Pakistani climber Sajid Ali Sadpara has made history by summiting some of the Earth’s highest peaks, but perhaps his greatest achievement was the cleanup he undertook on K2 in the summer of 2023.
Last July, Sadpara and a team of four spent a month on the world’s second-highest mountain, collecting ropes, tents, oxygen tanks and other rubbish left behind by other climbers, collecting 200 kilograms (440 pounds) of trash in one week, according to AFP.
“K2 is no longer as beautiful as it used to be,” veteran climber Abbas Sadpara, who is not involved, told AFP at K2 base camp. “We have destroyed its beauty with our own hands.”
The mountain, named after the second peak in the Karakoram range that was identified by British surveyors in 1856, formed 50 million years ago in what is now the Gilgit-Baltistan region of northeastern Pakistan.
Wind speeds will reach 200 kilometers (124 miles) per hour and temperatures will plummet to minus 60 degrees Celsius (minus 76 degrees Fahrenheit), making trash collection extremely difficult.
Sadpara’s clean-up efforts helped preserve the natural beauty of K2 and also memorialize his late father, Ali Sadpara, who died while climbing the mountain in 2021 along with his son and two other climbers.
Abandoned equipment has become a problem with the explosion in popularity of mountain tourism, said Yasir Abbas, an ecologist at Central Karakoram National Park, who led a campaign to remove 1,600 kilograms of trash from K2 in 2022.
“Commercial companies will take back more equipment,” he told AFP. “If more people go climbing, there will be more waste.”
The situation is similar on Everest, where climbers are abandoning increasing amounts of equipment and trash on the world’s highest mountain.
Sadpara acknowledged the challenges of climbing K2 and said for many climbers cleaning up takes a back seat to survival, but added that part of the appeal of climbing is the “mental peace” it brings and seeing the trash can change the experience.
Speaking about his actions, Sajid Sadpara said: “I am doing this from my heart. This is our mountain. We are its custodians.”
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