ISLAMABAD: Sajid Ali Sadpara, the climber-son of renowned Pakistani mountaineer Mohammad Ali Sadpara, were to set out on a search expedition of K2 to look for the bodies of his father and two other climbers who had gone missing early this year in an attempt to ascend K2.
Sajid Ali Sadpara announced on social media that he, along with the Canadian award-winning documentary maker Elia Saikaly, were leaving on Friday (June 25), on a search operation for the three missing climbers — Mahammad Ali Sadpara of Pakistan, John Snorri Sigurjónsson of Iceland and Juan Pablo Mohr of Chile.
Sajid Sadpara and Elia Saikaly were also part of the expedition but had to return to Camp 3, hours before the fateful departure due to malfunctioning of the oxygen supplement regulator. They were to join them but could not due to bad weather conditions.
The three climbers were last seen on February 5 near the bottleneck on K2 as they attempted to reach the summit.
Later, an aerial rescue operation was launched but it had to be aborted after around 12 days and the missing mountaineers were officially declared dead on February 18.
Earlier, Elia Saikaly also announced he was in Pakistan and “headed to K2 with Sajid Sadpara to help him search for answers around the disappearance of his father Ali Sadpara, our friend John Snorri and JP Mohr.”
In his post on Instagram, Elia Saikaly said ‘the truth is he couldn’t do anything for his friends and teammates’.
“We were making a film about their winter ascent. We were supposed to be with them the night they disappeared with JP Mohr and we are likely alive because fate intervened as an oxygen mix-up forced PK and I back just below camp 3. Ali, JP Mohr and John never returned. Sajid survived.”
Before his attempt, Sajid Sadpara called on the High Commissioner of Canada Wendy Gilmour and thanked her for the support.
Wendy wished the junior Sadpara and his colleague success in their expedition and safe return. “I look forward to seeing you at BC,” she said in a post on social media.
An emotional video clip showing the US mountaineer Colin O’Brady remembering his friends, ‘the fallen heroes’ is also doing the rounds on social media.
Filmed atop the Mount Everest, which Brady has scaled recently, the footage shows him calling out names of his friends JP Mohr (Chile), Sergi Mingote (Spain), John Snorri (Iceland), Atanas (Bulgaria) and Ali Sadpara (Pakistan) and showing flags of their countries.
