Pakistani climber cleans K2 as shrine to fallen father

Over the course of a week, some 400 pounds (200 kilograms) of trash is cut from the pinnacle’s frozen claws by his five-person team and precariously hauled back, he says, a rare act of charity in one of the most unforgiving environments on Earth. .

It is a high-altitude tribute to Sajid’s father, legendary climber Ali Sadpara, in honor of the place where they came together in the wild and where his body remains after a father-son expedition in 2021 stumbled upon the “wild mountain.” .

“I’m doing it from my heart,” Sajid told an AFP crew at K2 Basecamp, where 5,150-meter-high gasps and avalanches tremble in an amphitheater of surrounding slopes.

“This is our mountain,” the 25-year-old said, assessing the earlier task. “We are the custodians.”

K2 was forged when India collided with Asia 50 million years ago, sprouting the Karakoram mountain range in present-day northeastern Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan.

It was named by British surveyors in 1856, denoting the second peak in the Karakoram range. Over time, nearby mountains with alphanumeric designations became better known by the names used by locals.

But sequestered in a glacial cul-de-sac on the Chinese border, days from the slightest suggestion of human habitation, K2 retained its ominous moniker, fueling a reputation as a wilder, more indomitable and technically demanding climb than Everest of Nepal, which is 238 meters higher.

First conquered by the Italians in 1954, its winter winds whip up to 200 kilometers per hour and temperatures drop to minus 60 degrees Celsius (minus 76 Fahrenheit).

But it also ignites primal passions with its archetypal triangular silhouette: the shape of a beak that a child might draw.

After two days on trails through valleys and four more across the Baltoro Glacier, a 63-kilometre shard frozen in permanent storm surge and riddled with crevasses, the first glimpse of K2 sends a shiver through hikers.

It stands like an altar at the end of a colossal corridor. Sundown deepens its rocky reliefs and polishes the snowy slopes to rose gold. Pilgrim paragliders come to spin in its shadow.

A renowned nature photographer called this sight “the throne room of the mountain gods.”

“We love it more than life itself because there is no place of such beauty on Earth,” said Central Karakoram National Park (CKNP) director Muhammad Ishaq.

Against this sublime backdrop, Ali Sadpara stood out among a largely white Western mountaineering elite as a domestic hero who rose from humble roots to climb eight of the world’s 14 “super peaks” above 8,000 metres.

“The name of Pakistan has risen high because of Ali,” said Abbas Sadpara, a 48-year-old veteran climber who led the AFP team to K2.

Two years ago, Sajid was attempting a perilous winter ascent of K2 with his father and two foreigners when illness forced him to turn back.

The three men who continued were later discovered dead below the “bottleneck,” a ledge that looks like a frozen tidal wave in the final stretch before the summit.

Sajid recovered his father’s body and performed Islamic rites in a makeshift grave near Camp Four, the last stop before the summit.

He marked the spot with GPS coordinates before the mountain engulfed the wreckage at a height of more than 23 Eiffel Towers.

Sajid bears that loss with gentle grace.

Her voice, untouched by emotion, is hard to make out in the thundering restaurants of Islamabad or in the resort town of Skardu, where a mural of her father watches expeditions disembark in roaring jeeps.

But in the nearby village of Choghoghrong, an oasis of golden farmland dotted with lavender bushes, he resonates as he recounts the rare appreciation of the natural world his father passed down as they worked the land between summit ascents.

“This simple life and this natural life that we spend here,” said Sajid. “This whole world was my people.”

“I’m more connected to nature in this town,” he said.

But K2 exerts a gravitational pull: a place of extreme risk, but also the promise of absolute zen in the psyche of the curious and adrenaline-confused climber.

“We want to be in the mountains just for peace of mind,” Sajid said. “If we see any garbage, the feeling is totally different.”

Abbas Sadpara said: “K2 is no longer as beautiful as it used to be. We have destroyed its beauty with our own hands.”

But Sajid has climbed half of the 8,000-meter peaks without supplemental oxygen, a reckless undertaking, and he has no ill will toward those who ditch equipment on the slopes.

“After a summit you are totally exhausted,” he said. “The main thing is survival.”

But there is a saying in Islam that he likes to remember: “Cleanliness is half of faith.”

“Getting to the top is something else,” he explains. “Cleanliness is something that one personally feels from the heart.”

In 2019, plastic debris was discovered 11 kilometers under the sea in the Mariana Trench, the deepest point on Earth.

With commercialized mountain tourism transporting increasing numbers of tourists to the top, Everest is also becoming notorious for large rubbish patches.

K2 saw a record-breaking 150 or so summits last season, raising concerns that the same ironic dynamic, of climbers leaving trails of debris as they pursue the world’s most unspoilt views, has been brought to play in Pakistan.

“There are two mountains where litter has been a problem and they are K2 and Everest,” said Norwegian climber Kristin Harila, 37, whose summit of Pakistan’s peak last month sealed an all-mountain record ascent. 8,000 meters in three months and one day.

“Commercial companies are accepting more equipment,” explained CKNP ecologist Yasir Abbas, who oversaw a campaign to remove 1,600kg of rubbish from the mountain by 2022. “If more people are going to climb, there will be more waste.”

“What goes up has to come down,” he says. “The people who are cleaning up K2 are risking their lives for the environment.”

But the cleanup mission goes beyond the environment, and extends to the fellowship code that climbers abide by at height, beyond the ground crutches of rescue services and emergency rooms.

Discarded ropes can trick altitude sickness-clouded teams into oblivion. Abandoned tents force other campers to more exposed locations at the mercy of the elements. Each thrown canister of O2 is another great danger at the whim of gravity and wind.

“It’s not my rubbish or your rubbish, it’s our rubbish,” Harila told AFP in Islamabad.

“Here on K2, if there is any mistake, you fall. If you fall, you fall to the end,” said Mingma David Sherpa, 33, who led a Nepali team with the Nimsdai Foundation that also cleared some 200 kilograms of the K2 before passing. the baton to Sajid in mid-July.

One day before that time, young Sadpara sets his eyes on the mountain after days of trekking through the glacial wilderness. “I look at K2 and I think in a different way,” he says. But “from afar you can’t see the garbage.”

“K2 is more than a mountain for me.”