Muhammad Ali Sadpara was born on 2 February 1976 in Sadpara village, 15 kilometres outside Skardu, in a community where most men worked as porters for foreign expeditions. By the time he disappeared on K2's Bottleneck on 5 February 2021, he had summited eight 8,000-metre peaks and redrawn what a Karakoram climber could be.
1. A village where porters outnumber climbers
Sadpara village sits at roughly 2,527 metres above sea level; in the 1970s and 80s, its men lined up each spring to carry loads for European and American expeditions, the pay often less than PKR 500 per day in today's terms.
2. Porter, then lead climber — no shortcuts
Ali started as a high-altitude porter around 2003–2004, but unlike most he studied rope technique, weather patterns, and route decisions until Italian alpinist Simone Moro publicly called him not a porter but a full alpinist who planned routes and led pitches.
3. February 2016: Nanga Parbat's last unsolved winter problem
On the 8,126-metre Nanga Parbat in February 2016, Ali stood on the summit alongside Simone Moro and Alex Txikon, completing the mountain's first-ever winter ascent — the final unsolved winter puzzle in Himalayan climbing at the time.
4. 5 February 2021: 300 metres short, never seen again
Ali, John Snorri of Iceland, and Juan Pablo Mohr of Chile left Camp 4 before dawn on 5 February 2021 without supplemental oxygen; Sajid last saw his father gripping the serac wall at the Bottleneck — about 300 metres below the 8,611-metre summit — before turning back due to an oxygen regulator failure.
5. July 2021: A son goes back up to bring him home
On 26 July 2021, bodies were found above Camp 4 by a Madison Mountaineering Sherpa team; Sajid then climbed K2 a second time that same summer season — without supplemental oxygen — to retrieve his father's remains.
6. The school that carries his name forward in Sadpara village
The Sadpara Mountaineering and Adventure Institute, inaugurated in Sadpara village on World Mountains Day 2022, now trains young Gilgit-Baltistan climbers; Sajid told Dawn that the valley produced internationally recognised alpinists despite what he called "limited resources."
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