Broad Peak Avalanche Kills 10, Mountain’s Deadliest Disaster in 70 Years
Updated
Updated · ExplorersWeb · Aug 7
Broad Peak Avalanche Kills 10, Mountain’s Deadliest Disaster in 70 Years
3 articles · Updated · ExplorersWeb · Aug 7
Summary
Ten climbers died in the July 30 avalanche on 8,051-meter Broad Peak, making it the deadliest disaster ever recorded on the Pakistan-China border mountain.
The slide struck a route long exposed to avalanche danger, especially between Camps 2 and 3, where storms can load unstable snow and sweep climbers 800 to 1,600 meters downhill within minutes.
Broad Peak’s fatalities have historically come in smaller clusters from avalanches, falls, exhaustion, altitude illness and disappearances, with many deaths occurring on descent after successful summits.
Past avalanche deaths on the mountain included single climbers in 1985, 1988 and 2015, and two climbers in 1997, underscoring how unusual the 10-fatality scale was for Broad Peak.
Even so, the disaster remains below some of mountaineering’s worst avalanche losses, including 43 deaths on Lenin Peak in 1990, 17 on Kawagarbo in 1991 and 16 Sherpas on Everest in 2014.