Timestamps:

0:00 - Murad Sadpara: the rock where the mountain is already over
19:48 - Pete Thexton: the doctor who died of what he knew best
34:07 - Éric Escoffier: back to the mountains after the paralysis
48:58 - Kim Hong-bin: the last eight-thousander and the broken rope
1:05:01 - Sharif Sadpara: the cornice that gave way
1:18:00 - Poland 1975: five on the summit, two came back
1:34:33 - Cristina Castagna: the nurse and the false summit
1:50:30 - Zuzana Hofmannová: the last of thirteen on the summit
2:04:36 - Markus Kronthaler: the year that passed between two summits
2:21:32 - Vlado Plulík: when the truth disappears too

Broad Peak, 8,051 meters, is the twelfth-highest eight-thousander on the planet. Commercial expedition catalogs sell it as the most accessible peak in the Karakoram: a training eight-thousander, a rehearsal before K2, with which it shares a base camp on the Godwin-Austen Glacier. The statistics tell a different story. The mountain has two summits separated by 1.5 km of corniced ridge, and that stretch — about 40 minutes each way — is where almost everything is decided. Broad Peak doesn’t kill on the way up. It kills on the descent.

In this documentary, we examine 10 stories that unfolded on this mountain between 1975 and 2024: the first ascent of the central summit, which cost a Polish expedition three lives; a British doctor; a star of French mountaineering who returned to high altitude after being partially paralyzed; the first disabled climber to complete all 14 eight-thousanders; Pakistani high-altitude porters; an Italian nurse; a Czech mountaineer; and an Austrian whose brother brought him down from 8,000 meters a year later.

All information comes from expedition reports, alpine club publications, and media from the climbers’ home countries. Accounts we were unable to verify are identified as such in the video.