RIP Nimsdai

I'm not a climber. I've never stood above 5,000 metres, never felt my lungs fight for oxygen they can't find, never looked down at a cloud line instead of up at one. But I didn't need to be a climber to be moved by Nims Purja.

I watched 14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible on Netflix, expecting a mountaineering documentary. What I got was something closer to a masterclass in belief. Here was a man who set out to climb all fourteen of the world's 8,000-metre peaks — the so-called "Death Zone" summits — in a fraction of the time anyone thought possible, funded on credit cards and sheer will, and did it anyway. Project Possible wasn't just a climbing record. It was a demonstration that the ceiling most of us live under is usually one we built ourselves.

Following him afterward, on social media, only deepened it. There was no separation between the man on the mountain and the man online — the same warmth, the same relentless positivity, the same refusal to let "impossible" be a stopping point rather than a starting line. He didn't just climb mountains. He made the rest of us feel a little more capable of climbing our own.

In Nepali, dai means "older brother" — it's a term of real affection and respect, not just a nickname. That's exactly how millions of people who never met him seemed to feel about him. Not like a distant celebrity, but like someone genuinely rooting for you.

News broke today that Nims died in an avalanche on Broad Peak, alongside members of his expedition team. It's strange to grieve someone you've never met, but that's the mark he left — he made strangers feel like they mattered to him, and in turn, he came to matter to them.

I don't know if I'll ever climb anything higher than a hiking trail. But I know I want to carry a piece of what he showed me: that the version of yourself you're capable of becoming is usually bigger than the one you've settled for. That's the debt I owe him, and the best way I know to repay it is to actually go live it.

Rest easy, Nimsdai. Thank you for the push.