Quitting’s Not in the Blood The Inside Story of the World’s Most Dangerous Mountain Mission

by Purja, Nims

• ISBN13: 9781426223433
• ISBN10: 1426223439
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2023-06-06
• Publisher: National Geographic

Summary

In this spellbinding memoir, Nimdai Purja tells the story of his latest epic mountaineering achievement: leading the first team to scale K2 in the winter season. Filled with danger and suspense, his story reveals how leadership, a willingness to learn, integrity and collaboration are essential qualities behind the world's greatest climbing feats. The first man ever to summit all fourteen 8000m 'Death Zone' peaks in less than 7 months (the previous record was 7 years,) Purja reveals how he was able to go miles beyond the possible. Excerpt below:
“For a lot of extreme altitude climbers, climbing K2 in winter had long been considered an act of madness. Temperatures of around -70c were enough to kill a person if they were unlucky enough to be pinned to one spot for more than 10 or 15 minutes. Hurricane winds of 120mph could blow a climber from the mountain. Meanwhile, the face of K2 sparkled with blue ice, a deceptively beautiful booby trap that was almost impossible to climb over without rope, ice axes and crampons. Even when armed with the correct kit on a shallow slope, one slip, or misplaced step could trigger a fatal skid to the very bottom. In winter, a climber’s game had to be next level if they were to conquer K2, but as of 2021, no one had found that next level game. I shut out the risks and continued to climb.
“The sky around me blazed a brilliant blue. The white and black peaks of Pakistan’s Karakoram mountain range stretched out for as far as I could see, like a row of jagged teeth. There was Broad Peak, a climb ranked in 12th place on the world’s most-highest list, but even that was overshadowed by K2’s vast mass. And everything seemed so tiny below. I could see the crevasse-scarred ice field on the lower stretches that snaked towards base camp and wound its way to the bottom of the mountain. From there it fed into the Baltoro Glacier like the artery of some vast American super-freeway. I felt like an insignificant dot on a massive landscape, like a man standing alone on the moon. But there was no time to enjoy the picture postcard vista. I had to focus.
Brother, be ready.”

Author Biography

Celebrated Nepali climber Nims Purja holds multiple mountaineering world records. After serving with the British Armed Forces as a Nepalese Gurkha and as a soldier in the Special Boat Service (SBS), an elite special forces unit of the Royal Navy, he took on a series of mountaineering challenges, including climbing all 14 of the world’s mountain peaks above 8,000 meters in just over six months, reaching the summits of Mount Everest, Lhotse, and Makalu in 48 hours and completing the first-ever winter ascent of Pakistan’s K2. He lives with his wife, Suchi, in Hampshire, England.