On a bright afternoon, Nima Rinji Sherpa’s stroll down a crowded Kathmandu street is frequently interrupted by people coming to greet him. Some give him a warm pat on the back. As he joins friends for lunch at a pizzeria, its owner rushes to embrace him, gushing, “You are making us proud, Nima.”
Everyone in Nepal, a small nation in the Himalayas tucked in between India and China, seems to know who he is. In October 2024, at age 18, he became the youngest person to summit the world’s 14 mountains higher than 8,000 meters (26,247 feet). Apart from Nepal, these mountains are in Pakistan, China, and India.
Mr. Rinji hails from a family of Sherpas, an ethnic Tibetan tribe living in Nepal whose people are pioneers in mountaineering. For generations, they have been highly sought-after guides and porters for international clients making the world’s most difficult climbs.
Why We Wrote This
A story focused on
For generations, Sherpas have been highly sought-after guides and porters for international clients making the world’s most difficult climbs. This trailblazing role model aims to inspire young people to become athletes in their own right.
While the climbing community around the globe has lauded Mr. Rinji’s record-breaking accomplishment, back home there is more to it. He is seen as a trailblazer who is pursuing climbing as a professional mountaineering athlete and who aims to inspire more young people to break away from the Sherpa tradition of serving only as helpers on expeditions.
“[Sherpas] are well qualified to be the best climbing athletes, too,” Mr. Rinji says. “They just need some guidance and inspiration.”
Born into a clan of climbers
Mr. Rinji’s father, Tashi Lakpa Sherpa, has summited Mount Everest nine times; at age 19, he became the youngest person to summit Everest without additional oxygen. In 2011, Mr. Rinji’s uncle Mingma Sherpa became the first South Asian climber to summit the 14 peaks.
Courtesy of Nima Rinji Sherpa
Mr. Rinji nevertheless showed no interest in climbing in his early teenage days. But in 2020, during the lockdown imposed for the COVID-19 pandemic, he developed an interest in photography and eventually followed his father up mountains with the hope of capturing scenic photos and videos.
On the first trek, Mr. Rinji says, he surprised his father by matching his pace and kept following him in the coming weeks on more trails, awestruck by the “beautiful and overwhelming” mountains. Soon, Mr. Rinji was part of his father’s training sessions for professional climbers and was determined to summit the Himalayas.
In September 2022, a few months after Mr. Rinji turned 16 – Nepal’s legal age for climbing – he was part of an expedition to Mount Manaslu, the world’s eighth-highest mountain at 8,163 meters. There Mr. Rinji had firsthand experience of the challenges climbers face and of how tirelessly Sherpas work for their clients.
Out of 500 people who were at the base camp preparing to summit that season, he says, only about 100 achieved the feat. Twenty people were caught in avalanches and had to be rescued. At least one climber died. (Hilaree Nelson, a top American ski mountaineer, fell while descending.)
“Some got in danger; some got afraid,” Mr. Rinji says. “But me and my dad knew for sure that we are not quitting, no matter what.
“I think I was one of the last people to summit. Then it clicked,” he says with a smile and some pride showing on his face.
After that, he kept summiting one after another “eight-thousanders.” When he reached the top of Everest, it was night, but he continued on, stopping only at the summit of an adjacent peak, Lhotse. “That entire expedition was 15 days of extreme climbing,” he explains.
“A middle path”
It was during his 14-peaks expedition spread over the span of two years that Mr. Rinji realized the extraordinary, underrecognized work of Sherpas.
In 1953, Edmund Hillary, a New Zealand climber on a British expedition, and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first people confirmed to have summited Mount Everest.
“The only reason [Norgay] got invited to be part of that climbing experience was because of the merit,” Mr. Rinji says. “It’s our duty to vocalize ourselves, to take credit for who we are.”
Making his own case as an example, he says he didn’t receive support from any major sponsors for his 14-peaks expedition and had to rely on the resources of his family. Had he been a Western climber, he says, big names would have rushed to sponsor him.
Mr. Rinji has been meeting with young Sherpas who work as guides – or aspire to be guides – to motivate them to see themselves as athletes. He visits schools, addresses public events, and posts on social media about the need for young Nepalese to be “leaders” in climbing.
With the help of his father’s expedition company, he provides free courses, or charges a nominal fee, to train young people who want to become athletes. Such a course, he says, can cost around $10,000 in Western countries.
Mr. Lakpa is proud of his son not only for what he has achieved but also because “He is working for himself.”
Lakpa Temba, a Sherpa who works for an expedition company in Kathmandu, says Mr. Rinji is broadening the employment horizons for Sherpas. “Nima is showing us a middle path,” he says, “where you are climbing mountains for yourself, on your own terms.”
Veteran Sherpas also believe that having more people from Nepal become athletes in climbing will bring new attention and opportunities for Sherpas. And it could attract more people to Nepal, a poor country that relies on tourism.
“Our young generation is moving forward from traditional climbing practices,” said Nima Nuru Sherpa, the president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association. “What [Mr. Rinji] has done is inspiring.”
