THE TEN · #09

04 AUG 2026

Mallory Geis:
The Photographer Who Framed the Vertical World

An artist from San Antonio whose first 8,000-metre peak became her last frame.

Some people climb mountains to escape. Mallory Geis climbed them to see. A travel photographer and the owner of a pilates studio in San Antonio, Texas, she built her life around movement, light and the stories that people carry. In 2026 she took her camera to the Karakoram for the highest frame of her life.

The Artist Above the Clouds

Geis had spent years documenting the world's remote places through a lens. Broad Peak was to be her first eight-thousander — the culmination of training, dreaming and preparation that she shared openly with her community back home in Texas.

The Last Frame

On 30 July 2026, on the west ridge of Broad Peak, an avalanche swept Mallory Geis and nine others down the mountain's face. Her body was recovered the following day. She was one of the two clients on the expedition — a photographer who had spent her life framing the vertical world, and who gave her final frame to it. Remember her →

“An artist who framed the vertical world, and gave her last frame to it.” — from the memorial