The Nimsdai team, made up of six climbers, was led by Purja, a former Nepalese soldier and British special forces operator who – after retiring from military service – burst onto the climbing scene in 2019 when he climbed all 14 8,000-meter peaks in six months and six days, eliminating more than seven years of the world record.
Purja is Magar, not Sherpa, but he formed a team that included five Sherpa climbers. The team included Geljen Sherpa, who climbed several Himalayan peaks with Purja in 2019, and Mingma David Sherpa, best known for rescuing 52 climbers from the Everest slopes in a single season in 2016.
Mingma G, a Sherpa mountaineer who climbed Everest five times, K2 twice and climbed all of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks before turning 30, led a separate team of Sherpa climbers.
Together, they and a team of local Pakistani porters carried 70 camping tents, six dining tents and 30 specially designed high-altitude tents on a spectacular 60-mile journey through the snow to the base camp at about 17,000 feet. They also packed thousands of meters of rope, dozens of ice screws, rock studs, supplemental oxygen and kerosene, 360 pounds of meat and 400 pounds of chocolate, cookies and energy bars.
Before his arrival, it had been decided that all climbers at the base camp would follow the standard Abruzzo route that winter. On December 26, Purja and his team filled their backpacks with ropes, tents and four days of food and climbed the 40 degree slope to Camp I at 20,013 feet to begin their first four-day high-altitude rotation to acclimatize. the conditions. The next day, they moved to Camp II at 21,982 feet, where they pitched tents under the ledges of the rocks, providing insufficient shelter from the howling wind.
On December 28, Purja’s radio played. The Mingma G team was busy repairing cables on the mountainside that all teams could use during the winter. And they needed help if they wanted to finish driving the lines to Camp III. Four members of Team Nimsdai were very tired and went down to base camp, but Purja and Mingma Tenzi went up to 23,000 feet to lend a hand. When everyone returned to base camp on New Year’s Eve, Purja’s fingers were frozen and two Nepalese teams had joined forces.