Growing up as a sherpa in Nepal, Nima Rinji Sherpa was used to his relatives performing superhuman feats on the mountains. There was his father, Tashi Lakpa Sherpa, who at 19 summited Mount Everest without any additional oxygen, becoming the youngest to do so. Then there were his uncles, the first brothers to scale the world’s 14 highest peaks together.
But at 18, he has already outpaced them all. This month, he became the youngest person to summit all 14 of the world’s highest mountains – which are spread across Nepal, Pakistan, China and India – a mission he began aged just 16.
When he set out to climb his first of the 14 peaks – Mount Manaslu in Nepal, which at 8,100m is the world’s eighth highest mountain – it was not to break any records or to hunt for glory.
“To begin with, I was just curious about the experience but every step I took felt so natural,” said Sherpa. “I loved the rawness of the mountains and how your thought process changes when everything is just about life or death. You learn a new respect for people and for life.”
Most potently, it made Sherpa feel a deep connection to the previous generation of sherpas, an ethnic Tibetan community who live in Nepal. Their skills as elite mountaineers and knowledge of the Himalayan terrain have made them sought-after guides for the world’s most treacherous climbs for decades. However, they have also long been written out of history and headlines and rarely get the kind of recognition, lucrative sponsorship deals and safety training of the western climbers they regularly help to the top.
The more mountains he climbed, the more he began to dwell on the difference between how the achievements of sherpas were treated to those of western climbers. Sherpa cited the case of the most famous sherpa, Tenzing Norgay, who accompanied New Zealand climber Edmund Hillary on the British expedition that was first to reach the summit of Everest, the world’s tallest mountain, in 1953.
“Tenzing Norgay made sherpas famous around the world, but in 70 years since there has been no progress in how we are perceived,” he said. “We are rarely seen as elite athletes in our own right in the same way that western climbers are.”
By the time he had climbed half of the world’s highest peaks, across Nepal and Pakistan, he found he had “a greater motive for why I was doing this”.
“I realised how important it was to me to push the narrative of sherpas as elite athletes, and to push for an equality with western climbers,” he said.
“That became a huge motivation for me to succeed, even at my lowest moments. There is so much talent and skill within my fellow sherpas that is still not being properly recognised and I knew I could be a voice.”
He did not have any sponsors or professional training for his climbs. Instead, he was helped logistically by his family who have one of the most established mountaineering and guiding organisations in Nepal. He would often go up the peaks with groups of climbers, helping as a guide along the way.
Yet even with his family’s experience – his father has climbed Everest eight times – he said he never took for granted just how close death was during his climbs. Over the course of all his expeditions about 30 people around him died on the mountains, including one of his mentors, who was killed in an avalanche.
“We glorify mountaineers but I never forgot there is a risk of not returning home,” he said. “In particular, sherpas don’t have access to safety training and equipment, which is something I want to change so we see less death on the mountain for the next generation.”
As he was still a teenager whose muscles and lungs were not as strong or fully formed as his fellow climbers, he often found himself in extreme agony. He also pushed himself beyond what he had ever imagined. After scaling to the top of Everest at night, he continued onwards without stopping to summit the adjacent peak of Lhotse, a total of 15 days of extreme climbing.
“Yes, it was hard but I always had the self-belief that I would make it,” he said. “High altitude mountaineering is all about suffering. When it’s -60C out and the wind is hitting you, it doesn’t matter how physically strong you are. It’s always your mental capacity that gets you there in the end.” Another challenge, he added, was fitting in the climbing around his school classes and exams.
Yet even with the world’s 14 highest peaks under his belt, Sherpa is barely stopping to draw breath before his next challenge, which will be the unprecedented feat of scaling Nepal’s Mount Manaslu in the dead of winter without any oxygen or ropes.
He is curious to see how far he can push his own endurance. But more than anything, he wants to make his fellow sherpas proud. “The more well known I become, the more I can be a bridge for my community,” he said. “I am doing this for the next generation.”
