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In today’s edition, Joe shares:
- What made Nims Purja different.
- Why he never needed to be sold on the Hard Way.
- What he left behind, in the people around him.
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My buddy Nims Purja died on Broad Peak this week. Avalanche took him and nine others. He was 43.
He's the third buddy of mine the mountains have taken. I'm not going to pretend that number doesn't sit heavy. I had Nim on my podcast. I called him a badass to his face. I meant it.
If you don't know who he was, here it is straight. Nepali-born, former Gurkha, then UK Special Forces, SBS, the British equivalent of SEAL Team Six. In 2019 he climbed all 14 of the world's 8,000-meter peaks in six months and six days. Nobody had ever done it that fast. No sponsor believed him going in. He went on to lead the first winter ascent of K2. He built a foundation for the porters and Sherpas who make every expedition possible and rarely get credit for it.
Most people need convincing that hard is good for them. I spend half my life trying to make that case. Nims never needed the pitch. He just understood it, the way some people understand music or numbers without being taught. Gurkha selection, 33,000 applicants for 230 spots. Special Forces after that. Then walking away from a career to chase a mountain project the world called impossible. He didn't grit his teeth through any of it. He wanted the next peak, the next impossible thing, the way other people want a vacation.
That instinct got tested for real on Kanchenjunga. He gave away his own oxygen twice to save strangers. Fifty other climbers said help was coming. It never did. Two of the three men he tried to save died in his arms. He told me that hurt him more than the mountain ever did.
That kind of betrayal breaks most people. Makes them smaller, more careful, more guarded with what they give away. Not him. He kept climbing. Kept doing rescues, never charging a cent for those. Somehow the Hard Way didn't just build him. It opened him up. On K2 he summited with nine other Nepali climbers, arms locked, glory shared equally, no single name above the rest. His foundation still puts porters' kids through school and funds the housing he fought for. That work doesn't stop because he did.
He told me once the difference between discipline and self-discipline. Discipline is doing what you're told. Self-discipline is doing it when nobody's watching and nobody's making you. I use that line constantly now. I got it from him, and every time I say it, he's still teaching somebody something.
That's the man. He got the Hard Way. He lived inside it, not around it, and it made him better instead of harder. He spent every bit of that on other people. Three friends the mountains have taken from me now, and every one of them left me better than they found me. That's rare. That's the whole point of everything I've ever tried to build here, and he just did it, no philosophy required.
Go find your hard thing this week. Do it for somebody else, the way he always did.
Joe
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MEMENTO MORI, THE HARD WAY
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The Stoics had a practice. Remember you will die.
Not to scare you. To filter out what doesn't matter.
Nims lived that way before he ever needed the reminder.
That's why nothing he did was ever wasted time.
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| They Said It |
| "Discipline is not good enough. Discipline and self-discipline."
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| – Nirmal Purja
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➝The Hard Way Podcast with Joe |
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| THE HARDWAY PODCAST
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Nims Purja climbed 14 of the world's highest peaks in six months, no oxygen, no sponsor believing in him. Watch him tell Joe what it actually took, before the mountains took him.
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