Quick Facts:
- Nirmal Purja feared dead after Broad Peak avalanche, according to a drone sighting reported by Nepal’s The Tourism Times on 31 July 2026
- Four bodies recovered so far, two officially identified: Nadhira Al Harthy of Oman and Pur Bahadur Gurung of Nepal
- Search and rescue teams have not issued formal confirmation of any additional deaths, including Purja’s
- Avalanche struck a 10-member team below Camp III on Broad Peak, Karakoram range, Pakistan, on Thursday, 30 July 2026.
Nirmal Purja feared dead after Broad Peak avalanche is the update now circulating among climbers, journalists and Purja’s own fanbase, after Nepal’s The Tourism Times reported that a drone flown from base camp spotted what appeared to be four bodies just below Camp I on the mountain’s Concordia side. Nirmal Purja, known worldwide as Nimsdai, was among them, alongside Kili Pemba Sherpa, Nima Sherpa and Wang Zhong. The search team reportedly told The Tourism Times that all 10 climbers caught in Thursday’s avalanche are now believed to have perished on that side of the mountain. No government or expedition authority has yet confirmed this formally, and identification of the victims is still incomplete.
This piece pulls together what has been reported over the past 24 hours, what remains officially unconfirmed, and who Nirmal Purja is for readers only now hearing his name.
Where Is Nirmal Purja Right Now?
As of the latest reporting, Purja’s exact location and condition have not been confirmed by any official body. What is known comes from a drone flight coordinated by climbers helping with the search and rescue effort, who told The Tourism Times that four bodies matching Purja, Kili Pemba Sherpa, Nima Sherpa and Wang Zhong were visible just below Camp I, toward the Concordia side of Broad Peak. The Alpine Club of Pakistan has not issued a statement confirming these sightings or identifying any additional bodies beyond the two already named, and officials have repeatedly urged the public to wait for verified information rather than draw conclusions from field reports.
Earlier tracking data offered a small window of hope. GPS devices carried by the climbing team reportedly kept transmitting after the avalanche struck, and Purja’s own tracker showed his position shifting into the early hours of Friday morning. Whether that movement reflected a survivor or simply equipment settling in the snow was never established, and the picture has darkened considerably since.
Is Nirmal Purja Lost, or Has He Been Found?
Strictly speaking, Purja remains classified as missing rather than confirmed dead. The drone report describing bodies “seen to have perished” below Camp I is being treated by climbing outlets as deeply worrying but not final, because no body has been physically recovered or formally identified as his. Two bodies from the wider group of ten have been confirmed: Omani climber Nadhira Al Harthy and Nepali guide Pur Bahadur Gurung, known as Yukta. Both were airlifted to Skardu on Friday. A third body, reportedly a partial recovery believed to belong to the American climber on the team, was also transported, though this too awaits formal confirmation.
That leaves six climbers, including Purja, whose status rests on the drone footage and secondhand accounts from climbers who abandoned their own summit attempts on nearby K2 to assist the search. Mingma David Sherpa, Purja’s business partner at Elite Exped, was reported to be travelling to Pakistan to join the recovery effort directly, alongside two other Nepali climbers.
Has Nimsdai Been Found?
Not officially. What has been reported is a visual sighting from a drone camera, relayed through climbers coordinating with search teams rather than through a government statement or the Alpine Club of Pakistan directly. Search and rescue coverage of high-altitude accidents often moves this way, field reports reaching journalists hours or days before an official body issues a formal statement, and Broad Peak’s harsh weather has already delayed helicopter access for much of the operation. Ground teams have had more success than aircraft so far, which is how the first four bodies were located and partially identified.
Readers should treat “feared dead” as an accurate description of where the story currently stands, not as confirmation. Families, expedition companies and the Nepali government are, by every account so far, still waiting on the same verification the public is.
Did Nims Really Climb 14 Peaks?
Yes, and this is where the scale of the current story becomes clear. Purja completed Project Possible in 2019, summiting all 14 of the world’s 8,000 metre peaks in six months and six days, a record that stood until 2023. He was the first climber to summit Everest, Lhotse and Makalu within 48 hours of each other, and in 2021 he joined a team of nine other Nepali climbers on the first successful winter ascent of K2, a peak that had turned back every previous winter attempt. His achievements were the subject of the Netflix documentary 14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible, released in November 2021, which introduced him to an audience well beyond the mountaineering world and turned Nimsdai into a household name in Nepal and internationally.
Who Is Nirmal Purja?
Nirmal Purja was born on 25 July 1983 in Dana, a village in Myagdi District, in what is now Gandaki Province, Nepal. He served in the British Gurkha regiment and later the UK Special Boat Service before leaving the military in 2018 to pursue mountaineering full time. Within a year he had rewritten the record books, and by 2021 he held both the fastest 14-peak ascent and a share of the first winter K2 summit. He later took Non-Resident Nepali citizenship in 2023 while continuing to hold British nationality, and built Elite Exped, his own expedition company, into one of the most recognisable names in high altitude guiding. He is also known in Nepal for funding welfare initiatives for Sherpas and high altitude porters, including a shelter for porters opened recently in the Everest region.
How Old Is Nimsdai Purja?
Purja turned 43 this year, having been born on 25 July 1983. That means this expedition on Broad Peak came only days after his birthday, and less than a fortnight after he completed an oxygen-free ascent of Gasherbrum II on 21 July, part of what he had been calling his Hat Trick Campaign to climb all 14 eight-thousand-metre peaks three times over.
What Happened on Broad Peak
Broad Peak stands 8,047 metres tall in Pakistan’s Karakoram range, the world’s 12th highest mountain and a close neighbour of K2. On Thursday, 30 July, an avalanche struck a 10-member international team below Camp III as they moved toward the summit. Reports describe two separate slides hitting the group within a short span of each other. Radio and satellite contact with the team was severed almost immediately, and confusion over who had been alerted meant Base Camp did not fully register what had happened until many hours later, delaying the launch of a formal search until Friday morning.
The 10 climbers came from five countries. The Nepali contingent, led by Purja, included Pur Bahadur Gurung, Kili Pemba Sherpa, Nima Sherpa, Gyalu Sherpa and Nawang Thindu Sherpa. The rest of the team comprised Pakistani guide Sohail Sakhi, American climber Mallory Geis, Omani climber Nadhira Al Harthy and Chinese climber Wang Zhong. Three separate outfitters, Elite Exped, Seven Summit Treks and Imagine Nepal Treks, had climbers on the mountain that day, alongside Sakhi guiding independently.
Helicopters were grounded for much of Friday by poor weather over the Karakoram, forcing rescue teams to rely on ground crews and drone flights instead. It was a ground team that recovered the first bodies, while aerial drone footage, first from Mingma G’s team and later from the climbers who spoke to The Tourism Times, has provided the more recent and more troubling sightings near Camp I.
Why the Rescue Has Been So Difficult
Broad Peak sits inside the death zone, the altitude band above roughly 8,000 metres where the human body cannot properly absorb oxygen and begins to fail the longer it remains there. What makes the mountain genuinely dangerous, though, is not technical climbing difficulty. Broad Peak is generally considered less demanding than its infamous neighbour K2, which is precisely why many climbers use it to build toward summiting all 14 eight-thousanders. Its real hazard is weather that turns without warning and slopes above Camp 2 prone to sudden, heavy avalanches.
The mountain’s history reflects that. In 2013, three Iranian climbers died descending after reaching the summit. In 2021, a Russian American climber died attempting a solo winter push after refusing to turn back with his teammate. Pakistan’s worst mountaineering disaster remains the 2008 K2 avalanche that killed 11 climbers in a single incident. This week’s events sit inside that same pattern, one where isolation and sudden weather, not technical grade, tend to decide the outcome.
What Nepal Is Saying
Given that six of the ten missing climbers are Nepali, this has become a national story as much as an international one. Nepal’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said its embassy in Islamabad is coordinating directly with Pakistani authorities, including the Alpine Club of Pakistan, to support the search. China’s foreign ministry has also said it is working to verify details and offered assistance to Pakistan, given Wang Zhong’s involvement. Climbers who abandoned their own K2 summit attempts to help with the search, including American guide Benny Lieber, have been credited by Nepali and Pakistani outlets alike for redirecting resources toward Broad Peak at a critical moment.
Social media reaction inside Nepal has been immediate and emotional, with tributes to Purja circulating even before any official confirmation, a reflection of how central his story has become to how Nepal sees itself on the world mountaineering stage over the past six years.
What Happens Next
Search and rescue operations remain active, and every outlet reporting on this story, from Kathmandu Post to Al Jazeera to The Tourism Times itself, has repeated the same caution: nothing is confirmed until the Alpine Club of Pakistan or Nepal’s government says so directly. Ground teams are expected to keep working the debris field, weather permitting, and identification of the bodies already recovered is ongoing. Whether the four figures seen near Camp I are formally recovered, and whether they match the drone sighting, will likely be the next confirmed update in this story.
For readers following the wider context of high altitude risk in this region, our guide to what actually happens inside the death zone on Mount Everest explains why altitude itself, not technical skill, is so often the deciding factor in accidents like this one. Our piece on the most dangerous stretches of Everest’s climbing routes covers similar terrain hazards on a different 8,000 metre peak, and our look at a recent Himalayan trekking fraud case is a reminder that scrutiny of expedition safety and communication protocols has been building across the region well before this week.
This is a developing story, and details here reflect verified and reported information as of 31 July 2026. Figures, identifications and the status of missing climbers may change as search and rescue operations continue.
Sources: The Tourism Times, Al Jazeera, CNN, Kathmandu Post, ExplorersWeb, Planetmountain.com, Wikipedia