Osprey have welcomed new Athlete, Nirmal ‘Nims’ Purja MBE to the team.
With over 16 years in the British Military, including Special Forces roles and more than six years in a Mountain Guide / Expedition Leader role, Nims now joins Osprey Europe.
Nims is currently attempting to climb the 14 x 8,000m peaks in only seven months – Project Possible.
For Phase 1, Nirmal ‘Nims’ Purja MBE and ThruDark’s Jay Morton successfully summited Everest carrying an Aether Pro backpack. The current record, held by Jerzy Kukuczka is seven years, 11 months and 14 days and highlights the immense challenge that Nims is undertaking. With several mountain rescues under his belt, Nims has both the background and mindset to undertake such a challenge. This challenge hit its’ first major milestone on May 22 at 5.40am, when equipped with both an Aether Pro 70 and a bespoke ThruDark summit suit, Nims stood atop the highest point on earth.
Twenty four hours later Jay Morton, Director at ThruDark, followed Nims to also summit Everest. Jay with over ten years of British Military experience works closely with the co-founders at ThruDark to provide outdoor clothing for the most extreme and adverse environments around the world.
Osprey join ThruDark in a strong, long-term brand partnership yielding exciting expedition alliances and future product collaboration projects. Both ascents were supported by an expert team with decades of combined experience. Among the support team were legendary Sherpas, Mingma and Jabu, whose resident experience was invaluable during the entire expedition.
Nims said: “Everything in life is possible armed only with a determined approach and positive mindset.”
This determination was also reflected in Jay’s ascent. He added: “We originally planned to summit on the 16th but due to ill health I was unable to. We went from an eight-man team to a four-man team. We all summited around the same time; it was an honour to be stood on the summit with the remaining three guys. They all individually earned it in their own way.”
For Osprey this is the second time an Aether backpack has been part of an Everest related, record-breaking attempt. In 2001 Erik Weihenmayer became the first blind person to summit Everest, earning him and the Aether pack a spot on the cover of Time Magazine.
Aether Pro builds on this heritage and extends the technical capability of the Aether backpack series. It can be stripped back to bare essentials for a streamlined and svelte companion or can retain the full featured componentry. With a superb comfort and fit, a lightweight design and technical fabric and build quality, this backpack is the ‘Everest of carry systems’.
Head of Marketing, Gary Burnand, said: “We look forward to supporting and sharing Nims’ future ascents as a key sponsor of Project Possible. His sheer determination to accomplish such a challenging project is very inspiring and as a team we are behind him every step of the way.”
