Broad Peak Avalanche July 30,26, Pakistan: Remembering Nims Dai and the Expedition Team Lost in the Karakoram

Editor’s note: This piece was written in the immediate aftermath of the Broad Peak avalanche july 30,26. Some details — including the final status of every climber — were still being confirmed by Nepali and Pakistani authorities as recovery operations continued at the time of writing. We have noted where information remains unconfirmed and will update this article as verified facts become available.

A Mountain, and a Team, the World Was Watching

Thursday, July 30, 2026, began with the devastating news of an avalanche that swept down the western wall of Broad Peak in Pakistan’s Karakoram range. The tragedy claimed the lives of ten climbers who shared a single rope and were part of an already very famous group of Himalaya and Karakoram. Nirmal “Nims Dai” Purja MBE, the mountain climber from Nepal who had already redefined the extreme altitude limits of humans in a very short time, was among those dead.

The mountain guide and climber community was not at all surprised that Elite Exped, the expedition company of Purja, came out with the official news about his death and some of his team members only after a gap of two days. Though what came in was the same as people were dreading for the mountain community: Purja died, so did several members from his team.

We are not here with a history book and a hindsight perspective. Events are just happening. Though, we have to share this story with a good deal of understanding and care, not only about the famous name of the person who would get featured in every headline, but also about the whole group including the names of team mates of Nims, five other Nepali climbers, the one Pakistani high-level rock guide, and a handful of the tourists including one from Oman and also a client from the USA and China.

This kind of tragedy serves as a reminder that many lives are lost on the world’s highest peaks every year, many of them due to uncontrollable or unpredictable conditions rather than the fault of others. So, their loss will be even greater if their names and their identities get drowned in a footnote of just some bigger story, someone’s legend.

Nirmal “Nims Dai” Purja: The Leader

Nirmal Purja was born on July 25, 198,3 in the village of Dana, Myagdi District, in Nepal’s Annapurna region – this detail indicates that this is the tragic incident that happened almost exactly five days after his 43rd birthday. Before becoming a celebrated figure in the mountaineering community, Nirmal Purja was serving the King with the British Army’s Brigade of Gurkhas in Afghanistan and, after that, with the UK Special Boat Service, an elite special force, and he always regarded his experiences in both as the source of his physical strength and the mental stamina which became the hallmark of his climbing expeditions.

The main event in Purja’s climbing career was the 2019 “Project Possible 14/7, ” where he attempted (and succeeded) in climbing all fourteen 8,000-meter-high mountain peaks in the world within seven months. He got it done in six months and six days – 189 days – thereby breaking a record that had stood, until then, for just under eight years – one held by the Polish climber Jerzy Kukuczka and later also one by the South Korean climber Kim Chang-ho. As a part of this incredible journey, which also saw him ascending Broad Peak, Purja’s climb was later featured in the Netflix film 14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible and helped to cement Purja as one of the most well-known names in modern mountaineering.

He did not stop there. In January 2021, Purja was part of an all-Nepali team of ten climbers who achieved the first winter ascent of K2 — the last of the 8,000-metre peaks never before summited in winter — a feat many in the climbing world had considered close to impossible. In the years since, he continued pushing his own limits, including an oxygen-free traverse from the summit of Everest to neighbouring Lhotse earlier in 2026. Beyond his own climbing, Purja founded the Nimsdai Foundation to advocate for the welfare and recognition of Nepali high-altitude workers, and built Elite Exped into one of the leading guiding companies operating in the Himalaya and Karakoram.

On Broad Peak this July, Purja was there in the role he had increasingly taken on in recent years: expedition leader, guiding a mixed team of seasoned Nepali climbing partners and international clients up one of the world’s most demanding mountains. By his own account on social media before the climb, Broad Peak had been a late addition to this season’s plans — one he hoped would leave him within a single mountain of becoming the first person to climb all fourteen 8,000-metre peaks twice without supplemental oxygen.

Nims Dai and the Nepali Climbers on the Team

Purja was not climbing alone, and the mountaineering community has been careful to insist that the five Nepali climbers who joined him deserve to be remembered by name and by achievement, not simply as members of “Nims’s team.”

Pur Bahadur Gurung, known to his climbing partners as “Yukta,” was one of Purja’s most trusted guides. His body was among the first recovered by rescue teams on July 31, alongside two of the international clients.

Kili Pemba Sherpa, known as “Kilu,” was one of the most experienced climbers on the mountain that day. A member of the Imagine Nepal team, he had been part of the historic all-Nepali team, alongside Purja, that completed the first winter ascent of K2 in January 2021 — a bond between the two men that stretched back to one of Nepali climbing’s proudest modern achievements.

Nima Sherpa, a guide and climbing partner on the expedition, was confirmed among the dead in Elite Exped’s August 1 statement, announced in the same breath as Purja’s own death.

Nawang Thindu Sherpa and Gyalu Sherpa completed the Nepali contingent of the team. At the time of writing, search and recovery efforts for the remaining climbers were still underway, and we will update this piece as their status is confirmed by Nepali and Pakistani authorities.

Nepal’s government, through its embassy in Islamabad, has been coordinating closely with Pakistani authorities throughout the search and rescue effort, and Prime Minister Balendra Shah offered condolences on behalf of the country, saying the climbers’ “courage, dedication, and contributions will always remain inspiring.”

The International Climbers

Sohail Sakhi, from the Hunza Valley in northern Pakistan, was the expedition’s Pakistani high-altitude guide. A mathematician by training with a master’s degree from Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, Sakhi had built a serious climbing résumé of his own: in 2025 he summited Nanga Parbat without supplemental oxygen, and he had also climbed K2, Gasherbrum I, and Gasherbrum II, the latter two also without bottled oxygen. Alongside guiding, he worked as a mountain photographer and drone pilot, and had spoken out as an advocate for greater recognition and fair treatment of Pakistani high-altitude workers within the mountaineering industry.

Nadhira Ahmed Abdullah Al Harthy, of Oman, was the first Omani woman to summit Mount Everest — a trailblazing achievement in a country with a very small mountaineering community. Her body was recovered by rescue teams on July 31, one of the first confirmed deaths from the avalanche.

Sarah Mallory Geis, 39, of San Antonio, Texas, worked alongside her father in the family’s real estate business and had closed her Pilates studio earlier in 2026 to pursue a new chapter of travel and adventure. Broad Peak was her first attempt at an 8,000-metre peak. In a social media post before the climb, she wrote that she had “a sneaking suspicion there will be lots of helmets, harnesses, and crampons involved.” Her body was recovered on July 31, and her family has said their focus now is bringing her home.

Wang Zhong, of China, rounded out the international side of the expedition. Chinese officials confirmed they were working to verify his status as search and recovery operations continued; at the time of writing, this remains an active, unresolved part of the story, and we will update it as confirmed information becomes available.

The Day on Broad Peak

Broad Peak, at 8,047 metres, is the world’s twelfth-highest mountain, rising in Pakistan’s Gilgit-Baltistan region as part of the Karakoram range. It is a serious, technical climb, and the 2026 summer season had already been marked by unstable conditions: heavy snowfall blanketed the mountain in the week before the accident, following a significant windstorm on the night of July 18 that deposited large amounts of wind-loaded snow onto the upper slopes.

By July 25, at least two climbers on the mountain — David Klein of Hungary and Ian Overton of the United States — had decided the forecast and snow conditions were too dangerous to continue, and withdrew to Skardu. Purja’s team, along with a small number of others still on the mountain, chose to remain for a summit push.

On the morning of Thursday, July 30, between roughly 8:57 and 9:30 a.m. local time, a major avalanche released on Broad Peak’s main west-facing gully, in the area between Camp II and Camp III on the standard West Ridge route, at an elevation of around 6,579 metres (21,580 feet). It swept the ten-person team down the mountainside — in some cases over a kilometre — burying climbers and equipment across a wide debris field. GPS trackers carried by several climbers, including Purja, showed sudden, dramatic drops in elevation consistent with a catastrophic fall.

Compounding the tragedy, word of the avalanche did not reach the Alpine Club of Pakistan until nearly thirteen hours later, around 10 p.m. that night — a delay that cost rescuers the daylight hours in which a helicopter response might have reached the site before dark. “We are all shocked,” said the Alpine Club of Pakistan’s Naila Kiani of the communication gap.

Search and rescue operations began in earnest on July 31, with Pakistan Army Aviation helicopters and ground teams — led by Pakistani climber Sirbaz Khan and later joined by Nepali climber Mingma Gyalje Sherpa (Mingma G), Sherpas from other expeditions on nearby peaks, and Pakistan Army personnel — working through difficult, snow-laden terrain. Poor weather forced a suspension of the search at points over the following two days.

Rescuers recovered the bodies of Pur Bahadur Gurung, Nadhira Al Harthy, and Mallory Geis on July 31. On August 1, Elite Exped confirmed that Purja and Nima Sherpa were also among the dead, in a statement that read, in part: “Today, it is with profound sadness and immense heartbreak that we confirm that Nirmal ‘Nimsdai’ Purja tragically lost his life following the avalanche on Broad Peak. Additionally, we have proof that other expedition members tragically did not make it out alive.”

Recovery and identification efforts for the remaining members of the team continued as this article was being written.

Legacy

It is difficult to overstate what Nirmal Purja did for Himalayan and Karakoram climbing in barely a decade at its highest levels. Before Project Possible, high-altitude expeditions were, in the public imagination, largely stories about Western climbers, with the Nepali and Pakistani guides who make those ascents possible often reduced to anonymous “Sherpa support.” P

urja pushed hard against that framing — insisting on naming his climbing partners in every interview, every photo, every summit post, and building a foundation explicitly devoted to the recognition and welfare of Nepal’s high-altitude workers. That several of the men who died alongside him on Broad Peak — Kili Pemba Sherpa among them — were themselves record-holders and veterans of historic climbs, including the 2021 winter ascent of K2, is itself part of that legacy: a generation of Nepali climbers who became famous in their own right, not merely as support to famous foreigners.

The tragedy on Broad Peak is also, soberingly, a reminder of how thin the margin for error remains at 8,000 metres, no matter how decorated or well-resourced an expedition is. Karakoram peaks like Broad Peak are notorious for avalanche risk on exactly the kind of wind-loaded slopes that had built up in the days before July 30, and the mountain has claimed lives before during periods of deteriorating weather and difficult judgment calls about when to turn back.

That a team led by one of the most experienced high-altitude climbers alive was not immune to that risk will likely prompt renewed discussion within the industry about weather forecasting, communication protocols, and the pressure — commercial and personal — to push on for a summit.

Tributes have poured in from across the climbing world and from Nepal’s government and public figures, a reflection of how far beyond the mountaineering community Purja’s story had travelled. Whatever comes of those conversations, the loss on Broad Peak this week belongs to ten families and two countries’ climbing communities at once, and the honest, complete telling of it — every name, every mountain behind those names — is the least this story owes them.

Our thoughts are with the families, friends, and climbing communities of everyone aboard this expedition.