In 1976, Nanda Devi Unsoeld, the daughter of legendary mountaineer Willi Unsoeld, died on the mountain for which she was named. This is the story of Deviโs life and of the historic climb that killed her. A riveting adventure read, it doesnโt shy away from highlighting the history of misogyny, cultural appropriation, and selfishness in mountaineering culture:
In late September of 1975, at the Unsoeld home in Olympia, Willi met with 26-year-old John Roskelley, another very accomplished American alpinist, putting plans in motion. They were of different minds about leadership and climbing, and women, tooโnamely, whether they belonged on major expeditions with men. Roskelley tried to convince Willi not to invite a female climber named Marty Hoey to join the group. He believed that the presence of women could complicate things; he worried that emotions could get out of hand when the two sexes were put together in high-stakes, high-altitude situations.
It didnโt help that Hoey had been dating Peter Lev, another veteran of the Dhaulagiri expedition who they wanted on the team; Roskelley hated the idea of a coupleโs quarrels bleeding into the teamโs daily demands. He also assumed the climb would be a traditional, equipment-heavy effort, relying on multiple camps and fixed ropes, while Willi and Lev seemed intent on an alpine-style ascent, lighter on ropes and happening fast.
As they wrangled over the climbโs fundamentals, Devi herself burst in, glowing with sweat. Sheโd just biked seven miles home from a soccer game. Roskelley would later recall his first impression in his 1987 book,ย Nanda Devi: The Tragic Expedition,ย saying that Devi โswept in like a small tornado after an obviously brutal game of soccer.โ
In public speaking engagements for the next few years, Willi would sometimes describe this moment, too, including an extra detail about some of the first words out of Deviโs mouth that evening: โYouโre Roskelley,โ she said. โI understand you have trouble with women.โ
To those outside the world of mountaineering, Nims Purja is the subject of the Netflix documentary 14 Peaks, which chronicled his journey to climb all of the worldโs 8,000-meter mountains in record time. To many of those inside the world of mountaineering, though, Nims Purja is a climber in every sense of the word โ as much a showboat and a hustle-minded careerist as a talented alpinist. In this gnarled, complex profile, Grayson Schaffer tries to get the measure of the man from all angles, folding in everything from Purjaโs newfound influencer clientele to the fraught history of the Nepali sherpa community. Itโs a hell of a read, even to those of us who will never set foot in a base camp.
He says heโs the CEO of nine companies, though he wonโt name them all. His book and movie are both autobiographical. The former, a best seller, reads like the kind of memoir written by American politicians who have suddenly taken to vacationing in Iowa. The latter, Nims says, was Netflixโs most popular release of 2021. He gets consistent corporate speaking gigs, and his one-on-one guiding rate up Everest is, he told me, more than a million dollars.
Itโs a lot. Nims is a lot. But his hustle and bravado are precisely the things that have allowed him to break into the mainstream from Nepalโs deep bench of climbing talent. Iโve covered mountaineering and Sherpa culture on and off for more than a decade, and while there have always been insanely strong climbers with roots in Nepal, nobody has ever amassed the mind share, as the marketers say, that Nims has. In the process heโs gathered a legion of devotees and plenty of critics, all of them hoping to cement his reputation as either a generational talent among high-altitude mountaineers or else an egotistical self-promoter flying perilously close to the sun.