Mohammad Ali Sadpara will be remembered as a versatile climber by the international community of mountain climbers, and a hero in his native Pakistan.
He is the only Pakistani to have climbed eight of the 14 highest mountains in the world, and he made the first ever winter climb of the ninth highest peak in the world, Nanga Parbat.
On Friday, February 5, he went missing along with two others – John Snorri of Iceland and Juan Pablo Mohr, Chile – while trying to climb K2, the second highest peak in the world at 8,611 meters (28,251 feet) and also the deadliest. .
His son Sajid was also a member of the team and the idea was that the father-and-son duo should reach K2 without oxygen, an achievement that has never been done in the winter. But Sajid had to turn back from a place called the Bottleneck – also known as the ‘death zone’, about 300 meters from the top – after feeling sick.
He has since helped military-led rescue teams search the mountain for signs of his father and the other two men – but there was no trace of one. The military wants to resume the search, weather permitting, using a C-130 high-altitude aircraft and infrared technology to see possible shelters at the peak.
But Sajid does not hold much hope.
“I am grateful to everyone who arranges a search, but it is unlikely that they would still be alive now. The search must therefore be to repair their bodies,” he said earlier this week.
How did Mohammad Ali Sadpara start climbing?
Mohammad Ali Sadpara was born in 1976 in Sadpara, a village in one of the river valleys of the Himalayan-Baltistan region in the far north of Pakistan.
Livestock farming is the main source of livelihood in the region, and the youth of the area also work as porters with Western mountaineers and adventure tourists who visit the region every year.
Sadpara completed high school in the town and his father, a low-grade government employee, later moved the family to the city of Skardu, where Sadpara attended high school before moving on to climbing.
Nisar Abbas, a local journalist and family member and friend of Sadpara from their village days, describes him as extraordinarily right from his childhood.
“He had the physique and habits of an athlete, and was also good in studies. He never failed a class. Since his older brother never did well in school, his father was eager for him.” to give a good education, and therefore he moved to Skardu. ‘
Given the family’s financial constraints, he started climbing around 2003 or 2004.
“He was an immediate success with tour operators, as the expeditions he led were mostly successful. He gained worldwide fame in 2016 when a team of three men in which he participated was the first to Nanga Parbat in the winter. to fetch.
Hamid Hussain, a Karachi-based tour operator from Skardu, who has known Sadpara since 2012, has similar memories.
“He was brave, pleasant and very friendly,” he says. “And he was so fit. We pulled together on many occasions, and although sometimes there were teeth that made us breathe and collapse, he still jogged up the steep slopes and then shouted back and asked us to be quick.”
Once in the winter of 2016, during a trek from Sadpara Valley to the Alpine planes of Deosai, when icy winds caught them in a snow-filled gorge and sent shivers down their spines, they saw him climb up the slope smoothly and start dancing across the reef.
Ali Sadpara has been in close quarters before, and he knew the risks.
“I lost 12 of my 14 colleagues in the mountaineering industry. Two of us remain,” he said in a 2019 interview. “So my friends often ask me, Ali, when are you going to die?”
Why does K2 reach without oxygen?
One theory is that he worked as a large porter for John Snorri and had to abide by the agreement he made with him.
But it was just a quarrel, says Nisar Abbas. Weeks earlier, Sadpara had openly spoken out about the effort after a 10-member Nepalese team led by the famous Sherpa Nirmal Purja became K2 for the first time in winter.
And to set a new record, Sadpara wanted to do the same – but without oxygen. And he also wanted his son to be there when that happened.
Sajid, his son, told the media that they started with about 25 to 30 climbers, local and foreign, but all turned back before reaching the 8,000 meter mark.
Sajid’s own condition deteriorated when they hit the bottleneck.
“We were carrying an oxygen cylinder in our emergency equipment. My dad said I should take it out and use it. It will make me feel better. ‘
But while Sajid was setting up the cylinder, the mask regulator caused a leak.
Meanwhile, his father and the two foreigners continued to enlarge the bottleneck. His father then looked back and shouted for Sajid to keep climbing.
“I screamed that the cylinder was leaking. He said ‘do not worry, keep climbing, you will feel better’. But I could not find the strength to do so, and decided to turn back. “It was about noon on Friday. That was the last I saw of them.”
Asked why Sadpara insisted he should continue, Sajid said: “The Nepalese did it weeks before, and he wanted to do it too, because K2 is our mountain.”
What could have happened?
Sajid says he saw the three men climb over the top of the bottle neck, meaning they probably reached the summit.
Experts believe most accidents occur while falling, because even a slight loss of balance can cause someone to plunge into an abyss.
Those who knew Sadpara doubted whether he would have made such a mistake.
People in his village remember more than once that a goat Sadpara had climbed into the mountains, was injured, and instead of cutting his throat, as others would, he would pull it over his shoulders and down to the bottom walk to take it. to the village veterinarian.
They suspect that he probably could not succeed in coming back because one or both of his partners had an accident and he kept on finding a way to save them.
We will probably never know.
People in the area are waiting for a miracle.
But as his son says, given the hostile environment, low oxygen and winter temperatures as low as -80 ° C, there is little chance that the men could survive a week at more than 8,000 meters.
“It has not happened in climbing history yet, so we can only hope for a miracle,” Sajid Sadpara told the BBC.