The Son of the Mountain: Sajid Ali Sadpara's Oxygen-Free Alpine Triumphs Across K2 and the 8,000ers

On the barren, windswept shores of Satpara Lake near Skardu in Gilgit-Baltistan, the men of Sadpara village have carried heavy loads into the Karakoram mountains for over a century. For decades, they worked in the shadows—hauling food, fuel, and ropes for foreign expeditions while foreign climbers claimed the international headlines and medals.

In the 2010s, Muhammad Ali Sadpara broke through that invisible ceiling, becoming a national hero and an international icon with his historic first winter ascent of Nanga Parbat in 2016. Walking beside him was his young, quiet, and athletically gifted son, Sajid Ali Sadpara.

Today, Sajid Sadpara has emerged not merely as his father’s successor, but as the standard-bearer for a revolutionary new era of Pakistani mountaineering: climbing the world’s most terrifying peaks strictly in pure alpine style, without supplemental bottled oxygen and without personal Sherpa support.

The Prodigy at Twenty

Sajid first caught the attention of the global mountaineering community in July 2019. At just twenty years of age, climbing alongside his father, Sajid reached the summit of K2 (8,611m)—the Savage Mountain—without using supplemental bottled oxygen. He became the youngest human being in history to accomplish the feat, displaying an extraordinary natural cardiovascular capacity and mental poise in the lethal Bottleneck couloir.

Then came the tragedy of February 2021. During the historic winter push on K2, Sajid climbed past the Bottleneck without oxygen alongside his father Ali, Icelandic partner John Snorri, and Chilean climber Juan Pablo Mohr. But at 8,200 meters, near the base of the massive overhanging summit serac, Sajid’s oxygen regulator (which he was carrying as emergency backup for the winter assault) malfunctioned, causing severe headaches and disorientation. Realizing the danger, his father ordered him to turn back to Camp III while the three elders continued toward the summit.

Sajid survived the descent. His father and companions disappeared into the winter storm, never to return alive.

The Sacred Search and Recovery

In the wake of unimaginable grief, lesser men might have turned their backs on the mountains forever. Sajid did the exact opposite.

In July 2021, Sajid returned to K2 on the ‘K2 Clean-up and Search Mission’ alongside Canadian filmmaker Sandro Gromen-Hayes and Bolivian climber Hugo Ayaviri. Climbing without supplemental oxygen, Sajid ascended directly into the Death Zone, located the bodies of his father, Snorri, and Mohr high above the Bottleneck, retrieved their personal cameras, GPS units, and wedding rings, and buried his father with solemn dignity on the icy slopes of K2 according to Islamic rites.

It was an act of profound filial love and physical bravery that earned Sajid universal admiration across the global mountaineering fraternity.

The Pure Alpine Campaign

Freed from the psychological burden of searching for his father, Sajid set out to prove what an independent Pakistani alpinist could accomplish at the highest level of world mountaineering. He committed to a strict, uncompromising ethic: no supplemental bottled oxygen, no personal support porters, and climbing to the true geographical summits.

In September 2022, Sajid climbed to the true summit of Manaslu (8,163m) in Nepal without bottled oxygen, navigating the razor-sharp knife-edge ridge that many commercial climbers bypass.

In April 2023, he tackled the avalanche-swept headwalls of Annapurna I (8,091m) without oxygen. Just three months later, in July 2023, he summited Nanga Parbat (8,126m) via the Kinshofer Route in pure alpine style without bottled gas, before returning to his beloved Karakoram to scale K2 once again without supplemental oxygen.

Through his humility, unbreakable physical strength, and ethical purity, Sajid Ali Sadpara has transformed the image of Pakistani mountaineers from humble high-altitude porters into elite world leaders of alpine style—carrying the name of Sadpara and Pakistan to the very top of the world.