Tomek Mackiewicz and Nanga Parbat: a Shakespearean mountaineering tragedy

Pakistan’s Nanga Parbat (8,125m), the world’s ninth-highest mountain, has had its share of strange tragedies. It was the first 8,000m peak to take a climber’s life in 1895, when Albert Mummery and two Gurkha officers, Ragobir Thapa and Goman Singh, set off to cross the Diamir Gap and were never seen again.

In 1934, nine members of a German expedition, including six Darjeeling Sherpas, died in a harrowing eight-day storm as they retreated down the mountain. In 1937, sixteen members of another...