Renowned climber Nirmal Purja feared missing after Broad Peak avalanche

On Thursday around midday, an avalanche swept across Broad Peak in Pakistan's Karakoram range, and a climbing team of ten vanished into silence. Among them was Nirmal Purja, the Nepali mountaineer whose name had become synonymous with high-altitude endurance after he accomplished something that had seemed impossible: summiting all fourteen of the world's peaks above 8,000 metres in just over six months back in 2019. Now, at 8,047 metres on Broad Peak, he and nine others—climbers from Pakistan, Oman, China, and the United States—had stopped transmitting. No word. No signal. Nothing but the weight of the mountain and the silence that followed.

The Alpine Club of Pakistan received the first reports of the disaster and immediately began coordinating with government authorities. The organization issued a statement acknowledging the gravity of what had happened: a massive avalanche had struck the team, and in the hours since, there had been no communication from any member of the party. Ten people, experienced mountaineers all, had simply gone dark.

What made Purja's disappearance particularly striking to the climbing world was the trajectory of his career. He had not been a climber since childhood, working his way up through the traditional apprenticeship of smaller peaks. Instead, he had burst onto the scene with a singular, audacious goal: to climb the fourteen highest mountains on Earth faster than anyone had ever done. In 2019, he succeeded. The feat had made him a global figure, someone whose name appeared in headlines and documentaries, whose story inspired people who had never set foot on a mountain. He had become, in the language of mountaineering, a legend while still actively climbing.

Broad Peak itself is a formidable mountain, though not the highest in the Karakoram. It sits at just over 8,000 metres, which places it in that rarefied category where the air contains roughly one-third the oxygen available at sea level. Avalanches at that elevation are not rare events—they are part of the mountain's character, a hazard that climbers accept when they commit to the route. But acceptance does not prepare you for the moment when ten people simply disappear.

Pakistani authorities moved quickly to mobilize rescue resources. The Alpine Club stated that it was in constant contact with government agencies to facilitate an immediate search and rescue operation. The plan, as outlined in official statements, was to deploy helicopter support and marshal every available resource to reach the team. But there was a crucial caveat: weather and operational conditions would determine whether any of this could actually happen. At that elevation, in that season, weather can change in minutes. A helicopter that could reach the site in clear conditions might be grounded for days by cloud cover or wind.

The international composition of the team added another layer of complexity to the rescue effort. Climbers from four different nations meant four different governments, four different sets of protocols, four different families waiting for news. Pakistan's Alpine Club found itself at the center of a multinational emergency, coordinating not just the logistics of rescue but the flow of information to multiple capitals and multiple sets of worried relatives.

As of the initial reports, no one knew whether the team had been caught in the avalanche's path or had managed to shelter. No one knew if anyone had survived. The only certainty was that ten experienced mountaineers had gone to Broad Peak and had not come back, and that somewhere on that mountain, in the thin air and the cold, the answer to what had happened was waiting to be found.