When an avalanche killed climber Nirmal Purja, his friends faced the hardest mission of all

When avalanche struck and killed climber Nirmal Purja, his friends were left with the toughest task of all

As he made his way along the frozen slope toward two bodies, Mingma Gyalje Sherpa understood that his friends were gone.

The three of them had climbed the world’s highest peaks together, beneath clear mountain skies and through dangerous snowstorms. Nirmal Purja and Kili Pemba Sherpa were among the strongest climbers Mingma G had ever known.

But in July, an avalanche tore through Pakistan’s Broad Peak while the two were ascending, swallowing everything in its path.

Drone footage appeared unmistakable: no one had survived.

Still, as Mingma G drew nearer to the fluorescent down suits, bright against the snow, he could not dismiss the feeling that they were waiting for him.

“I told them: ‘It’s ok. You don’t have to be here in the cold anymore.’”

Speaking to the BBC in Islamabad, he remembers the awful moment he reached their bodies.

As he held one of them, he said: “I’m here to take you guys home.”

Mingma G and Nirmal Purja first met in Pakistan in 2021, when they were part of the first team to reach the summit of K2, the world’s second-highest mountain, in winter.

Mingma G knew of Nirmal — or Nims, as he was called — from his Netflix documentary 14 Peaks, which showed him climbing the world’s 14 highest mountains in just over six months.

The two Nepalese climbers had followed different routes.

Mingma G came from the Sherpa community and spent more than 20 years building his name as a mountain guide. Nims was a former Gurkha and British Special Forces soldier who rapidly became one of the best-known mountaineers in the world.

To many, Nims was an extraordinary climber who helped Nepalese mountaineers win international recognition in a field long dominated by foreigners. But he also had detractors, who said he was too focused on records and on promoting his expeditions to his expanding social media audience.

In 2024, the New York Times reported sexual misconduct allegations from two women, which Purja denied strongly through his lawyer at the time, who said they were “false and defamatory”. Purja later denied the allegations again in a lengthy interview.

Before Mingma G met Nims, he was unsure about him: “In the beginning, I had the feeling he was very arrogant.”

That changed five years ago, when their paths crossed as rivals heading to K2, before they decided to climb together and share the record. Mingma G says he came to see Nims as “very kind-hearted, one of the most beautiful human beings I’ve met”.

Over the years, the two met on mountains around the world: Nims “would always be on Everest”.

This summer they met again, entering the Karakoram range before splitting up for separate climbs. Nims went to Broad Peak and Mingma G to K2, about 8km (five miles) apart.

Nims asked Mingma G to wait one more day so they could meet again before setting off on their separate missions, but that meeting never took place.

“That was the last thing he told me. I still regret it.”

On 30 July, “we had perfect weather, sunshine, no winds,” Mingma G says.

By then, he was leading a team up K2. Nims’s climbing group had joined others to form a larger team of 10 heading up Broad Peak.

At 08:30, Mingma G spoke with Kili Pemba Sherpa — better known as Kilu — a childhood friend and skilled climber in Nims’s group. Kilu said the snow conditions looked good, and they agreed to speak again once they both reached the next camp on their respective mountains.

The BBC spoke to two trekkers who saw the climbers ascending Broad Peak. “We were cheering them on,” one says. He took a photo of them on the slope, tiny figures against the snow.

The group kept climbing. But less than an hour later, one trekker says there was a “thundercrack”: “a huge avalanche, starting from the top going down both sides of Broad Peak”.

“We were hoping and praying that the climbers were above the avalanche,” the first trekker continues. But they could no longer see the silhouettes on the slope.

The trekkers’ guide informed base camp about what they had seen.

The avalanche’s cause is still under investigation, but the Alpine Club of Pakistan told the BBC that although there had been heavy snow earlier that week, its initial research indicated the disaster was caused by the collapse of an ice slab, regardless of snowfall.

By the time Mingma G reached the next camp on K2, his team still had not heard from the Broad Peak climbers. They were not alarmed, because climbers often switch off their radios to conserve battery.

But he felt uneasy.

One of the Broad Peak climbers, Wang Zhong, was a close friend and client. He would usually send Mingma G a message through his Garmin satellite tracker to say he had safely reached the next camp. This time, there was no message.

Far below, Pakistani mountain guide Waqar Ali says he was also trying to reach the group, but without success. He thought they might have been sleeping, preparing for a final push to the summit that night.

But by 15:00, no one at base camp had made contact with the Broad Peak group.

Mingma G was 7,300m up on K2, where communication was difficult. His team began calling officials, relatives, contacts in Kathmandu and anyone else who might have been in touch with the climbers.

He says it was probably 20:00 when they first learned that the altitude readings from the Broad Peak climbers’ trackers had dropped sharply: one had fallen by about 1,600m.

It was too late to climb and too dark to send up a drone, so he chose to wait for daylight. “I had hope,” Mingma G says. Especially for Kilu and Nims, who were “experienced and physically… strong”.

Early the next morning, a drone was launched and soon afterward the operator radioed them. The drone had found bodies on the mountain. It appeared there were no survivors.

“I was totally blank,” Mingma G says quietly.

Mingma G says they did not find Nims’s Garmin watch on his body.

He was not yet ready to accept that he had lost so many close friends at once.

“Maybe still I had a feeling they might all be alive [and] wanted somebody to help them get down. That was just something I had in my heart and mind.”

Later that day, Mingma G called off his K2 expedition.

At the base of Broad Peak, Waqar cried as he arrived with another climber to begin the difficult task of recovering the bodies.

They recovered the bodies of Nadhira Al Harthy, the first Omani woman to climb Everest, and Pur Bahadur Gurung, a Nepalese climber who had reached the summits of 12 of the world’s 14 highest peaks.

But more bodies remained on the mountain, and Mingma G was determined to bring his friends home.

When he phoned Nims’s wife and brother-in-law to share the tragic news, he says they found it hard to believe. Kilu’s wife “couldn’t say much, but told me: ‘don’t leave your brother on the mountain’”.

Planning the next stage of the recovery mission was difficult.

The climbers who had been ascending K2 with Mingma G were unsettled, he says, and under pressure from their families to return home.

Then there were the practical problems. From the drone images, Mingma G believed the bodies could be recovered by helicopter using a long-line rope, but he says he was told that would not be possible. “In Nepal it would have taken like two minutes,” he says.

The Pakistani army, which would have supplied the helicopters, did not respond to the BBC’s questions. The Alpine Club of Pakistan says a request made on 1 August was approved, but bad weather prevented it from being carried out for days.

For Mingma G, there was only one remaining option: a recovery mission on foot.

On 1 August, Mingma G says his rescue team set out to search for four bodies they believed they had seen in the drone images — those of Nims, Kilu, Zhong and another climber, Nima Sherpa. Gyaljen Sherpa would also be found nearby.

Because the slope was so unstable, there was a danger of falling rocks and further avalanches. A larger team could mean more casualties, but a smaller one would struggle to bring the bodies down.

As soon as the rescue team reached the bodies and began lowering them on ropes, another avalanche struck, he says.

The rush of snow sent one body to the bottom. Three others, including Nims, ended up in a more dangerous spot — in the middle of a slope with large pillars of glacial ice precariously balanced on the left and right. If either side collapsed while the rescuers were trying to reach the bodies, the ice tower could sweep them away.

The team needed a new plan. As the days went on, some members began to leave. Their number fell from nine to six, then four.

Because the slope was so dangerous, the group decided Mingma G would stay back and monitor by drone while directing the three climbers. The exhausting operation took five to six hours, but they eventually managed to bring the bodies down the slope.

The moment Mingma G first saw his friends on the mountain still troubles him.

Nims and Kilu had covered their faces with their jackets — Mingma G believes they had seen the deadly avalanche coming and prepared themselves. The two were tied to the same rope, with their legs wrapped in it. Mingma G thinks they may have struck each other on the way down — which he fears killed them rather than the fall.

“They didn’t fall that much, almost 500m. But unfortunately they hit each other a lot, I think. If they were not on the rope, maybe there was a possibility that Nims and Kilu might have survived.”

The team brought the bodies down the mountain. They were flown by helicopter to the nearby city of Skardu, then to the capital Islamabad and finally home to their families.

Pakistani mountaineer Sohail Sakhi’s body was found a few days later, as was the body of American climber Mallory Geis. The body of Nepalese climber Nawang Thindu Sherpa remains on the mountain.

The bodies of Nims, Kilu and Gyaljen Sherpa arrived in Kathmandu on 11 August.

Nims’s family says they are deeply thankful to the “extraordinary team led by our brother, Mingma G, who worked in incredibly challenging conditions to bring Nimsdai home”.

This recovery mission has stayed with Mingma G. He says it is unlike any other mission he has ever carried out.

Looking back with deep sadness, he feels his career may be nearing its end.

Memories of Kilu and Nims — the three of them singing together as they climbed toward the summit of a freezing but sunny K2 a few years ago — will always remain with him.

But, he says, “I’m not sure if it helps, if the memory helps me to keep climbing or it makes me stop.”