Barstool's Everest Guide Nims Purja Dead After Broad Peak Avalanche

Purja was leading a group of 10 climbers up the 8,051-meter Broad Peak in northern Pakistan on Thursday, July 30, when an avalanche tore through the mountain's main west-facing gully around 9 a.m. local time. His Nimsdai Foundation confirmed the following day that he had "tragically lost his life," along with longtime climbing partners Pur Bahadur Gurung and Nima Sherpa.

If you don't follow mountaineering, you probably still know Purja's story secondhand. He's the guy from "14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible," the 2021 Netflix doc that turned an ex-Gurkha soldier into a global name after he climbed all 14 of the world's 8,000-meter peaks in 6 months and 6 days back in 2019 — obliterating the previous record. That's the guy the avalanche just took.

The Wonton Don

@DonnieDoesWorld

This is devastating to hear. Praying for Nims and all the other climbers!!!

The Barstool connection here is DonnieDoesWorld, who actually got to experience Purja's operation firsthand. Donnie joined one of Purja's Elite Expeditions trips up Everest, stopping at base camp himself, and has been posting tributes since the news broke — first the shock, then a longer remembrance of what the trip meant to him.

The Wonton Don

@DonnieDoesWorld

Just heard @nimsdai was confirmed dead in an avalanche. He let me join one of his Everest expeditions (I stopped at base camp) and the hospitality him and his team @eliteexped showed me made it a truly life changing experience. RIP.

That's not a small brag. Elite Expeditions is Purja's own guiding outfit, the operation he built off the back of his record-breaking fame to get more climbers — pros and amateurs alike — up the biggest mountains on earth safely. Getting invited onto one of those trips as a Barstool guy documenting the climb is the kind of access most outlets would kill for, which is exactly why this hits different than a normal celebrity-death tribute cycle.

Tributes are pouring in well beyond Barstool's corner of the internet too, which makes sense given how far Purja's story traveled after the Netflix doc. "This guy was an absolute legend and a hero," one Barstool account wrote, and that's basically the consensus everywhere — a guy who redefined what was considered physically possible at altitude, gone in the exact kind of disaster that stalks everyone who does what he did for a living.

Gaz

@stoolsalesguy

Fuck. This guy was an absolute legend and a hero. RIP NIRMAL

Purja was 43. Recovery efforts on Broad Peak have reportedly continued since the avalanche, with search teams working to account for all 10 climbers caught in the slide. For a guy whose whole legend was built on doing the impossible on the world's deadliest peaks, the mountains finally got the last word — and it's leaving a mark on everyone who crossed paths with him, Barstool included.