When an avalanche killed climber Nirmal Purja, his friends faced the hardest mission of all

As he picked his way past the frozen slope towards two bodies, Mingma Gyalje Sherpa knew his friends were gone.

Together, the three of them had climbed the world's highest peaks, under crisp mountain skies and in treacherous snowstorms. Nirmal Purja and Kili Pemba Sherpa were two of the strongest climbers Mingma G had ever known.

But this July, an avalanche swept through Pakistan's Broad Peak while the two were on their way up, engulfing everything in its path.

The drone images seemed clear: no-one had survived.

And yet, as Mingma G came closer to the fluorescent down suits, sharp against the snow, he couldn't shake the idea they were waiting for him.

"I told them: 'It's ok. You don't have to be here in the cold anymore.'"

Speaking to the BBC in Islamabad, he recalls the terrible moment he reached for their bodies.

Holding one of them, he promised: "I'm here to take you guys home."

Mingma G and Nirmal Purja met in Pakistan in 2021, where they were part of the first team to summit the world's second-highest mountain, K2, during winter.

Mingma G knew of Nirmal - or Nims, as he was known - from his Netflix documentary 14 Peaks, in which he successfully climbed the world's 14 highest mountains in just over six months.

The pair, both avid climbers from Nepal, had taken different paths.

Mingma G came from the Sherpa community and built his reputation as a mountain guide over 20 years. Nims was a former Gurkha and British Special Forces soldier who quickly became one of the world's best-known mountaineers.

Many saw Nims as an incredible climber who helped Nepalese climbers gain international recognition in a field dominated by foreigners. But he also had his critics: they said he focused too much on records, and on marketing his expeditions to a growing social media following.

In 2024 the New York Times published sexual misconduct allegations from two women, which Purja strongly denied through his lawyer at the time, who said they were "false and defamatory". Purja again denied the allegations in a lengthy interview soon after.

Before Mingma G met Nims, he wasn't sure about him: "In the beginning, I had the feeling he was very arrogant."

But that changed when their paths crossed five years ago, as competitors on their way to K2, who then decided to climb the mountain together and share the record. Mingma G says he found Nims to be "very kind-hearted, one of the most beautiful human beings I've met".

Over the years the two would meet on various mountains around the world: Nims "would always be on Everest".

This summer they met again, walking into the Karakoram range, before they would split up for different climbs. Nims headed for Broad Peak and Mingma G for K2, around 8km (five miles) apart.

Nims asked Mingma G to wait another day so they could meet once more before embarking on these separate missions, but that meeting never happened.

"That was the last thing he told me. I still regret it."

On 30 July, "we had perfect weather, sunshine, no winds," Mingma G says.

By then, he was leading a team up K2. Nims's team of climbers had joined others to form a larger group of 10 that was making its way up Broad Peak.

At 08:30, Mingma G spoke to Kili Pemba Sherpa - better known as Kilu - a childhood friend and expert climber in Nims's group. Snow conditions looked good, Kilu had said, and the two agreed to speak again when they both reached the next camp on their respective mountains.

The BBC spoke to two trekkers who spotted the climbers scaling Broad Peak. "We were cheering them on," one says. He took a photo of them on the slope, small silhouettes against the snow.

The group continued ascending. But less than an hour later, there was a "thundercrack", the other trekker says: "a huge avalanche, starting from the top going down both sides of Broad Peak".

"We were hoping and praying that the climbers were above the avalanche," the first trekker continues. But they couldn't see the silhouettes on the slope.

The trekkers' guide notified base camp about what they had witnessed.

The cause of the avalanche is still being investigated, but the Alpine Club of Pakistan told the BBC that while it had snowed heavily earlier that week, their initial research suggested that it was caused by the collapse of an ice slab, irrespective of snowfall.

By the time Mingma G reached the next camp on K2, his team had not heard from the Broad Peak climbers. They didn't panic because climbers often turn off the radio to save battery life.

One of the Broad Peak climbers, Wang Zhong, was a close friend and a client. He would normally message Mingma G through his Garmin satellite tracker to let him know he'd arrived safely at the next camp. But there was no message from him.

Thousands of metres below, Pakistani mountain guide Waqar Ali says he was also trying to contact the group, but to no avail. He thought they may have been sleeping, in preparation for a final push towards the summit that night.

But by 15:00, no-one at base camp had had any contact with the group on Broad Peak.

Mingma G was 7,300m up on K2, where communication was difficult. His team started calling officials, families, contacts in Kathmandu and anyone who might have been in touch with the climbers.

He says it was probably 20:00 when they first heard that the altitude readings from the Broad Peak climbers' trackers had dramatically fallen: one of them had dropped by around 1,600m.

It was too late to climb and too dark to send up a drone, so he decided to wait for sunrise. "I had hope," Mingma G says. Especially for Kilu and Nims, who were "experienced and physically… strong".

Early next morning, a drone was sent up and soon after, the operator radioed them. The drone had spotted bodies down the mountain. It looked like there were no survivors.

"I was totally blank," Mingma G recalls in a low voice.

Image caption, Purja's coordinates according to Garmin's data. Mingma G says they did not find Nims's Garmin watch on his body

He wasn't quite ready to accept he had lost so many dear friends at once.

"Maybe still I had a feeling they might all be alive [and] wanted somebody to help them get down. That was just something I had in my heart and mind."

Later that day, Mingma G called off his K2 expedition.

Down at the base of Broad Peak, Waqar wept as he arrived with another climber to start the difficult job of bringing the bodies back.

They retrieved the bodies of Nadhira Al Harthy, the first Omani woman to climb Everest, and Pur Bahadur Gurung, a Nepalese climber who had summited 12 of the world's 14 highest peaks.

But there were still bodies on the mountain and Mingma G was determined to bring his friends home.

When he called Nims's wife and brother-in-law to tell them the tragic news, he says they struggled to believe it. Kilu's wife "couldn't say much, but told me: 'don't leave your brother on the mountain'".

Organising the next steps of the recovery mission was complicated.

The climbers who'd been heading up K2 with Mingma G were unsettled, he says, and facing pressure from their families to go home.

Then there were the logistics. From the drone images, Mingma G thought the bodies could be recovered using a helicopter and a long-line rope, but says he was told this wouldn't be possible. "In Nepal it would have taken like two minutes," he says.

The Pakistani army which would have provided the helicopters didn't respond to the BBC's questions. The Alpine Club of Pakistan says a request made on 1 August was approved, but poor weather meant it could not be carried out for days.

There was only one other option for Mingma G - a recovery operation on foot.

On 1 August, Mingma G says, his team of rescuers set off in search of four bodies they believed they'd seen in the drone shots - those of Nims, Kilu, Zhong and a fellow climber called Nima Sherpa. Gyaljen Sherpa would also be discovered nearby.

With the slope so unstable, there was a risk of falling rocks and further avalanches. A larger team could potentially lead to more casualties, but a smaller team would struggle to bring the bodies down.

The moment the rescue team reached the bodies and began sending them down on ropes, another avalanche hit, he says.

The torrent of snow sent one of the bodies down to the bottom. Three others, including Nims, ended up in a more dangerous position - in the centre of a slope with large pillars of glacial ice precariously balanced to the left and right. If either were to collapse while the rescue team were trying to reach the bodies, the tower of ice could sweep them away.

The team needed a new plan. As the days progressed, some of its members started leaving. Their numbers went from nine to six, then four.

Given how precarious the slope was, the group decided Mingma G would hang back and monitor by drone, instructing the three climbers. The arduous operation took five to six hours, but they finally managed to bring the bodies back down the slope.

The moment Mingma G first saw his friends on the mountain still haunts him.

Nims and Kilu had covered their faces with their jackets - Mingma G believes they had seen the deadly avalanche coming and prepared. The two were attached to the same rope, their legs wrapped in it. Mingma G thinks they may have hit each other on the way down - which he fears killed them rather than the fall.

"They didn't fall that much, almost 500m. But unfortunately they hit each other a lot, I think. If they were not on the rope, maybe there was a possibility that Nims and Kilu might have survived."

The team brought the bodies back down the mountain. They were flown by helicopter to the nearby city of Skardu, then on to the capital Islamabad and finally, home to their families.

Pakistani mountaineer Sohail Sakhi's body was found a few days later, as was the body of American climber Mallory Geis. The body of Nepalese climber Nawang Thindu Sherpa remains on the mountain.

Nims's family say they are deeply grateful to the "extraordinary team led by our brother, Mingma G, who worked in incredibly challenging conditions to bring Nimsdai home".

This recovery operation has stayed with Mingma G. It doesn't compare to any other mission he has done.

As he looks back with deep sorrow, he feels the end of his career could be coming.

Memories of Kilu and Nims - the three of them singing together as they marched up to the summit of a freezing but sunny K2 a few years ago - will always be with him.

But, he says, "I'm not sure if it helps, if the memory helps me to keep climbing or it makes me stop."