Watch: Mingma G recalls the climb to bring home the bodies of his friends
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.
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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 embarked on a difficult journey after learning his good friends had died
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.
Nirmal Purja was an accomplished mountaineer who put Nepalese climbers on the map
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."
Mingma G's old friend Kilu was among those who climbed Broad Peak with Nims
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.
Trekkers saw these climbers from Nims's group near the summit of Broad Peak
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.
Watch: Moment deadly avalanche crashes down Broad Peak
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.
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.
