Background of the 2021 K2 Disaster

The Lone Survivor

On February 5th, 2021, a lone figure, etched against the unforgiving canvas of the mountain infamously known as the “Killer Mountain”, was descending down treacherous slopes of ice and snow.

His name was Sajid Sadpara, and his father and mountaineering mentor, the legendary mountaineer Ali Sadpara, and two other companions, John Snorri Sigurjónsson and Juan Pablo Mohr Prieto were gone, vanished into the elements, lost in the white fury far above him.

Alone, without his companions, Sajid plunged down the icy slopes toward K2 Camp 3. He had to abandon the expedition and return back to the camp because his emergency kit oxygen regulator had malfunctioned. This was supposed to be a non-supplementary oxygen winter summit but he was suffering from severe altitude sickness so he had decided to turn back to Camp 3 and wait for his companions there.

The Savage Mountain

K2 mountain is known by a number of different names. It’s called the Mount Godwin-Austen, “Mountain of Mountains”, the “Mountaineers’ Mountain”, the Killer Mountain, and the Savage Mountain. The mountain lives up to its infamous name; the 8,611 colossal pyramid is second only to Mount Everest in terms of height, but K2 mountain reigns in notoriety. 

The K2 mountain is a death trap for mountaineers; one in four who attempt to reach the summit of this monstrous wall of ice and snow perishes. The now-famous name the “Savage Mountain” was given to this mountain of mountains by the American mountaineer George Irving Bell, a physicist by profession who had worked on the Manhattan Project and helped build the atomic bomb, who, after a failed ascend, famously declared: “It’s a savage mountain that tries to kill you.” A befitting name for the mountain that claimed the lives of so many who dared attempt to reach its summit.

It’s called the Mountaineers’ Mountain because of the technical difficulty to climb it; in fact, more people have been to space than on the summit of K2 – only 377 people have been able to conquer it, while 91 people perished attempting to subdue this savage mountain.

The Doomed Expedition

Tragedy struck once again in 2021 on the mountain where tragedy was commonplace. Ali Sadpara, his son, Sajid Sadpara, and two other mountaineers, the Icelandic mountaineer John Snorri, and the Chilean Juan Pablo Mohr were on their way to make history by ascending the mountain during winters without the use of oxygen. All were seasoned professionals, Sajid the youngest and comparatively least experienced, but as fate would have it, he would be the only one to survive this ill-fated mission.

The Ill-Fated 2021 K2 Expedition

The Team

Ali Sadpara

Ali Sadpara, the leader of the ill-fated expedition, was a seasoned and renowned mountaineer. After ascending several high altitude peaks without supplementary oxygen, he had achieved a near-legendary status in the mountaineering community. He had scaled eight of the 14 eight-thousanders, four of them in a single calendar year.

Ali Sadpara was considered an expert on K2 in the mountaineering community. He hailed from Gilgit-Baltistan, the region in Pakistan where most of the eight-thousanders are located, including K2, and he had been climbing all his life.

Sajid Sadpara

Accompanying Ali Sadpara was his 21-year-old son, Sajid Sadpara, with whom he had successfully ascended K2 in 2019. His father had started coaching him when he was only eight years old and Ali was understood to be an alpine prodigy.

Despite his young age, Sajid was also an expert mountaineer. He had ascended several mountain peaks without supplementary oxygen alongside his father. When his father decided to attempt a winter expedition of K2 without supplementary oxygen, Sajid eagerly joined him.

John Snorri Sigurjónsson

John Snorri was an Icelandic mountaineer and alpinist who also had extensive mountaineering experience. He had ascended some of the most challenging mountains in the world, including K2 mountain in 2017. After climbing a range of peaks across the world, he set his sights on K2 again. He would join Ali Sadpara’s ill-fated expedition in 2021.

Juan Pablo Mohr Prieto

The fourth member of the team, Juan Pablo Mohr Prieto, was a Chilean. An architect by profession, he had decided that mountaineering was his true calling and K2 was his dream expedition. He had previously conquered Lhotse, Mount Everest, and Dhaulagiri, all without supplementary oxygen. He traveled to Pakistan in 2021 to attempt the winter expedition with Ali Sadpara.

The Ascend

The ascend began on February 4th, 2021, during the freezing cold winter morning. Ali Sadapara was leading the team and they planned to scale the mountain in the pure alpinist style – without rope, supplementary oxygen, or guide. They wanted to make history by becoming the first to summit K2 without supplementary oxygen in winter.

Weeks before, Nirmal Purge and his team had successfully scaled the mountain in the winter for the first time. Ali wanted to do it too but without supplementary oxygen, and he wanted his son to be part of his great accomplishment. 

They took the Abruzzi Spur, the most used route by climbers, located on the south-east ridge of the mountain. The only bottleneck on this rout, aptly named the “Bottleneck”, was the hardest part. After a day of arduous climbing, the reached the Bottleneck.

Tragedy Strikes

When they reached the Bottleneck at 11 AM on February 5th, 2021, Sajid Sadpara started feeling altitude sickness. His father, Ali Sadpara, advised him to use some oxygen from the emergency gear but due to a regulator malfunction he wasn’t able to do that.

He decided to turn back but he heard his father shouting far above, asking him to keep climbing. When he replied, the oxygen cylinder was leaking, his father replied: “Keep climbing, you will feel better.” He didn’t have the strength to do that so he decided to descend.

The last he saw his father, John Snorri, and Juan Pablo, they were ascending through the narrow couloir of the Bottleneck. He would never see them again.

The Descend of the Lonely Survivor

When the lone figure of Sajid Sadpara was descending down the treacherous slopes of the K2 mountain, he thought they would reach the summit shorty as the Bottleneck was only 300m from the top, and they would soon join him at Camp 3 where he was headed.

However, when they did not return by midnight, he knew that something had went terribly wrong. He still clung to the possibility that they were still alive. From camp 3 he looked upward toward the summit, searching for answers, but the Savage Mountain remained silent, offering no words of solace. He prepared for the worse and descended to the Base Camp of K2 to arrange for a search and rescue mission.

The Mystery Surrounding the Death of Ali Sadpara, Jon Snorri, and Juan Pablo Mohr

Sajid Sadpara maintained that he saw his three companions passed the Bottleneck and he speculated that they might have reached the summit and disappeared on their descend from the top.

Mountaineering experts also argue that whatever transpired might have happened during the descend as most alpine accidents happen during the descension phase, when a slight loss of balance can send you tumbling down at break-neck speed. Ali Sadpara was an expert mountaineer and experts are not convinced that he made a fatal error on his ascend after passing the Bottleneck. Instead, the general consensus is that an accident had happened during the descent. 

Another mountaineer, a Bulgarian named Atanas Skatov, who was with another team, had also perished hours before the disaster with Ali Sadpara’s team had happened.

Aftermath and Legacy of the 2021 K2 Disaster

Search and Rescue Mission

On 6th of February, 2021, a search and rescue mission under the supervision of the local administration was arranged with mountaineers familiar with the terrain assisting the team. Helicopters made search flight at up to 7,000m but were not able to trace the missing mountaineers. As the weather got worse, the rescue mission was called off. Bad weather continued to thwart search and rescue efforts intermittently but several teams continued the operations.

After several days of no contact, experts started speculating that the three mountaineers had died as they could not survive in the death zone at above 8,000 meters.

On February 18, 2021, after 12 days of no contact or activity from GPS trackers mountaineers carried, Ali Sadpara, John Snorri and Juan Pablo Mohr were all declared dead by the search and rescue team.

Commenting on his father’s death, Sajid Sadpara thanked everyone who prayed for his father and said: “[My father] set many records including the first winter ascent of Nanga Parbat in 2016 and earned immense respect and praise from the best climbers in the world. This is his lasting legacy.”

Sajid Sadpara’s Mission to Find His Father’s Body

Sajid Sadpara continued the search for the bodies of his three companions with the help of other mountaineers. In July 2021, after five months of laborious search, the bodies of Ali Sadpara, John Snorri, and Juan Pablo Mohr were found hanging by a rope near the Bottleneck.

As it was not possible to bring back the bodies down the mountain, the body of the three deceased mountaineers were buried in snow on K2.

Aftermath and Legacy

The 2021 K2 tragedy left a deep mark on the mountaineering and alpinist community. The unforgiving terrain of K2 lived up to its name and claimed the lives of three accomplished mountaineers.

Ali Sadpara was hailed as a national hero and tributes poured in from all over the world. A park in Karachi, the biggest city in Pakistan, was named after him. The government of Gilgit-Baltistan established a mountaineering school called Muhammad Ali Sadpara Institute of Adventure Sports in honor of Ali Sadpara in his hometown of Skardu.

Sajid Sadpara announced that he would keep his father’s memory alive by following in his footsteps and striving to become a legendary mountaineer like him. He said: “To all the climbers… who look up to him. I promise I will carry on his dreams and mission and continue to walk in his footsteps.” 

He would go on to summit Nanga Parbat, Mount Everest, and Broad Peak without supplementary oxygen. He is still active in mountaineering, keeping the memories of his father alive.