UKC

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-50217376

Not normally impressed by speed attempts but you have to doff your cap in this instance. The stars must have really aligned to allow for appropriate conditions let alone all the bureacracy.

Incredible achievement. I hope that can be the end of it though, nothing to be gained by being a day quicker. 

In reply to TMM:

Interesting to read this thread then:

https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/expedition+alpine/will_anyone_ever_climb_...

I was out with my sequence, but not far off the rest of it.

In reply to Damo:

I'm assuming he isn't plagued by the "Summit Zone of Tolerance" debacle?

In reply to galpinos:

He definitely is.

For both Dhaulagiri and Manaslu.

In reply to Damo:

Thank God* for that.

I'm generally pretty unfussed by 8000m challenges/firsts etc but this is pretty incredible.

Please select deity of choice.... or not.

In reply to Damo: Almost more remarkable is that they actually got the Chinese to re-open Shishapangma for this attempt.

And before anyone claims he has natural acclimatisation being Nepali, he was born and brought up in Chitwan, The Norfolk of Nepal (but with more elephants than Norwich on a Saturday night).

In reply to galpinos:

I mean that he *is* plagued by it, right?

He did not go to the summit of Manaslu, which is very obvious from his pics, nor did he go to the main summit of Dhaulagiri. He has said he will go back to Dhaulagiri at some point, but I doubt it. He knew about the situation with Manaslu, but still didn't even try it.

For anyone wondering wtf I'm talking about:

https://explorersweb.com/2019/10/25/manaslus-can-of-worms-did-anyone-at-all...

The source dossiers are at: http://www.8000ers.com/cms/index.php in the section 'True Summits or Tolerance Zones'.

This has been known for years: https://www.markhorrell.com/blog/2016/how-to-verify-manaslu-summit-claim/

And it has to be said, it's looking like maybe no one, at all, has been to the true main summit of all the 8000ers. Maybe Kukuczka, or Viesturs, hard to say at this point. The question is - does it matter?

In reply to TMM:

I couldn't find anywhere if he used supplemental oxygen or not. Anyone know?

Ah, I found this quote in an interview with him:

"The only reason that I have used oxygen on this current challenge is because of its scale. You cannot plan a single mountain in isolation. I have to consider the whole phase: the weather, the features of the mountain and the conditions. I have to get back down, so that I can reach the next mountain. I listen to my body. You must have humility so that you can get home. You can always go again without oxygen if that is what is so important, but you can’t if you’re dead."

In reply to Damo:

Ah.........

In reply to Damo: not even Messner :-O

In reply to TMM:

Plus he helped in some rescues in his summit attempts.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/29/ex-soldier-climbs-worlds-14-h...

In reply to TMM:

Bloody good effort and very well done Nims!!

In reply to Damo:

Quote from one of your links:"The confusing, controversial summit picture of Manaslu. Explains Tobias Pantel: “The final ridge extends in a northwest-southeast direction. It is roughly 20m in length. The altitude difference between C2 and 4 is approx. 3-6m. Two small cols separate C2 from C3 and C3 from 4 (5-6m deep) on this final summit ridge.”  Photo: Paulo Grobel"

So 3-6m out of 8,163m but even if complex those meters are unlikely to be the crux of the route. They are missing between 0.036% to 0.073% of the route! 

Call me lenient but I give them all, or in this case the Gurka lad, the tick. But nobody cares what my opinion is.

(forgot my in the last sentence)

In reply to TMM:

https://alpinemag.fr/incroyable-nirmal-purja-14-x-8000-en-six-mois-partie-2...

Badly google translated this suggests comparing apples with oranges i the record concept is bogus...

6 months instead of 7 years?

On September 27, it was written that "  Nirmal Purja has already entered history : with a bottle of oxygen, of course, but with a big kick to the buttocks of well-born eight-millists. So, is Nims the new Messner? Beyond the tornado, we must still compare what is comparable. The com 'of Nims or his entourage, repeated many times, to say that he will do in seven months what others have done in seven years, is biased. Since we are talking about records, the 14X8000 were indeed completed most quickly by the Korean Kim  Chang-Ho in seven years, ten months and six days, but without oxygen . The previous holder of this "record" was still of a different kind:Jerzy "Jurek" Kukuczka , seven years, eleven months and 14 days, most without oxygen but not all. But the Polish had a very different curriculum vitae  : he opened ten new tracks on the 8000, realized four winter climbs including three first absolutes. Let's mention Makalu's solo and oxygen-free ascent in 1981: "Jurek" was then the second man, after Messner on Everest in 1980, to achieve such a feat. The Polish also made one of the most beautiful Himalayan crossings with Voytek Kurtyka with the Broad Peak crossingin 1984 in pure alpine style. Kukuczka was also the first to climb the Dhaulagiri and Cho Oyu in winter (January 1985), and the first in winter at Kangchenjunga (January 1986, with K. Wielecki), and also realized in winter the Annapurna. In short, to compare Kukuczka and his 7 years of adventures, first and winter, with the Nims marathon makes little sense, and does not serve Nepali.

COMPARING THE 7 YEARS OF CHANG-HO WITHOUT OXYGEN OR THE 7 YEARS OF KUKUCZKA AND ITS FIRST WINTERS WITH THE 6 MONTHS OF NIRMAL PURJA DOES NOT MAKE MUCH SENSE.

What's more amazing about Nirmal Purja is his ability to recover: he says he takes oxygen from 7500 meters. Which induces enormous efforts for several reasons in the case of Nims. On several summits (including the K2) Nims opened the summit before others reached the following days. So he did not have the marks every time. Regarding her use of oxygen, Nims claims to have saved a woman from Everest in previous years by giving her her own oxygen, which is why he continues to take it. A laudable intention, and that corresponds to his altruistic attitude on the 14X8000 this year, but which is not a reason as such not to follow the ethics which is the standard of the current high-level, either to climb without oxygen. This is why the new challenge of achieving the 14X8000 will not be beating the time of Nirmal Purja: it would be to climb these oxygen-free peaks in a time inferior to that of Chang Ho, the man who has buckled them in seven years without oxygen. He died in 2017 during an unexplained tragedy in Nepal: 9 killed in their base camp, literally pulverized, at Gurja Himal. Kim Chang Ho had style: for Everest, his last 8000 climbed without O2 in 2013, he had left Calcutta, paddled 156km on the Ganges, pedaled nearly 900km before walking the next 160km to base camp ... and climb the normal path. No doubt it will inspire Nirmal Purja, as possibly returning to K2 to make it the first winter. it would be to climb these oxygen-free peaks in a time inferior to that of Chang Ho, the man who sealed them in seven years without oxygen. 

In reply to Damo:

It didn't matter when Boardman, Tasker and Scott climbed Kanchenjunga. As I'm sure you know, they stopped short of the true summit out of respect for the 'Gods'. Their climb wasn't discredited because of that. In fact it was lauded for that very reason. I know there are differences between that climb and this but for me, it doesn't really matter.

In reply to Damo:

The source quoted in this thread says the following about the Summit Zones of Tolerance approach - "in which a certain amount of fudging is permissible"

Fudging? Fudging is a very slippery slope in climbing, I thought everyone knew that

Fudging, OK - so anyone who climbs to the top of the Hillary Step has climbed Everest? I don't think so. Likewise in my book Nirmal, great achievement, well done, but you have not climbed the 14 (yet)

In reply to profitofdoom:

OK. So, I need to disclose that I am part of the group that has been researching, compiling, analysing, discussing and communicating about this for several years now. It's a serious mess.

I agree about fudging, it's a slippery slope and the concept involved is probably not best expressed in that bit you quoted. It's a bit more particular than that.

It's mainly for Manaslu, Annapurna and Dhaulagiri, and you can read all that in those dossiers linked above at the 8000ers site. For Shishapangma and Broad Peak, it's pretty much now accepted that only going to the Central Peak and Forepeak, respectively, does not count as summiting those peaks (and climbers and 8000m collectors have voted in agreement with their feet and returned to finish the job if they'd previously stopped short).

For Everest, nobody counts the South Summit as the summit (though it's been tried) and the issue with Kanch is known about. In fact many climbers have been right to the top of Kanch for years, deities be damned, but a few metres of easy flat ground out of respect is not going to rule anyone out. Thirty horizontal metres and several vertical metres away, as with the Ms. Oh saga, judged by Ms. Hawley, will rule you out - a point worth noting for defenders of Manaslu pikers.

There is an issue with Makalu, with some climbers stopping at one of the little tops on the summit ridge, probably an honest mistake - though most have managed to not make that mistake. Some of the main Sherpas have been a bit confused about this one, but nothing compared to...

Annapurna. Geez :-/ There are two summits maybe, two points that seem to be almost exact in height and one, or two(?) more that are just a couple of metres (more?) lower. Then there's another three or four points, including the junction of ridges at the NW end.

This has all been realised by a) new satellite data, and b) a very instructive panorama shot of the summit ridge taken by (I think) a Spanish TV crew in a helo a few years back. Some very (very) famous people have not been to the summit of Annapurna. I'm reluctant to even mention their names here, but they definitely were not on the main summit(s). Apparently, as we've learned, some people have known about this for years.

So the issue of the TZ is a retroactive amnesty. To say "Look [Famous Dude] we assume you weren't lying or stupid and just assume that for whatever reason you didn't know about where an alternative top was, or you couldn't see it in the bad weather, or there was a lot of snow that year, or ....whatever."

So nearly all the existing summit claims since 1950 are 'officially accepted' and no mass re-writing of Himalayan 8000m climbing is needed. Personally, I would not want to do that anyway.

But for the future? It has not been decided, but right now I hope any TZ will be historical/retro only - not going forward from this(?) point onward.

Now everyone knows where the highest point is, they should go there. End of.

In reply to Damo:

Damo, thanks a lot for your long reply, much appreciated

I like your conclusions, "no mass re-writing of Himalayan 8000m climbing is needed" .... a...nd ".Now everyone knows where the highest point is, they should go there. End of."

In reply to profitofdoom:

Yeh, well, the dossiers have been out for months, and that blog link re Manaslu above was from 2016, so plenty of people have known for years. One of my colleagues, who also works with the Himalayan DataBase interviewing expeditions, discussed the Manaslu issue with Nims before he left, but still neither he nor his team tried to go past the selfie-summit. I stress that this is not about Nims though - everyone is doing it, at least in autumn, and many in spring.

People are just stopping where the Sherpas tell them to, because that's how the bulk of 8000m climbers climb now. That's not my definition of adventure, but clearly many disagree.

And, of course, there is a whole other argument about whether it matters. Whether you're there for the summit or just for the experience. Or something...

In reply to TMM:

I can’t believe no one has asked ‘but what’s he ever done on grit?’....