The Controversial King Of Hardcore Climbing

After scaling the 14 meanest mountains on earth in record time, Nepali-born Nims Purja emerged as a powerful champion of the country's Sherpa guides. He's also become the first celebrity mountaineer of the social media age and the most controversial figure in the global climbing community.

I strolled into base camp at Ama Dablam, the 6,812-metre peak known as the Matterhorn of the Himalayas, the mountaineer Nims Purja was locked in a fierce game of beach volleyball. Just beyond the court, in every direction, sprawled a village of tents, some 65 in all, erected by his guiding company, Elite Exped. The outfit is the ultra-ambitious Nims’s latest gambit—a business meant to parlay his status as one of the world’s most celebrated climbers into a venture that pays more than simply breaking mountaineering records. Perhaps more significantly, though, the Nepali-born Nims wants to use the company to upend the old paradigms of the Himalayan guiding industry by cutting the Sherpa guides in on the largesse. And as with anything Nims tries, he has launched it on a grandly immodest scale.

When I found him on the makeshift volleyball court, Nims and his Sherpa guides were taking on the kitchen crew and getting beaten. Still, it was immediately clear that the 39-year-old Nims is a gifted athlete. With his thin moustache, almond eyes, and black swooped hair, he resembles a Bollywood star. And despite standing only five feet seven, he was still able to spike the ball from above the net. The cook crew was spry, however, and kept sending it back, until fi nally the hitter behind Nims squibbed one into the latrine tent.