A former Gurkha soldier stuns mountaineering
community with record-breaking ascents.
By
Freddie Wilkinson
 |
|
Nirmal
Purja Magar poses on top of Mount Everest after summiting on May 22, 2019.
The
Nepali soldier turned climber, who goes by "Nims," has summited six
of the
world's
14 8,000-meter peaks over the last month. He's also turning heads
in
the climbing community with his brash style. (This photo, originally
posted
on Nims's Instagram account, @nimsdai, was supplied
with
his permission.) PHOTOGRAPH BY @NIMSDAI
PROJECT
POSSIBLE
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In all, Nimsdai or Nims—as he prefers to be
known—knocked off six of the world’s highest and most dangerous mountains this
spring—Annapurna, Dhaulagiri, Kanchenjunga, Everest, Lhotse, and Makalu—in a
little less than a month. It's a stunning effort—some would say insane—but for
Nims, the feat marks the successful completion of the first phase of a vastly
more ambitious project—bagging all 14 of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks in a
seven-month span.
Since alpine legend Reinhold Messner first
completed the so-called “8,000-ers” in 1986 (after starting the project in
1970), the list has remained the gold standard on high-altitude résumés. In the
intervening 33 years, approximately 40 mountaineers have followed in Messner's
footsteps, and many others have died trying to join their number. Most took
decades to complete their quest; the current fastest-known time (set by the
legendary Pole, Jerzy Kukuczka) stands at seven years, 11 months, and 14 days.
Although the idea to complete them all in a
single year has been bandied about before, no climber has actually undertaken
the challenge with serious intent. Pulling it off would represent a paradigm
shift in the relatively stagnant, commercialized world of high-altitude
mountaineering. Now, it seems possible Nims could complete it by October. As
remarkable an achievement as that would be, it would likely be met with some
grousing by alpinism's old guard, as his grandstanding style and unabashed
showmanship—some might add recklessness—are not admired by everyone in elite
mountaineering circles.
When Messner, and those that followed him,
established the 8,000-er club, they insisted that how they climbed the
mountains mattered as much as getting to the top. They generally eschewed the
use of bottled oxygen, having ropes fixed for them by others, and Sherpas
guiding them or carrying extra gear and supplies for them. They also believed
climbers should attempt routes on terrain that required technical climbing
skills and where possible establish new routes. And when the deed was
accomplished, it was considered bad form to blather indecorously about it to
media.
Nims, however, unapologetically embraces
modern conveniences, sending climbing Sherpas ahead with oxygen cylinders to
meet him at high camps, and his Instagram feed feels like a Hollywood version
of Himalayan climbing—an orgy of dramatic storms, rescues, and swooping
helicopters. There is no shortage of pride, either. Consider the following call
to arms, which he posted before starting up Everest:
"...I have given you 3 summits of the
world’s most dangerous and rarely climbed mountains within 3 weeks with 2
unplanned rescue missions involved above the death zone… Now, I will give you
the summit of everest, Lhotse and makalu within 3 days. I will be trying to
break my own world records. How copy ?”
And yet, despite the bravado, Nims appears
capable of pulling off the whole caper. He's followed through on his words so
far with six significant summits, earned the respect of the working Sherpas
with whom he shares the mountain, and cultivated an eager following of fans,
particularly among Asian climbers, who are flocking to the Himalaya as never
before.
“He doesn't mince words and speaks
unapologetically straightforward—often with no filter,” says Canadian
mountaineer Don Bowie, who enountered Nims while climbing Annapurna, the
Nepal's first 8,000 meter summit of the year. “But he is quick to smile and disarmingly
friendly," Bowie added, "and seems to emit this constant, infectious
enthusiasm that energizes everyone around him. It's hard not to admire his rare
kind of authenticity.”
An
Epic Spring
Approximately 12 hours before leaving base
camp for the summit of Everest, Nims welcomed me into his mess tent for a cup
of coffee.
“How are you?” he asked in casual greeting.
“I’m feeling good, brother,” he announced before I could answer.
At about five-foot seven, he’s shorter than
you might expect based on his heroic social media profile, and he speaks
English with a vague working-class accent that’s littered with “mates,” “brothers,”
and “buds.” He seems relaxed, though a media team is hustling in the
background, pecking away at laptops and fidgeting with cameras.
“The biggest thing for the project so far has
been the rescues,” he said. “That was unplanned. Other than that, mate, it’s
all good. Rescuing people from 8,450 meters is way harder than climbing a
mountain.”
In fact, the trifecta of mountains that Nims
had just summited at at the time of our meeting—Annapurna, Dhaulagiri, and
Kanchenjunga—would be considered career highlights under almost any
circumstances. And the circumstances surrounding Nims’s ascents were far from
ideal. Take Annapurna, where climber Wui Kin Chin, a doctor from Malaysia, went
missing the same day Nims summited:
“We got back down to base camp probably
around 10 p.m. Of course, because we had summited we had a few friends waiting
for us, and they gave us whiskey and we drank until, like, 3:30 in the morning.
Then the heli comes at 6:00 a.m. and says the doctor was alive. So, I got my
team together… We got dropped into Camp 3 via long line. From there, normally
the timing to where he was was more than 16 hours. We did that in four hours.”
Chin was successfully evacuated to Kathmandu
and then Singapore, where he died several days later.
From Annapurna, Nims helicoptered on to
Dhaulagiri, which he found even more challenging due to the bad weather. “We
summited Dhaulagiri at around 6:30 p.m., in some of the worst conditions ever.
It was tough.” Nims and his team of four other Nepali climbers descended through
the dark to meet a helicopter at base camp the next morning, which whisked them
off to Kathmandu.
“We spent one night in Kathmandu, and that
wasn’t too restful at all because loads of my friends wanted to have beers,”
Nims said with a wink. “And the next day we went to Kanchenjunga.”
For Kanchenjunga, Nims and one of his primary
climbing partners, Mingma David Sherpa, decided to go for the summit in a
single push from base camp, leaving at 1 p.m. and summiting after 11:00 a.m.
the next day. Along the way, they picked up a second climbing Sherpa in
support, Gesman Tamang. On the descent, the three came across a struggling Indian
climber, Biplab Baidya and his guide Dawa Sherpa, both of whom had run out of
bottled oxygen at 8,450 meters. They gave the two men two of their backup
oxygen cylinders and began helping them down, only to come across a second
Indian climber, Kuntal Karar, who had been also run out of oxygen and been
abandoned. Nims gave him his own oxygen cylinder.
“We started to ask for help a million times,
mate… We started asking for rescue, backup, and people kept saying they’re
sending people. By seven o’clock it’s dark, and we don’t see any headlights,”
he said.
Karar died soon after the oxygen Nims gave
him ran out. The team continued helping Baidya descend, until, one by one,
Nims’s two companions Mingma David and Gesman began to show signs of mild high
altitude cerebral edema and were forced to descend.
Baidya ultimately died less than 200 meters
from Camp 4, where dozens of people were bivvied that night. Speaking a week
later, it’s obvious the events still frustrated Nims. “People call themselves
high-altitude experts, solo climbers, all these things, mate, but nobody came
for help… The saddest thing is they kept lying, saying they were sending three
people. To not send out accurate information, it is a big thing.”
Despite the outcome, Nims sees events like
what happened on Kanchenjunga as validation for his climbing style. “If I
wasn't climbing with oxygen, I wouldn't have been able to give them oxygen,” he
says.
By
Strength and Guile
Nims is not yet well-known in mountaineering
circles for good reason: Until this year, he was a full-time soldier in the
employ of the British government as a member of the famed Gurkhas and later the
elite Special Boat Service (SBS). In fact, it’s probably easier to understand
him as a soldier, not a mountain climber, and after we had coffee in Everest
base camp, he invited me to come back to his tent that evening for dinner to
discuss his military career.
“I was born in Nepal, I grew up in the
Gurkhas, and I became a man in the SBS,” he told me as he gamely poured me a
beer, though he abstained as he was leaving to begin his back-to-back climbs of
Everest and Lhotse about seven hours later.
Nims enlisted in the Gurkhas at age 18. A
vestige of colonial days, the Gurkhas are a regiment of soldiers recruited in
Nepal to fight and serve in the British Army. With a proud, 100-year history
fighting around the globe and a pension and benefits guaranteed by the British
government, the unit is a popular choice for ambitious young Nepali men, and
selection is highly competitive. After six years serving in the Gurkhas, Nims
passed through the even more grueling, six-month testing process for the SBS,
an elite unit in the British Special Forces. It’s motto: By Strength and Guile.
“Like the Navy Seals?” I asked.
“No mate, like Seal Team Six,” Nims
responded.
Yet uncharacteristically, he demurred when I
pressed for details about his service. “I did a few operations with the
Gurkhas, special forces—all over, but I cannot talk about it… not about the
special forces, the work stuff,” he said. Asked what countries he’s served in,
he replied: “We’ll just say I have been deployed in sensitive areas, that’s
it.”
“The biggest thing I learned from being in
the special forces is the decision-making process and also the willingness not
to give up,” Nims continued. “You need to have a certain mindset. I call it a
positive mindset.”
From
Soldier to Climber
It was with such commitment that Nims made
the biggest leap of his career—leaving the military to become a professional
mountaineer.
“I had done 16 years in the British military,
I had only six years (left) to get my full pension, which is worth about
500,000 pounds… but for me I never work for money,” he tells me. “Work wouldn’t
let me do it, because it was too much of a risk. I sacrificed my pension and
resigned my job for this.”
Nims dubbed his 8,000-er quest Project
Possible, and after his initial sponsor fell through, he threw himself into
fundraising in January. “I started writing emails to everyone who I know, and
within 10 weeks I’d managed to raise 250K, but it was epic. It was the hardest
thing I’ve ever done.” The money was just enough to get Nims through the six
Nepal peaks—leaving the next phase, Pakistan, which is set to begin June 7,
$300,000 short on funding. “I have got 10 days to make the decision,” Nims told
me.
The money challenges facing Project Possible
should come as no surprise. It typically takes an athlete years of
relationship-building to get a sponsor to cough up six-figure support; Nims has
only been in the game six months. And even if funding miraculously comes
through, it’s no guarantee he’ll succeed on the five Pakistani 8,000-meter
behemoths—including K2 and Nanga Parbat, the world's second- and ninth-tallest
mountains—he must climb to have a real crack at finishing his quest.
But as he poured me another beer, it struck
me that success or failure, Nims has already proven himself to be one thing for
certain: an original character. He might not be Ueli Steck—the late, phlegmatic
Swiss speed-climbing phenom—but if commercial outfitters are going to lead
clients with iffy qualifications up 8,000-meter peaks, there might as well be a
Nims, showing up at just the right time to help fix ropes through storms, drag
a few sick people down the mountain, and then throw a good party in base camp
before helicoptering off into the sunset.
Nims' positive mindset brokers no second
thoughts: “I have remortgaged my house for this; I’ve given my job for this;
I’ve taken every risk I could that was in my hands. If it doesn’t happen, I’ll
say ‘Nims, you’ve given 100 percent of what you could. And that’s what one
person can give in life…' I’ll just be happy with that, mate.”
