Rescuers resumed searching for several missing climbers on Saturday, two days after an avalanche struck Pakistan’s Broad Peak, one of the world’s highest mountains, according to the regional police and officials with the Alpine Club of Pakistan. The British-Nepali mountaineer Nirmal Purja was among those unaccounted for.
The rescue operation resumed early in the morning and includes experienced Sherpas from various expeditions, Pakistani military personnel and high-altitude rescue specialists, according to Ayaz Shigri, an official with the Alpine Club of Pakistan.
Regional officials in Gilgit-Balchistan, where Broad Peak is, said on Friday that four bodies had been recovered on Friday. On Saturday, however, they revised that number to three.
They were Nadhira Alharthy, the first Omani woman to summit Mount Everest; Sarah Mallory Geis, an American climber; and Pur Bahadur Gurung, a Nepali climber who was part of an expedition led by Mr. Purja, according to the regional officials.
The statement on Saturday said only part of Ms. Geis’s body had been recovered, along with her bag, and the search for the rest of her remains was continuing.
It said Ms. Alharthy’s body was transported to Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, and “handed over to the Embassy of Oman today for onward transportation.” Mr. Gurung’s body was expected to be transported to the Nepalese embassy on Sunday.
The 10 climbers, spread in four teams, had set off for Broad Peak’s summit in the early hours of Thursday morning.
By 9 a.m. local time, the tour operators had lost contact with the climbers, but the first reports of an avalanche only surfaced on Thursday evening, while the team was at an approximate altitude of 6,600 meters, according to the regional commissioner’s office.
The search and rescue operation started on Friday morning, nearly 24 hours after the climbers had lost contact. Regional officials said on Friday that rescuers had spotted the bodies of some of the climbers using drone footage, helping narrow the search area.
The missing climbers include Mr. Purja, 43, who is known for climbing all 14 of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks in record time in 2019, a project that was chronicled in a 2021 Netflix documentary. Also missing are Sohail Sakhi, a renowned Pakistani alpinist who was guiding Ms. Geis; Wang Zhong, a Chinese climber; and Kili Pema Sherpa, a Nepali guide.
Broad Peak is the world’s 12th highest mountain, with a summit of 8,047 meters (26,400 feet) above sea level. It lies near Pakistan’s border with China in the Karakoram mountain range, and close to K2, the world’s second-highest mountain.
Francesca Regalado contributed reporting.
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