For veteran Nepalese mountaineer Mingma Gyalje Sherpa, the journey up Pakistan’s Broad Peak last July was not one of summiting or record-breaking. It was a mission of loyalty: to bring home the bodies of two of his closest climbing companions, Nirmal “Nims” Purja and Kili Pemba “Kilu” Sherpa, who had been swallowed by a sudden avalanche on the mountain’s upper slopes.
When Mingma G picked his way across the wind-scoured frozen slope toward the two distant shapes, he already knew his friends would not be coming back alive. The three had shared decades of climbing memory across the world’s highest peaks, pushing through clear blue summit days and deadly blizzards side by side. Nims and Kilu, both counted among the strongest climbers Mingma G had ever known, had been ascending Broad Peak when the avalanche struck without warning, burying everything in its path. Drone surveys had already confirmed no signs of life. Still, as he drew near to the bright fluorescent down jackets cutting stark against the endless white snow, he could not shake the quiet feeling that they had been waiting for him.
“I told them: ‘It’s ok. You don’t have to be here in the cold anymore,’” Mingma G recalled in an interview with the BBC from Islamabad, his voice thick with grief. As he lifted one of the frozen bodies into his arms, he made a quiet promise: “I’m here to take you guys home.”
The friendship between Mingma G and Nims stretches back to 2021, when the pair crossed paths on Pakistan’s K2, the world’s second-highest peak. At the time, Nims had already earned global fame for his groundbreaking Netflix documentary *14 Peaks*, which chronicled his record-setting feat of climbing all 14 of the world’s 8,000-meter-plus peaks in just over six months. Both native Nepalese climbers, they had taken vastly different paths to the top of the mountaineering world: Mingma G, born into the Sherpa community, had spent 20 years building his reputation as one of the most reliable and skilled high-altitude guides in the industry. Nims, a former Gurkha and British Special Forces soldier, had rapidly risen to become one of the most recognizable figures in global mountaineering, credited with elevating the profile of Nepalese climbers in a sport long dominated by Western narratives. His career was not without controversy, however: critics argued he prioritized record-breaking and social media marketing over traditional mountaineering values, and in 2024, he faced public sexual misconduct allegations that he strongly and repeatedly denied through legal representation.
Mingma G admitted he had misjudged Nims at first, saying “In the beginning, I had the feeling he was very arrogant.” That impression melted away when the two rivals agreed to team up for the historic first winter ascent of K2 that year, and Mingma G quickly came to see him as “very kind-hearted, one of the most beautiful human beings I’ve met.” For years after, their paths crossed again and again on peaks across the globe, with Nims often found pushing for new routes on Mount Everest.
This summer, the pair met once again in the Karakoram Range, preparing for separate expeditions just five miles apart: Nims would lead a team up Broad Peak, while Mingma G would take a client team up K2. Before they split, Nims asked Mingma G to wait one more day for a final meeting before their ascents. That meeting never happened. “That was the last thing he told me. I still regret it,” Mingma G said.
July 30 dawned with ideal climbing conditions: clear sunshine, no wind, perfect snow for ascending. Mingma G was leading his team up K2 when he spoke to Kilu, his childhood friend and a senior climber on Nims’s team, at 8:30 a.m. Kilu reported snow conditions were excellent, and the two agreed to check in again once both parties reached their next planned camps. Two independent trekkers lower on the slope recalled watching Nims’s 10-person combined team climbing toward Broad Peak’s summit, cheering them on as their silhouettes stood small against the vast snowfield.
Less than an hour later, the mountain erupted. A sharp, thunderous crack split the air, and a massive avalanche broke loose from Broad Peak’s summit, tearing down both sides of the mountain. The trekkers waited and prayed the team had climbed above the avalanche path, but the small silhouettes never reappeared. Their guide immediately alerted Broad Peak base camp to the disaster.
Initial investigations by the Alpine Club of Pakistan have found that while the region had seen heavy snowfall earlier that week, the avalanche was triggered by the collapse of a pre-existing ice slab, unrelated to the recent snowfall. The cause remains under formal review.
By the time Mingma G reached his next camp on K2, his team had still received no word from the Broad Peak climbers. Initially, there was no panic: climbers often turn off radios to preserve battery life during ascents. But Mingma G grew increasingly uneasy: one of the missing climbers, Wang Zhong, was a close friend and long-time client who always sent a check-in message via his Garmin satellite tracker after arriving at a new camp. No message came. Lower down the mountain, Pakistani guide Waqar Ali also tried repeatedly to contact the team, with no response. He initially assumed the group was resting ahead of a final summit push that night, but by 3 p.m., base camp had still received no contact from any member of the 10-person team.
Stranded at 7,300 meters on K2 with limited communication, Mingma G began frantically reaching out to government officials, the climbers’ families, and contacts in Kathmandu for any information. It was not until around 8 p.m. that they received devastating data: the altitude readings from the Broad Peak climbers’ satellite trackers had plummeted, with one dropping by more than 1,600 meters in seconds.
It was far too dark and dangerous to launch an immediate rescue or reconnaissance, so Mingma G waited for sunrise, still clinging to hope. “Especially for Kilu and Nims, who were ‘experienced and physically… strong,’” he recalled thinking. At first light, a drone was launched, and within minutes, the operator radioed back: bodies had been spotted on the lower slope, and there were no signs of survivors.
“I was totally blank,” Mingma G said, his voice dropping. Still, he refused to leave his friends on the mountain, driven by the quiet conviction that they might still need help getting down. He immediately called off his own K2 expedition to lead the recovery effort.
By the time Mingma G reached Broad Peak base camp, Waqar and another climber had already recovered two bodies: that of Nadhira Al Harthy, the first Omani woman to summit Everest, and Pur Bahadur Gurung, a veteran Nepalese climber who had conquered 12 of the world’s 14 highest peaks. But the bodies of Nims, Kilu, and three other climbers remained trapped on the unstable upper slope. When Mingma G called Nims’s family to share the news, they struggled to process the loss; Kilu’s wife simply told him, “don’t leave your brother on the mountain.”
Organizing the recovery proved far more complicated than Mingma G had initially expected. The members of his K2 expedition were shaken by the disaster and faced pressure from their own families to return home. Logistically, Mingma G initially believed helicopter recovery with a long-line rope would be possible, a common practice in Nepal that would have taken just minutes to extract the bodies. But helicopter support was not available for the mission. The Alpine Club of Pakistan told the BBC a request for helicopter support filed on August 1 was approved, but persistent poor weather delayed the operation for days. With no other option, Mingma G assembled a small team to carry out the recovery on foot.
On August 1, the team set out to locate the four bodies spotted in drone imagery: Nims, Kilu, Wang Zhong, and Nima Sherpa, with a fifth climber, Gyaljen Sherpa, located nearby. The slope remained extremely unstable, with constant risk of falling rock and secondary avalanches. A large team would increase the risk of more casualties, but a small team faced immense physical challenges moving the heavy bodies down the steep ice.
Disaster struck again just as the team reached the bodies and began lowering them down the slope on ropes: a second avalanche hit. The rush of snow swept one body all the way to the base of the mountain, while three others including Nims came to rest in an even more dangerous position, wedged in the center of a slope flanked by towering, unstable glacial ice pillars. A single shift of either pillar would have sent the entire team tumbling to their deaths. As days passed and conditions worsened, team members began to drop out, their numbers shrinking from nine to six, then to just four.
With the slope too dangerous for a large group, the team agreed Mingma G would stay back to monitor the operation via drone, guiding the three climbing team members toward the bodies. The grueling, high-risk operation took more than five hours, but the team finally succeeded in dragging all recoverable bodies down to the base of the mountain.
The sight of his friends on the mountain still haunts Mingma G. Nims and Kilu had covered their faces with their jackets, leading Mingma G to conclude they had seen the avalanche coming and prepared for the impact. The pair had been tied together on the same rope, with their legs wrapped around it. Mingma G believes the collision of the two men as they tumbled down the slope, not the fall itself, was what killed them: “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.”
After recovery, the bodies were flown by helicopter to the nearby city of Skardu, then to Islamabad, before finally being repatriated to their families in Nepal. In the days after the avalanche, the bodies of Pakistani climber Sohail Sakhi and American climber Mallory Geis were also located and recovered. One climber, Nawang Thindu Sherpa, still remains on the mountain.
Nims’s family released a statement expressing deep gratitude “to the extraordinary team led by our brother, Mingma G, who worked in incredibly challenging conditions to bring Nimsdai home.”
For Mingma G, the recovery mission has left an indelible mark, unlike any other expedition he has completed in his 20-year career. As he grieves his lost friends, he says he is now considering bringing his legendary climbing career to an end. The memory of the three of them singing together as they climbed a sunlit but freezing K2 five years earlier will stay with him forever, but he is unsure what that grief means for his future on the mountains.
“I’m not sure if it helps, if the memory helps me to keep climbing or it makes me stop,” he said.
