You’ve got to respect the mountain." And you just sort of believe that it can be done and then you make it happen. Like in the movie, when you get to K2, the other climbers that are there, they're saying, "The mountain won't have us right now. So you just believe you're going to get better quicker, and you do. And within like two days after that, I was back in special operations kicking doors in, you know? And none of my special forces friends believed it. If there's two patients, similar age, similar build, in the hospital, the person who has got that mindset, the positive mindset, the one who believes that he can heal quicker, the one he thinks that he can overcome these things, will heal quicker. But I was like, "You know what? No, I can heal quicker." The doctors were telling me that I have to go away. And for me, I was so disappointed by myself. And obviously I came down to Lukla, which is lower elevation, 2,800 meters. So immediately I got there, obviously I found out that I had. Here I was carrying about 75 pounds, roughly, and I went to camp two, and it took me only five days from Lukla. So with that knowledge and experience I thought I could do it. Dhaulagiri, the seventh highest mountain, I climbed that in 14 days. I had a very short period of time, but also I knew that I was a very, very fast climber. And I was like, "Not going to go to the beach and just chill out and achieve nothing." No offense, but yeah, I was like, "I'm going to go and climb Everest." So I emptied my savings, and told the bank that I was going to buy a new car and took a personal loan, everything. So this is from my book, Beyond Possible-I was still in the special forces, but I just came from one operational tour, and I had a little holiday. One moment that did stick out in the film is when you had HACE coming down from a mountain. They told Nims his project was simply impossible. And most importantly, dealing with the emotional part with my family, with my mom's health, being nearly close to death when I was on the mountain. I'm on the summit of this mountain, I'm also already thinking, "What's happening on the next mountain? What's the logistics there?" And also the filming of the whole content, making sure that the images capture. The issue was not only climbing those peaks but at the same time raising the funding, managing team dynamics. In the whole of the 14 peaks, climbing was the easiest thing I had to do, honestly. What’s the most pain you’ve been in trying to summit a mountain? And how I overcome that was by even climbing faster, because if you climb faster, your heart rate is pumped up, you're struggling, and that pain is bigger than your dental pain. So I had a toothache, actually, in Shishapangma, my last mountain, with a wisdom tooth. It must be something to slow you down, considering the pain you’re in on the mountain sometimes.īro, you know what? When you have some pain, you’ve got to supersede with bigger pain. I think I've been on 10 painkillers a day. In 2021, Nims was part of the first team ever to summit in winter, when temperatures can hit 70 below. For reference, “opening a route” means to fasten the ropes and lay down a path up the mountain “HACE” is high altitude cerebral edema, which can strike climbers who are not acclimated to the altitude because they ascended quickly or ran out of oxygen The Bottleneck is a passage on K2, the world’s second-highest peak that is widely regarded as the most dangerous mountaineering mission there is. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. But he did have to push our chat back a day due to a horrible toothache. By the end, you’re left with an impression of a man who can only truly feel alive if he is testing himself against all there is, peering over a cliff into death’s own valley. “Sometimes, it doesn’t want you up there.” And then Nims and his team climb the mountain, setting a path for the rest to follow. “You have to respect the mountain,” says one. When Nims arrives at K2, the seasoned mountaineers at base camp have given up. But mostly, it is a rolling series of borderline incomprehensible human endeavors, the triumph of a mortal’s will against the towering strength of the natural world. The film is a celebration of the Nepalese climbing community, so often badly underrepresented in western discussions of mountaineering, and a story of the bond between a mother and her youngest son.
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