

Klein explained to National Geographic why fresh snow alone was not the problem:

Klein turned around below the summit on 19 July and walked off the mountain six days later. Read the full piece

What he wanted was several clear days in which nobody moved, so the new snow either bonded to the slope or slid off it. That waiting period did not happen.

Alan Arnette, who has covered the 8,000m peaks for two decades, climbed to 6,400m on Broad Peak in 2006, close to where the slide started. He describes that ground in terms that explain why no helicopter could simply lift the victims out.

Arnette has climbed the ground where the avalanche started. Read the full piece

Why Purja’s team stayed when others left has not been explained. Elite Exped said only that the group made its attempt during the final weather window of the season, alongside other climbing groups. It has been a punishing year in the high mountains more generally.

What this means for the Karakoram season

Every commercial expedition on the Karakoram 8,000m peaks has been cancelled. K2 teams abandoned their summit pushes to help with the search, and the season is effectively finished several weeks early. If you have a Baltoro trek or a peak permit booked for August, expect a reduced ground team and delays.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office advises against all but essential travel to Gilgit-Baltistan, which covers the whole Baltoro and every 8,000m peak in Pakistan. Travelling against that advice invalidates most standard insurance policies, so specialist cover naming the region is not optional.

The search for Sohail Sakhi is continuing. We will update this piece as the operation develops.