Nepal mourns Nirmal Purja after deadly Broad Peak avalanche

Nepal was mourning Nirmal Purja after Elite Expeditions confirmed the 43-year-old mountaineer had died in an avalanche on Broad Peak in Pakistan’s Gilgit-Baltistan region. The avalanche struck on July 30 during a climbing expedition led by Purja, who was widely known as Nims Dai.

Purja’s name carried weight far beyond one mountain. In 2019, he became the first person to climb all 14 of the world’s 8,000-metre peaks in less than seven months, completing the feat under his Project Possible challenge. His profile expanded worldwide after the 2021 Netflix documentary 14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible brought his record-setting run to a mass audience.

Broad Peak, in the Karakoram range, is the world’s 12th-highest mountain, and the conditions there were already severe enough that other expeditions had left the mountain because of heavy snowfall before the avalanche hit. Reports on July 31 and Aug. 1 said Purja and nine other climbers were killed, with some bodies recovered while search efforts continued for others. The expedition included climbers from multiple countries.

Elite Expeditions confirmed Purja’s death and said the loss was met with profound sadness and immense heartbreak. For Nepal, that confirmation landed like more than the death of a famous athlete. Purja had become one of the country’s most visible symbols of Himalayan ambition, a former British Army soldier whose speed record and film fame helped turn a Sherpa-dominated, risk-heavy profession into a globally recognized story of Nepali achievement.

His death also laid bare the price of that visibility. Nepal has long drawn prestige from the mountains that tower over it, and climbers like Purja have become central to that national image, carrying the country’s name onto some of the world’s most dangerous routes. Broad Peak, like so many Himalayan and Karakoram peaks, offers that acclaim only alongside constant exposure to avalanches, snowfall and altitude, hazards that do not stop at the border and do not spare the climbers who built their reputations on them.