AUGUST 2, 2026

Avalanche on Pakistan's Broad Peak kills mountaineer Nirmal Purja and nine other climbers

All ten members of a mountaineering expedition swept away by an avalanche on Broad Peak in northern Pakistan have been confirmed dead, according to Purja's company Elite Expeditions. The group was struck Thursday; rescuers found four bodies and recovered three of them Friday before resuming the search Saturday. The expedition included climbers from Nepal, the United States, Oman, China, and Pakistan.

Nirmal Purja, the British-Nepali mountaineer who set a record by climbing all 14 of the world's highest peaks in 189 days, died Thursday when an avalanche swept away his ten-member expedition on Broad Peak, a 26,414-foot mountain in Pakistan's Gilgit-Baltistan region. His company, Elite Expeditions, confirmed the deaths of all ten climbers in a statement Saturday. "The world has lost one of mountaineering's greatest climbers," the company said.

Purja, 43, was widely known by the nickname Nims Dai. His 2019 record — completing all 14 peaks above 8,000 meters in six months and six days — was the subject of the 2021 Netflix documentary "14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible." That record was subsequently broken in 2023, according to the Associated Press. Before his climbing career, Purja served for a decade in the UK's Special Boat Service, an elite British military special forces unit, NPR reported.

Among the dead was American climber Mallory Geis, 39, of San Antonio, Texas. The Associated Press reported that Broad Peak was Geis' first attempt at an 8,000-meter peak in Pakistan. NPR cited social media posts in which Geis described closing her Pilates studio to pursue high-altitude climbing and expressed excitement about the trip. Her family said in a statement, "Mallory was a bright light who was loved deeply by her family and friends." Her father, George Geis, told San Antonio local news outlet KENS 5, "She was a very positive person."