Renowned climber Nirmal Purja among 10 feared missing after Broad Peak avalanche

An avalanche swept across Broad Peak in Pakistan's Karakoram range on Thursday around midday, and with it vanished a ten-member climbing expedition led by Nirmal Purja, the Nepali mountaineer whose name had become synonymous with speed and audacity in the world's highest places. No word has come from the team since the mountain took them. Pakistani mountaineering officials are now coordinating what rescue efforts weather will permit, with a helicopter operation tentatively planned for Friday morning if conditions allow.

Purja, a former Royal Marine who served in the British Army starting in 2003, had earned his reputation through an extraordinary feat of endurance and determination. In 2019, over the course of just six months and a week, he summited all fourteen of the world's mountains that rise above 8,000 metres—a feat that had taken others years to accomplish. He was not a climber content to move slowly or cautiously. His expedition style was built on speed, preparation, and an almost relentless drive to move upward.

The team that disappeared with him was international in composition: an American, a Chinese national, an Omani, and five Nepalis. They were attempting Broad Peak, which at 8,047 metres ranks as the world's twelfth highest mountain. The peak sits in one of the planet's most unforgiving mountain ranges, and it has long been regarded as one of the more technically demanding summits for any expedition to attempt. The conditions that make it attractive to serious climbers—its technical difficulty, its remoteness, its exposure to sudden weather—are the same conditions that make rescue extraordinarily complicated.

Karrar Haidri, vice-president of the Alpine Club of Pakistan, told the BBC that authorities were working to mobilize resources as quickly as possible. The helicopter rescue, he explained, would depend entirely on whether the weather over Broad Peak cooperated. Mountain weather is unpredictable and often closes windows of opportunity within hours. The club itself issued a statement saying it had maintained constant contact with authorities and was committed to ensuring all available resources were deployed at the earliest moment possible.

Purja's path to mountaineering had been unconventional. He joined the British Army in 2003 and became a Royal Marine in 2009, serving in one of the world's most demanding military units. In 2012, he went to Everest Base Camp, but rather than descend back to Kathmandu as most climbers do, he stayed in the mountains. He summited Lobuche East, a 6,119-metre peak in Nepal, as his first mountain. That decision—to keep climbing instead of going home—seemed to set the pattern for everything that followed. He was someone for whom the mountains were not a destination to visit but a place to live, at least for a time.

The Alpine Club of Pakistan's statement carried the formal language of institutional grief and solidarity, but it also reflected the reality that the mountaineering world is small, interconnected, and bound by shared understanding of the risks that bind climbers together. The club prayed for the safety of all the climbers and expressed solidarity with their families and the international mountaineering community. What happens next depends on weather, on helicopter availability, on the terrain itself—on all the variables that make mountain rescue one of the most uncertain and dangerous forms of rescue work that exists.