RIP Nims Purja 🙏🕊🏔

a tribute to the remarkable climber and fighter from Nepal, Nims PURJA.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I'm sure you all have heard of the tragic, tragic passing of the esteemed mountain climber Nims Persia and nine other world-class climbers in an at fateful avalanche in Pakistan on Broad Peak on July 30th. I I'd like to make a tribute to Nims Persia from the perspective of a fighter. So I first encountered Nims Persia on the Joe Rogan podcast. That's where I learned that Nims was a Gurkha first and then a member of the UK Special Forces before he chose to leave all of that behind, including his potential retirement package, and pursue this vision of scaling 14 peaks in less than a year. I should add 14 peaks that are at an altitude of greater than 8 kilometers. Greater than 8,000 meters. Now, according to climbers, anything above that 8,000 meter altitude is called the death zone because there's simply not enough oxygen in the air, not enough oxygen molecules per cubic meter to sustain what the human body requires. I am quite certain there's a number of other effects that being at that altitude has on the human body. When you're that far away from the center of the earth, the force of gravity is less. And that does actually impact all of your body functions because it impacts fluid pressure, it the air density is different, and yes, the physics and physiology of the human body is shifted at that altitude, just as it is when you travel into outer space. Now, my first impression of Nims Persia on the Joe Rogan podcast was that he was very self-confident. He even steered the conversation and led it away from where Joe was going. He said several times, Well, I'd like to finish this story, or can we get back to this story, Joe? And Joe Rogan being the ultimate uh podcast host, of course, let Nims tell his stories. Nims also tried to cajole Joe and his producer into joining him on a climb, and Joe Rogan was pretty adamant, like, no way is he ever gonna go do any mountain climbing. But I had to give Persia credit for trying, and he had a great sense of humor about that whole exchange. Now, knowing that Nims Persia was a Gurkha and then also a member of the UK Special Forces, that tells me right away that he has an exceptional, exceptional mindset, and most definitely the mindset and determination of a fighter. Now, I will circle back to that because it's gets a little bit more esoteric and abstract when I start talking about mindset and spirituality, etc. But let's take a cold hard look at some of the facts because my concern is that since this unfortunate tragedy is trending on social media, I see tons, or I'm sure you've seen too, lots of memed footage of avalanche avalanches on Broad Peak, which I think most of them aren't the avalanche that took place on July 30th. There's also lots of memes of bodies being pulled down a mountain. Again, we don't know, or I don't know, you can't tell from this little clip if those are the bodies of the mountaineers that were involved in the July 30th avalanche. So I wanted to point you guys, if you're interested, in the direction of two sources that I found credible. One is NDTV, they have a YouTube channel, and is it Nancy D as in dog TV? And their lead journalist, gentleman, he was the person to whom NIMS Persia left his final voice message. Now that voice message has gone viral. People, you know, people keep posting and reposting it saying this is NIMS Persia's final communication. So NIMS was replying to this journalist's invite to an event that was supposed to take or is going to take place two weeks or so out. And so, as you can hear in that voice message, NIMS just says, hey, you know, I'll go up to the Broad Peak Summit, come back, and then we'll be in touch, and I'll also put you in touch with, you know, one of my assistants. So I wanted to make a point here that this was not something out of the ordinary for NIMS, because I heard him say on another podcast, not Joe Rogan's podcast, but another fellow's podcast, that he makes it a habit to communicate via satellite phone, even when he's doing these expeditions at these ridiculous altitudes, uh, because he has businesses to run. And he says, hey, you know, if I'm up above 5,000 meters and I can take care of business and return phone calls, how come you guys on the ground can't do it? So he's really giving his full team no excuse for not moving a project forward. So I think you really have to respect that no-holds barred type business mentality that NIMS had as well. Of course, the documentary on Netflix, 14 Peaks, Nothing Is Impossible. That's certainly worth checking out if you have not done so yet. That way you can learn about Persia's backstory and get an idea of just how incredible these this notion of taking on the these 14 climbs, just how sort of mind-boggling that is. And certainly it was before anybody even attempted it. Now, in addition to this 14 peaks, NIMS also led an expedition with I think nine other Nepali climbers to scale K2 during winter. This had never been done before, so it was completely unprecedented. I believe NIMS said that K2 was the only mountain that had not been scaled during the winter season, so he wanted to do that. Now, finally, just in the arena of uh climbing, NIMS was on his third round of going up these 14 peaks. He'd already done a previous second round scaling all 14, once again, without the use of supplemental oxygen. And so he was making his way through his third round, his hat-trick of these 14, when unfortunately he and his team were struck by this avalanche. Jumping back to that broadcast on NDTV, the journalist for whom Nims left that message had on four guests, one of whom was also a mountaineer. And he stated that that avalanche on July 30th was a little bit different because uh according to him, there was a lot of rubble that came down as well. It was not just snow. And this mountain I I would love to hear more from experienced mountaineers about the difference between an an avalanche that involves rubble and snow, not just mostly snow. I'm sure there's uh physics involved with that. Now, the most helpful and relevant post I found on social media was made by somebody who explained how the GPS tracking on NIMSPers indicated, you know, the specific path he was attempting when when the avalanche struck. So I will embed that right here so you can take a look at that.

SPEAKER_00 7:37

This is the live uh location for uh NIMS Dai. This is when he started yesterday at 4.33 in the morning, uh going toward camp 3 from this ridge at an elevation of 6166 meters. This is the start point, and then he continued up on this ridge. At one point, they have to leave this ridge and cross this massively um snow-packed kind of uh glacier gully, which has very very high chances of uh getting uh an avalanche, they were supposed to climb and get to uh to these black rocks to the right side of the screen and then continue up uh toward camp 3. But while all these 10 climbers along with the Nirmal uh Purja they were right in the middle, the avalanche started 815 or 820, and that's when the avalanche uh started, and within a few moments his garment shows that he went several hundred meters down, and his body stopped down here at 5935 meters, while the other climbers, some of them, their bodies were found further down a few thousand meters below onto the rocks. Um some people also say that Nirmal Purja might be alive because they saw this movement from this location at 823 a.m. to the next location at 833. So this is there is like 10 minutes difference between the these two locations. So this could be that the snow or the avalanche was still moving, or maybe at that point he was still conscious and he tried to get out of this place. But recent update on 31st of July past midnight shows that there is no more movement. And I don't think there is any signs of life, unfortunately. Now, today at 5 p.m., which is Pakistani time, 6 p.m., the rescue operation has been called off for the day. They will start again tomorrow for the search. So far, they have confirmed that there are four dead bodies that have been recovered, out of which two have been identified. We hope for some medical, but unfortunately the chances seem very, very slim. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 10:16

It's the scientist in me that wants to understand the pure facts about this, not just some sort of poetic video put to music. I I don't want to look at that. Maybe that's a little too cold or too morbid on my part, but that's just how my mind works. Now, Nims Persia did make several rather poignant observations about avalanches in several podcasts. Again, on the Joe Rogan podcast, when Joe asked Nims why the Anapurna ascent was so dangerous, right away, the first word out of his mouth, Nims said Avalanches. And on another podcast, when Nims described the one and only time he had to turn back on an expedition he was leading, the reason he gave was because there was potentially an avalanche about to happen. So Nims Persia described that he was he was leading the team, so he was ahead of everybody, and that while he was climbing, he heard the snow make a certain sound, and that indicated to him that, you know, maybe the the snow, I guess you called this sheet of snow had cleaved or was about to cleave and therefore could potentially cause an avalanche. And so Nims decided that, you know, in spite of everybody wanting to make it to the summit, you know, he would have to turn everybody around and head back down because he didn't want to take the risk of getting caught in an avalanche. So all of that tells me that not only was Persia well aware of the risks, he was highly experienced and knew the potential warning signs of an avalanche. So that leads me full circle to the connection between a mountaineer and a fighter. Because in the end, all of this involves just continual risk assessment, right? Risk reward assessment, whether it's over the course of months as you're planning things out in your fight camp or in your preparation for an expedition, or whether it's a risk reward decision that you gotta make in a millisecond with Johnny on the spot. Sometimes that very quick decision can be a little bit emotional. Sometimes it's also even a little faith-driven. If you've ever been under the gun, as we say, then you might be able to relate to that. So with any sort of risk reward evaluation, there is the intellectual side, right? You gather all your intel, you gather all the information. If you're deciding whether to take a fight or not, or you've already decided to take the fight and now you gotta prep for it. You need all the information you can get on your opponent. You you want all the relevant information about yourself in terms of your own physical preparedness and where the gaps lie and what you need to address before you step in there. Of course, you want to know about time zones, you want to know about weather, you want to figure out all the circumstances that can affect you as a fighter when you step in that ring. And even in the weeks leading up to that, if you decide to fly over early. If you're really a detail-oriented person, you're gonna consider even, of course, diet, you're gonna consider water because likely during that final few weeks you're cutting weights. You have to consider whether your system is adjusted to the local cuisine or not. If you're not and you don't want to deal with that, you're gonna have to travel with all of your own food. That most definitely is gonna add to the weight of your luggage. But you get the idea. I I won't go down my complete laundry list of things I check off before I set set off for any type of competition, but believe that it's very detail-oriented. And I would, of course, assume everything with a mountain expedition is just as equally uh detail-oriented. And of course, the the weight of their belongings is even more crucial than a fighter who gets to travel on a plane to their destination. Now that said, let's take a look at the emotional mindset in this sort of risk reward evaluation. For a fighter, maybe that happens sometime during the camp, or anytime things aren't going exactly as how you plan them out. So, how do you react emotionally? Do you get upset? Do you get angry? Do you get frustrated, sad, set into despair? This can also happen in, you know, in the moments in in fractions of a second during a fight when things don't go your way. How are you gonna react emotionally? Can you keep it together? And of course, finally, if you are truly challenging yourself as a fighter or as a climber, then you're gonna reach these points where people have already told you, like, this is impossible or this you can't do this. And your opponent is certainly trying to let you know that you cannot do this if you're in the ring. So you're gonna have to reach down inside and find something bigger than yourself to pull you through that moment. I love what Nimspur just said. He had this quote that when you think you are really effed, in fact, you are only 45% effed. And I think that's that's a humorous and yet very telling, you know, to keep in mind when you're faced with a very difficult moment. Because yes, in that moment you think, oh my gosh, I am just so absolutely 100% effed, but then try to step away from yourself for a moment and say, hey, no, you know what? Actually, I'm only 45% effed. There's still 55% here for me to salvage and pull myself out of this situation. I think it's really this spiritual side, I'll call it spiritual side to Nims Persia that really attracted or attracts all of us to him. He's somebody who's not just accomplished, he's you know, he's charismatic, he has a sense of humanity, and he's able to communicate all of this as long as well as his hope for all of us to pursue what maybe we think is impossible. And in my opinion, I have to say that Nims Persia was absolutely a fighter, not just literally as a as a Gurkha and a member of the UK Special Forces, but on a much higher level. You know, he he fought to show us what was possible in the face of everybody saying it's impossible. Nims Persia fought for the people of his nation. He wanted the Sherpas to get acknowledgement for all the hard work they put in so that others can be recognized for their accomplishments scaling these massive peaks. Were it not for the Sherpas, certainly Edmund Hillary would not have scaled Mount Everest. And yet Nims pointed out that the Sherpas weren't even allowed to stay in the village closest before they set out on their expedition, that they had to bring all the belongings up close to the base camp, but then they had to go back down to remain or you know, to sleep. So NIMS decided to build a facility where they could stay closer to where they were gonna set out on their expedition. Nims also fought for the dignity of those who lost their lives on the mountain slopes. You know, he fought, he fought desperately, risking his own safety to bring back climbers who had succumbed on their way up or down as he encountered them on his own ascent or descent. And NIMS fought for the mountains themselves. He established an organization to do what he called the Great Mountain Cleanup to try to bring back all the refuse left by climbers on these massive mountains. And finally, I think NIMS Persia fought to show us all that we too can do things that we think might be impossible. Just because somebody says it's not possible, just because we've never seen anybody else do it, just because we don't get a ton of encouragement to pursue something that's never been done, that does not mean it cannot be done. And for that message, I truly appreciate Nims Persia, the soldier, the accomplished mountaineer, and the fighter.