An Avalanche Hit Above Camp II in the Middle of the Day The avalanche struck the 10-climber group on Broad Peak, the world's 12th-highest mountain at 8,051 meters (26,414 feet), around midday Thursday, according to Al Jazeera .
It prompted at least one team attempting nearby K2 to abandon its own summit push in the aftermath, according to ExplorersWeb , a sign that the danger was read by other expeditions on the mountain as a broader instability in that week's snowpack rather than a freak, isolated event confined to one slope.
Mallory Geis, 39, of San Antonio, Texas, was on her first attempt at an 8,000-meter peak.
Accounts of the Recovery Operation Genuinely Conflict What happened after the avalanche is where the reporting stops agreeing, and it is worth being direct about that rather than picking whichever version reads cleanest.
China's embassy activated its own emergency response process following news of Wang Zhong's death, according to Global Times, and Elite Exped's own statement confirming Purja's death used a similarly weighted tone, the language of national loss rather than a routine business notice from an expedition company.
An avalanche killed Nirmal 'Nimsdai' Purja and nine other climbers from five countries on Pakistan's Broad Peak last Thursday. Days into recovery efforts, outlets covering the operation still disagree on which bodies, including Purja's, have actually been brought down.