13 Hours, No Oxygen: Nims Purja Just Halved His Own Everest World Record

No oxygen. No sleep. No limits. That's what Nirmal "Nims" Purja wrote after doing something no one on Earth has ever done twice: climbing from the summit of Mount Everest to the summit of neighbouring Lhotse, without a single breath of bottled oxygen, in under 14 hours — nearly halving his own previous record in the process.

Purja, a former UK Special Forces soldier turned full-time Himalayan guide, is no stranger to rewriting the record books — he became famous for climbing all 14 of the world's 8,000-metre peaks in under seven months. But this record was different because of what came immediately before it. According to Snowbrains, Purja spent the preceding two days at Camp 4 balancing the safety and nutrition needs of a team of expedition clients through the most volatile stretch of the spring season, before turning around and launching his own unsupported push — with no recovery period between guiding and record-chasing.

The route between the two summits is not a marked trail. Climbers descend Everest's South Summit, cross the treacherous, corniced ridge toward the South Col, then re-ascend Lhotse's face — one of the steepest walls in the Himalaya. This year, Purja found deep, fresh powder on the connecting ridge and had to break his own trail through it, on a route where a wrong step in either direction drops thousands of metres.

The feat landed in one of the busiest, most scrutinised Everest seasons on record. Nepal issued roughly 1,181 climbing permits across 30 peaks this spring, generating over $7 million in Everest fees alone, and 274 climbers reached the Everest summit in a single day on 20 May — a new record for the Nepal side, beating the 223 set in 2019. Climbers from 55 countries stood on top. It was also a season that cost lives: five climbers died on Everest and two more on neighbouring 8,000-metre peaks, a reminder that records and risk climb the mountain together.

What makes the traverse remarkable isn't just the speed — it's the sequencing. Most climbers need days of rest between two 8,000-metre summits; the human body simply doesn't recover fast at that altitude, oxygen or no oxygen. Purja did it back-to-back, on no sleep, after a physically demanding stint guiding others. He remains the only person to have completed an oxygen-free Everest–Lhotse back-to-back traverse at all, let alone twice at two very different speeds.

What this means for trekkers

Source: Snowbrains.

Cover photo: Sergey Guk via Pexels (Pexels License).