Kathmandu. KATHMANDU: British mountaineer of Nepali origin, Nirmal Purja aka Nims Dai, who set world records by climbing all 14 mountains above 8,000 meters in a short span of time, has died.
He died after being hit by an avalanche on Pakistan’s Broad Peak on Thursday, Elite XPed, a company owned by Purja’s founder, said on social media on Saturday afternoon.
Six of the 10 people who went missing in the avalanche were Nepali mountaineers. The bodies of 4 of them were found on Friday. An avalanche at the 8,047-metre-high Broad Peak in Pakistan’s Karakoram mountain range was cut off from the climbers on Thursday afternoon. The bodies of Pur Bahadur Gurung (Yukta) and Nima Sherpa were found on Friday.
In 2019, he set a world record by climbing all 14 mountains above 8,000 meters in a short span of time. He holds the record of climbing 55 mountains above 8,000 meters.
He was a British soldier when he came to Nepal to climb Mt Everest, but after being lured by the mountains here, he left his job as an army officer and started promoting adventure tourism. He has been leading the expedition of mountaineers from all over the world to Nepal and climbing the mountain ranges of Nepal.
