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Ali Sadpara a ‘living legend’: Canadian filmmaker

Elia Saikaly took to Twitter to share his experience of filming the Pakistani climber and his son Sajid Sadpara

By Web Desk
February 10, 2021
This handout photo taken on January 16, 2021 and released by Seven Summit Treks, shows a general view of the base camp of Mt K2, which is the second highest mountain in the world, in the Gilgit-Baltistan region of northern Pakistan. A team of Nepali climbers made history on January 16 after becoming the first to summit Pakistan´s Mt K2 in winter.-AFP

KARACHI: Canada-based filmmaker Elia Saikaly has called Pakistani mountaineer Ali Sadpara a “living legend” with whom he spent last two weeks before the climber went missing along with two other foreigners during K2 expedition.

Elia Saikaly took to Twitter on Tuesday to share his experience of filming the climber and his son Sajid Sadpara as the search operations to locate the missing mountaineers were affected due to extremely bad weather conditions.

Muhammad Ali Sadpara, 45, of Pakistan, John Snorri, 47, of Iceland, and Juan Pablo Mohr, 33, of Chile, were last seen Friday around noon at what is considered the most difficult part of the climb: the Bottleneck, a steep and narrow gully just 300 metres shy of the 8,611 metre (28,251 ft) high K2.

“For two and a half weeks we filmed and shared precious time with this living legend. #AliSadpara The last scene I filmed with Ali was at camp 2 on K2,” the Canadian filmmaker said along with the picture of Ali Sadpara holding a communication device.

While sharing details of his conversation with the climbers, Saikaly said John, Ali and Sajid told him that “how excited they were to summit”.

Elia Saikaly, who calls himself “a storyteller”, is on a “mission to inspire others to live their fullest and most meaningful life”.

He went to K2 on January 17 to make a documentary on incredible achievements of local climbers to promote adventure tourism in Pakistan.