A 10-member climbing party that includes a woman from Texas has vanished on Pakistan’s Broad Peak after an avalanche swept across the mountain, with famed Nepalese mountaineer Nirmal Purja leading the expedition. One veteran American alpinist who knows the terrain told The Post he worried the peak may have turned into a deadly trap.
The group was hit by a snowslide around midday Thursday while moving across Broad Peak, a 26,400-foot giant in the Karakoram range, the Alpine Club of Pakistan said.
According to officials, Purja was guiding a team that included Mallory Geis of Texas, Sohail Sakhi of Hunza, an Omani climber, a Chinese climber identified only as “Mr. Wang,” another foreign climber whose name has not been released, and five mountaineers from Nepal.
Purja, 43, is a former Royal Marine and one of the best-known figures in high-altitude climbing. The Nepal-born adventurer gained worldwide attention for summiting all 14 of the planet’s highest peaks, a feat chronicled in the Netflix documentary “14 Peaks: Nothing is Impossible.”
No contact has been made with the climbers on the world’s 12th-highest mountain, prompting authorities to launch a major search-and-rescue operation in the remote region.
Napier Sandford Fuller, a 53-year-old high-altitude climber who led a Broad Peak expedition just last week, told The Post on Thursday that the recent weather pattern raised serious concerns.
“It had been raining every day, which means that at high altitude, it would have been snowing,” Fuller said.
“I remember thinking, sh-t, they’re going to have a hell of a problem because if it’s raining … for a week straight, it’s going to have a huge snow load on that mountain,” he added.
The dad of four is no stranger to dangers while climbing the same mountain.
He said he had a near-death experience on the mountain while leading the team under a contract with Seven Summit Treks, a Nepalese travel company that organizes expeditions on high-altitude peaks.
As he reached 26,000 feet up the summit ridge of Broad Peak, a fixed rope anchor snapped and sent him into a free fall — a “terrifying” incident he said was nearly fatal.
“Usually that would be fatal, but I was able to do what’s called self-arrest. You flip a few times and then just grab the snow and kick your feet in like a little freight train; you just stop,” he said.
After the distressing ordeal and concerns about the equipment’s quality on the mountain, Fuller and his sherpa decided not to scale the remaining vertical gap.
A picture taken by the climber captured Geis, a travel photographer based in San Antonio who is a member of the missing group, camped out on a mountain ridge.
Geis struggled with altitude sickness during an initial attempt to ascend Broad Peak — her first try at climbing a mountain of that monstrous height, Fuller said.
Fuller was Geis in her previous climb as they stopped at campsites to acclimate to the altitude.
Geis hesitated about going up the mountain a second time but was convinced by a local guide that she was strong enough to do it.
“Mallory, she’s a Texan, a real nice young lady, her first 8,000 [meter],” Fuller said. I was talking to her like she didn’t want to climb an 8,000 … and met this guy, the guide, he’s a local, and he convinced her that she was strong enough to climb an eight. But it’s not really her idea at all.”
The Alpine Club of Pakistan said in a statement that “every possible effort” was being made to secure helicopter support and that “all available resources are mobilized at the earliest opportunity.”
The Post has contacted the Alpine Club of Pakistan for further comment.
