Nirmal “Nims” Purja, an expedition leader, claimed that his team discovered a cut rope on Mount Everest during a summit push on Monday. This rope, used by hundreds of climbers, was allegedly sliced, leading to accusations against Purja for fabricating the story for personal gain. The Nepalese government announced an investigation into Purja for “disseminating misinformation.”
Purja responded by posting a video on Instagram showing the cut ropes and interviews with Sherpas from his company, Elite Exped. He asserted that other teams could summit because his team repaired the line.
Another expedition company, Peak Promotion, first reported the cut rope while retrieving a body. Purja’s team confirmed this report, finding about 120 feet of rope cut and cast down the mountain. Skeptics questioned the motive behind cutting shared ropes.
Purja, a former member of Nepal’s Ghurka regiment and the UK Special Forces, welcomes the Department of Tourism’s investigation, insisting he doesn’t fabricate stories.
INTEGRITY. My team and I summitted Everest and Lhotse – what should be a huge celebration and yet I now have to clear up this negativity. Anything I do is with honesty and integrity – I do not make things up. On this video you can clearly see the cut ropes, which we were warned about on Sunday by the team at Peak Promotion who were doing body retrieval further up Everest. In the video you can see many other Sherpa guides speaking about their experience and what they saw.
nimsdai
Below is the timeline of events. I welcome the Department of Tourism investigation into the cut ropes and hope they will find out what happened and why. As you can see I have the evidence to back up exactly what was reported. One publication, which has printed many false stories about me recently, stated the video was fake – this is totally untrue. I have faced a lot of negativity and people trying to bring me down behind the scenes since 2019 – when all I ever wanted to do was raise the name of Nepal and its Climbing community, and bring tourists to see this beautiful country. I believe we are one big mountain community – and we should be working together, not trying to bring each other down.
Sun 26th May.
Nims and team head up from C2 to C3. The manager from a different company, who were on a rescue mission to bring back bodies from higher up Everest, radios to warn the team that ropes have been cut just below the south summit above the balcony. Because of the cut ropes they had to abort their rescue mission and turn back. They warn Nims to be careful.
This is what is heard on the radio in the first video.
Mon 27th May
Nims and his team were on the summit push and found the ropes cut exactly where the Peak Promotions body retrieval team said. Despite this, it is possible to summit by fixing new ropes ( or alpine style if your team is strong ) . This is what Nims and his team did – this is what any team could have done in the situation.
They successfully summit and return back down the mountain.
Therefore, everything relayed in Nims’ first video (which is other people stating the rope had been cut,) is backed up by the second video showing the cut ropes.12h
