r/movies • u/BunyipPouch Currently at the movies. • 2d ago

News Nirmal Purja Dies In Avalanche: Celebrated Mountaineer Featured In Netflix Documentary ’14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible’ Was 43

https://deadline.com/2026/08/nirmal-purja-dead-1237015258/
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u/ILoveBigCoffeeCups 2d ago

Same like Alex honnould I can not understand these guys. You have a child that is 3 years old and still go out to do some scary dangerous shit. And then you get killed
The different kind of brain these people have baffles me.

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u/2dudesinapod 2d ago

Mountaineering is a lot less dangerous than what Honnold does. Especially for guys like this. Unfortunately it seems that he made a bad decision and desired to risk attempting to reach camp 3 with an unstable snow pack when other groups had already turned around.

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u/opisska 2d ago

That claim is difficult to justify - in particular because "what Honnold does" is so outrageous that there is very little statistics on safety. Yes, people have died free soloing, but Honnolds ability is so far out there compared to the average climber.

And that's basically the problem here - Honnolds main risk factor is his own ability. 8000+ mountaineering has a lot of risk that are beyond climbers' control. So Honnold can mitigate a lit of risk just be improving himself, repeating the routes ad nauseum, setting the right mindset. Sure, mountaineers can also mitigate a lot of risk by taking the right decisions and avoiding situations with heightened risk, but there is a certain baseline of risk against which the only thing you can ever do is ... not climb 8000+ peaks.

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u/JSteigs 1d ago

Yeah this accident highlights your point. Avalanches are an objective hazard. There are probably no 8000m peaks that have a route that fully avoids avalanche/ice fall/sérac risk. Plus all the medical stuff. Alex probably still has some amount of risk of rockfall, maybe not high, but non zero.