At around 9 a.m. local time on July 30, 2026, an avalanche broke loose on the west-facing gully of Broad Peak, somewhere near 6,600 meters, on the stretch between Camp 2 and Camp 3. Ten climbers were on that slope. It swept all of them down the mountain, some of them more than a vertical kilometre. By July 31st the mountaineering community had retrieved the bodies of 3 climbers (partial remains of one climber) whilst the remaining climbers had been located by drone footage. By August 1, it was clear that none of them survived.

I’ve read the reports a dozen times now, and they don’t get any easier. Most teams had already abandoned Broad Peak that season. Heavy snowfall had blanketed the mountain from around July 22 onward, and climbers who’d been camped below it for a month, watching the slopes, had made the call to pack up and go home. Conditions needed days of stability to let the new snow either bond to the mountain or slide off it safely. Neither had happened yet. A handful of teams stayed anyway, chasing a closing window. Why, exactly, is still not fully clear, and probably never will be.

The ten climbers on the mountain were a mix of guides, high altitude sherpas and clients; Nirmal “Nims” Purja, Sohail Sakhi, Mallory Geis, Wang Zhong, Kili Pemba Sherpa, Nima Sherpa, Nawang Thindu Sherpa, Gyalu Sherpa, Nadhira Al Harthy, and Pur Bahadur Gurung (Yukta)

Nims by far the most famous amongst the group was the closest thing high-altitude mountaineering had to a household name since 2019, when he climbed all fourteen of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks in 189 days, a record that used to take the better part of a decade. Netflix turned it into “14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible” and made him rockstar famous well outside the small mountaineering world.

Nims briefly spoke of climbing Broad Peak to complete a second full round of the 8,000ers without supplemental oxygen. He posted before he went up: “Broad Peak, I ask for nothing but safe passage up and back down.” Sohail Sakhi a friend of mine (we climbed Kanchenjunga together in April/May of 2026) was a Pakistani climber guiding for Moving Mountains. Mallory Geis (American) client, Wang Zhong (Chinese) client and Nadhira Al Harthy an (Omani) client . Yukta had spent years working the highest peaks in the world and, only last fall, had helped support Jim Morrison’s first ski descent of Everest’s Hornbein Couloir. Kili Pemba, Nima, Nawang Thindu, and Gyalu were part of the Nepali team climbing alongside Nims. These were not amateurs, they were skilled, experienced and had dozens of accents of 8,000m peaks.

What struck the mountaineering community so hard wasn’t just the scale of it; ten people, in one avalanche, on one mountain, in one morning, though that alone would have been enough. It was who they were. These weren’t reckless climbers with summit fever. They were experienced technically proficient by every account. If the mountain could take climbers like that, the old comforting logic that skill and humility and experience offer real protection stops holding up.

Yes, it was an accident, an avalanche. But we still ask: did they do something wrong? Did their luck simply run out, one too many rolls of the die? Or did they just stay on a mountain whose season was ending? What do the rest of us take from this? We who watch, who climb, who have people we love that dread these moments, who don’t sleep wondering if you’ll come home?

What can we learn from this?

Is it even too early to ask?

What happened?

I’ve spent the days since looking for some kind of certainty, a lesson, a way to make this make sense so I can keep doing what I love, so I can look my family in the eye and justify it. I haven’t found one. What I have found is a mixed bag of raw emotions: sometimes gratitude, that I got to know these climbers and walk alongside them; sometimes shock, straight through to tears; sometimes anger. Sometimes I want every why answered. Why did the rescue take so long to be initiated, where were they on the mountain so late in the season, why, why, why and a whole list of other questions with no answers behind them.

I don’t know what the right answer is anymore. Whether any of us can keep asking these mountains for safe passage and mean it, when passage isn’t always granted no matter how it’s asked for.

I know the mountain doesn’t negotiate. She is, after all, a goddess, a deity in her own right, with her own agenda. And maybe that’s the lesson here: that it all comes down to fate and destiny, to the goddess knowing when your time is up, when this is your final lesson, your last summit, your last breath.

Maybe we’re simply not meant to see the bigger picture.

What this story does demand of us is this: nature always has the last say, and we have to walk toward her in humility. She doesn’t care about your resume, your climbing skills, your followers. She simply is, and sometimes what she takes is far more than anyone would ever choose to give.

Rest in peace to Nims, Sohail, Mallory, Wang Zhong, Kili Pemba, Nima, Nawang Thindu, Gyalu, Nadhira, and Yukta.

Thank you for showing so many of us what it actually looks like to do this well.

Rest in Peace

Caroline