National Geographic - UK (2022-02)

pretending that we don’t exist,” Mingma G. says.

“It’s like they think we don’t read their articles.”

And then there were the growing tensions, as

Nepali outfitters wanted more of the lucrative

guiding business that for years was dominated

by foreign companies. “We are the local people,

and we know more than the foreign guide ser-

vices do,” Mingma G. says. He acknowledges

that there is fierce competition among Nepali

outfitters, but “90 percent of foreign climbers,

they only trust foreign companies.”

Claiming the first K2 winter summit would

serve notice that Nepalis were taking their

rightful place not just as participants but

also as leaders in the mountaineering world.

“We wanted to have one for ourselves, for

history,” Nims would explain later. “It was a

no-brainer to team up.”

Mingma G. woke up on New Year’s Day with

a foggy hangover. Despite the subzero tempera-

tures, he had fallen asleep in his tent without

crawling into his sleeping bag. Soon he heard

Nims’s voice on the radio, inviting him back to

his camp for tea. They had more plans to discuss.

S

HERPAS LIKE TO SAY that a moun-

tain must allow a team of climbers

to reach its summit and return

unharmed. It’s the reason every

Himalayan expedition performs a

Puja ceremony: to ask the mountain

deities for permission to climb and

for safe passage. But during the first two weeks

of 2021, it was abundantly clear that K2 was not

ready to welcome any humans near its apex.

Hundred-mile-an-hour winds scoured the

mountain for days and plunged temperatures

well below zero at Base Camp, forcing everyone

to hunker down in their tents.

When the winds let up slightly, Nims’s team

made a quick foray up to Camp II to check on

their gear. “It was a wreckage sight,” Nims wrote

on Instagram. Gear they’d left for the summit

push—sleeping bags, battery-heated insoles for

their boots, spare mittens, and goggles—had

all blown away.

But weather reports predicted the winds

would calm beginning on January 14. Back at

Base Camp, more gear was quickly rounded up,

and another Nepali, Sona Sherpa from Seven

Summits Treks, joined the group to help bring

it up. Meanwhile, Nims and Mingma G. reass-

essed their schedule for reaching the summit.

Rather than spend a frigid night at Camp IV, the

traditional high camp pitched at roughly 25,000

feet for a summit bid, the Nepalis planned to

reach the top in a single day from Camp III. If

everything went well—a huge if—they could

summit on the 15th.

Later, some climbers at Base Camp would

accuse the Nepalis of hiding their plans to main-

tain an all-Nepali summit team, an accusation

Mingma G. doesn’t shy away from. “When there

is a football World Cup, do you ever want your

country to lose?” he explained in an interview

with ExplorersWeb. “No, never. And the team

and the coach always keep the strategy secret to

make those wishes possible. We were the same

on K2 this time.”

A CLIMB FOR HISTORY 97