Broad Peak Archive - Adventure Mountain

8. August 202511. August 2025

Pakistan: When a body needs to be retrieved from the mountain

The six-thousander Laila Peak in the Karakoram

Following the tragic death of German mountaineer Laura Dahlmeier on the 6,096-meter-high Laila Peak in the Karakoram in Pakistan, many are asking themselves: Should the body of the deceased be recovered after all? Or should her last will be respected?

Laura had written in her will that her body should remain on the mountain if others had to risk their lives to recover it.

This was exactly the case immediately after Dahlmeier’s death: the rockfall that had claimed Laura’s life at around 5,700 meters continued and would have posed a potentially fatal danger to the members of a recovery team.

And if conditions on the mountain improve? Even then, it would remain a dangerous undertaking, Dan Stretch of the US organization Global Rescue informs me.

25. July 202525. July 2025

Waiting for a good weather window on K2

K2, the second highest mountain on earth (in 2004)

The weather in the Karakoram is not making things easy for commercial expedition teams this summer season. First, extremely dry weather caused an increased risk of rockfall, and now snowfall is slowing the teams down. The teams have to be patient in their base camps at the foot of K2 (8,611 m) and Broad Peak (8,051 m).

No summit successes have been reported from either of the two eight-thousanders this summer. A brief window of good weather may open up over the weekend, making summit attempts possible.

12. July 20252. October 2025

Denis Urubko and Maria Cardell report: New route on Nanga Parbat

The Diamir sde fo Nanga Parbat — The Diamir side of Nanga Parbat

“On 10 July at 11:30 a.m. local time, we stood on the summit of Nanga Parbat after climbing it via a new route in alpine style,” Denis Urubko wrote yesterday to the Russian mountaineering portal mountain.ru. “Maria and I are happy.”

Urubko and his Spanish wife Maria “Pipi” Cardell had already travelled to Pakistan at the beginning of June to acclimatize for their project on the 8,125-meter-high Nanga Parbat. Their goal: a new route through the Diamir Face, the western flank of the ninth highest mountain on earth. In alpine style, i.e. without bottled oxygen, without fixed ropes, without fixed high camps and without high altitude porters.

9. July 20259. July 2025

Dry, drier, Karakoram

The eight-thousander Broad Peak in Pakistan (in 2004)

“Two days ago, above base camp, Ismail Akbarov from Azerbaijan was hit by a stone. This was his first ascent, and it also marked the end of his expedition. The impact damaged his tibia so that he had to be flown by helicopter to Skardu,” wrote Lukasz Supergan from Poland, who is attempting the 8,051-meter-high Broad Peak in the Karakoram in Pakistan this summer, on Instagram yesterday. He himself decided to start in the middle of the night rather than in the morning so as not to kick rocks loose and endanger those climbing below him.

Not only from Broad Peak, but also frp, neighboring K2 and the other eight-thousanders in Pakistan, Gasherbrum I, Gasherbrum II and Nanga Parbat, exceptionally dry conditions on the mountain are currently reported, accompanied by an increased risk of falling rocks. The usual precipitation has largely failed to materialize so far. Nevertheless, light snowfall is expected in the Karakoram in the coming days.

21. September 202421. September 2024

Pioneer of alpinism: Hermann Buhl was born 100 years ago

“Clearly the best all-round mountaineer in the world” in his time was the Austrian Hermann Buhl, Reinhold Messner once told me. “Buhl was at least 50 years ahead of his time.”

Buhl achieved the first ascents of two eight-thousanders in Pakistan: Nanga Parbat in 1953 and Broad Peak in 1957 – without bottled oxygen. Only his companion from Broad Peak, the Austrian Kurt Diemberger succeeded who was also the first to climb Dhaulagiri, achieved this feat.