Camp 3 was dreamlike and cold, the full moon bathing the tent in an ethereal light and illuminating the elusive summit 1,400 meters above. Four climbers—Alex Txikon from Basque country, Tamara Lunger and Simone Moro from Italy, and Ali Sadpara from Pakistan—shared one goal: the historic first winter ascent of Pakistan’s second-highest mountain, Nanga Parbat (8,125m). Ali was the workhorse on the team, breaking trail, carrying massive loads, and rigging most of the lines, all without supplemental oxygen.

On day 56 of the expedition, the team arrived at Camp 4 (7,100m) at 3:30 p.m. At 6:00 the next morning, they crept from their tent into a pitch-black world, an unforecasted polar jet stream hitting them like a punch to the face. The tiny orbs of light from their headlamps slashed at the darkness as they climbed. Moving faster than the others, Ali stopped five meters from the summit to let his partners catch up. He waited, banging his arms together, shuffling his feet, trying to stay warm. When Alex reached him, the pair fell to their knees, embracing each other. Tamara had turned back, but Simone eventually appeared. Each had fought for their life against the harsh winter elements, battling to keep the horrendous cold and shrieking wind from piercing their skin, and now they were on the summit.

It was February 26, 2016, and it was a historic moment. Alex, Simone, and Ali had done what 34 teams over the last 50 years had failed to do: make the first winter ascent of Nanga Parbat. In the following days, all of Pakistan celebrated, draping garlands of flowers around the climbers’ necks. Crowds cheered, calling Ali a national hero. Although they may not have known his name before, they did now—and they knew where he was from.

Like most people from northern Pakistan, Ali’s last name, Sadpara, is also the name of his village, where 2,000 people live in a maze of narrow alleyways lined by two-story clay and stone houses. Sadpara is a largely colorless place, with the occasional splash of red from a jacket drying in the sun or the turquoise of a freshly painted door. There are no coffee houses or restaurants. Motorized vehicles are absent because the cobbled roads are barely wide enough for pedestrians. An open water channel flows through the streets. The odd chicken pecks and clucks. It’s quiet. It’s hard to imagine that this place is home to some of the strongest mountaineers in the world—and that most of the local climbers have made multiple ascents of Pakistan’s five 8,000-meter peaks.

Considering the number of world-class climbers hailing from small villages like Sadpara, it seems preposterous that young Pakistani climbers learn their dangerous trade on the job. While the lucrative allure of Everest has brought several enviable training facilities to neighboring Nepal, these centers took significant foreign financial backing and years of effort to create. But there has been little appetite for replicating them in Pakistan. Of course, the countries’ climatological and geographical differences play a role: Nepal has two distinct climbing seasons while Pakistan has one. Nepal has eight 8,000ers. Pakistan has five. But the impact of training is undeniable: there are over 70 internationally qualified Nepali mountain guides. Pakistan has none.

As a result, Sadpara climbers have long relied on local mentors rather than formal programs for their high-altitude knowledge. But that may soon change.

Born Muhammad Ali Sadpara in 1976, Ali was the youngest of 11 children, eight of whom didn’t survive childhood. He shepherded livestock with his father in the pastures above Sadpara until, in his 20s, he got a job with a Korean cleanup expedition to K2, clearing the high camps of shredded tents, food waste, and fixed lines. His first summit was in 2006 when he hoisted Pakistan’s green crescent flag on the 7,029-meter Spantik Peak. He summited Gasherbrum II (8,034m) later that year, breaking trail, fixing lines, carrying massive loads of supplies and oxygen, and setting up camps for clients. Word of his first 8,000-meter summit followed him home, where his neighbors placed the ritual garland around his neck and did much congratulatory tea drinking. Two summits of Nanga Parbat followed, then Gasherbrum I (8,080m) in 2010. Paying climbers wanted him on their expeditions for his strength and natural intelligence, complemented by a curious and sincere temperament. His smile could light up a tent.

In 2011, Ali joined a Polish winter expedition to Broad Peak (8,051m). When the team reached Camp 2 during their summit bid, they discovered their tents had blown away. They spent the night sitting in the remains of a tattered tent abandoned by a previous expedition: no floor, drifting snow, and nearly –50°F temperatures. Sixty-mile-per-hour winds prevented them from even crawling into their sleeping bags. Ali had never experienced conditions so harsh, and endured frostbite on his toes as a result. When he attempted Gasherbrum I the following year, he learned that the frostbite from Broad Peak would bother him for the rest of his life.

Ali’s historic winter ascent of Nanga Parbat earned him respect from the global climbing community and the Pakistani government. However, despite his achievements, he faced challenges gaining financial support. Nevertheless, he continued to make significant strides. He completed a fourth ascent of Nanga Parbat, a winter ascent of Pumori (7,161m) in Nepal, and attempted Everest. In 2018, he climbed K2, and the following year, he summited both Lhotse (8,516m) and Makalu (8,485m).

But winter climbs continued to entice Ali, and K2 still had not seen a winter ascent. In December 2020 he, his son Sajid, and their Icelandic client, John Snorri, arrived at K2, hoping to make a bid for the summit. There were more than 60 climbers at base camp, which was buzzing with competition. The trio began fixing ropes immediately.

By January 12, the fixed lines reached Camp 3. Then, a series of storms pinned everyone down in base camp. Finally, one weather forecaster predicted a short good weather window. Nepali climbers Mingma G and Nirmal (“Nims”) Purja joined forces and began heading up the mountain with a 10-person Nepali team.

But Ali and his group followed a different forecaster and remained in base camp. The Nepali team topped out four days later. Their summit video went viral on social media. What a sight: ten Nepalis singing their national anthem as they touched the 8,611-meter summit of K2 for the first time in winter.

As happy as Ali was for his friend Mingma G, it was a crushing blow. K2 was Pakistan’s highest mountain, and Ali was Pakistan’s leading climber. But, unlike the Nepalis, he wasn’t climbing independently and he couldn’t take advantage of short and unlikely weather windows. He was working. He needed to guide his client.

Another opportunity presented itself when a three-day weather window appeared in early February. The Sadpara team headed up alongside numerous independent climbers. By the evening of February 4, Camp 3 was heaving: six people stuffed into tents designed for three. With temperatures dropping to -60°F, little rest, poor hydration, and no space to cook or eat, many descended in frustration. But Ali, Sajid, John, and Chilean alpinist Juan Pablo Mohr stayed put.

They planned to summit on February 5 directly from 7,200 meters—a big day—climbing 1,400 meters of elevation. Sajid began to feel ill at 8,200 meters as they shuffled beneath the serac-threatened Bottleneck feature. Speaking to Spanish journalist Isaac Fernandez, Sajid later recounted how he began using extra bottled oxygen intended for John, but the regulator was a poor fit and leaked. His father urged him to descend and said they would regroup at Camp 3 the next day after he and his client had summited. “I made tea and hot water and left a light on so they could find the tent,” Sajid said. “I was awake all night waiting for them.”

By morning, a fierce storm had enveloped the mountain, and there was no sign of John, Juan Pablo, or Ali. Heartbroken, Sajid made the long descent alone. Helicopters arrived days later, searching for the missing trio, but their high-resolution images revealed nothing. The three climbers were presumed dead.

Sajid flew back to Skardu alone, where the media clamored for a firsthand report. “They have been at 8,000 meters for two days. At that height, in winter, I have no hope they are alive.” He added, perhaps hopefully, “I think they summited.” Sajid then left the press conference and returned to his grieving family.

Mingma G, the Nepali climber, later reflected on his friend Ali. “Ali was like our brother, and he visited our camp almost every day. He knew our tentative plan on K2, but he was there guiding. If he was alone, I think he would have been with us on the summit. I still feel very sorry for this man.”

After his father disappeared on K2, Sajid stopped climbing to be with his family. Several months later, he asked his mother’s permission to return to climbing. Her answer was clear: Yes, but not in the winter.

In the summer of 2021, Sajid returned to K2 to find the bodies of John, Juan Pablo, and his father high on the mountain. He relocated them out of the path of ascent so they’d rest out of sight of future climbers. “My father is with Allah now,” Sajid said. “He is safe.”

Death in the mountains is a common trauma for the families of Sadpara. At the same time as Ali Sadpara’s rise to the top of Pakistani mountaineering, his neighbor, Nisar Hussain, was also gaining recognition. As the eldest of seven siblings, he started by building roads in Sadpara as a teen before ascending to the porter ranks. By 2012, he realized his dream of becoming a high-altitude worker, braving perilous conditions to fix lines on avalanche-prone slopes. Joining an international team led by Austrian alpinist Gerfried Göschl, they aimed for the first winter ascent of Gasherbrum I. Gerfried hailed Nisar as Pakistan’s strongest climber, noting his multiple oxygen-free summits above 8,000 meters.

While hurricane-force winds battered Gasherbrum I, Nisar, Gerfried, and Cedric Hählen waited in base camp for a favorable weather forecast. They finally set out on March 6, reaching 7,100 meters by the next day. Despite bitterly cold nights and poor visibility, the winds remained relatively calm.

However, the weather took a sudden and ferocious turn, and soon there was only silence from their radios. Their bodies were never found.

Despite being a highly respected professional climber, Nisar was neither sponsored nor well-paid and lacked insurance coverage for accidents or death. Following his disappearance, the Pakistani government posthumously honored him with the Sitara e Imtiaz Award for his remarkable achievements. Hussain’s younger brother, Muhammad Kazim, proudly accepted the award on his behalf and later married his brother’s widow, Nissa, taking on the responsibility of caring for the family. In Pakistan, it is customary for climbing widows to marry their deceased husband’s younger brother. Kazim embraced this role, along with the family’s wish for him to retire from climbing.

Reflecting on her late husband, Nissa noted how Nisar’s modest personality belied his many accomplishments, including multiple summits of Gasherbrum I and II, Broad Peak, Nanga Parbat, and K2. He had led the way for countless clients, fiddling with their oxygen tanks while never using them himself, even when breaking trail through deep snow, fixing lines, setting up camps, and carrying horrifically heavy loads. His speed above 7,000 meters was legendary. In many countries, he would have been hailed as a superstar climber, been fêted and sponsored, and offered opportunities to travel and climb abroad. Instead, this remarkable man was barely known outside his country.

Nisar Hussain was not the first talented Sadpara climber to go unnoticed by the mountaineering world. When American mountaineer Charlie Houston assembled a team for K2 in 1953, he hired several Sadpara porters, including Mohammad Hussein. There were few employment opportunities in Sadpara then, and carrying supplies for expeditions was the best way for the strong locals accustomed to a physical shepherding lifestyle to earn money. When an accident occurred high on K2, during which Art Gilkey disappeared, the remaining climbers limped into base camp, dazed and exhausted. George Bell was in such bad shape he couldn’t walk. Four porters lugged him down the glacier on a makeshift litter, but eventually the trail became too steep and narrow. Referring to Mohammad Hussein, Bell recalled: “At this point, the biggest and strongest of the Sadparas knelt beside the litter, and with a gentle smile invited me to climb aboard. Sprawled on his back with my arms draped over his shoulders and clasped across his chest, I could peer over his shoulder and see exactly what went on. … In time I came to feel almost as secure on his strong back as I had on my own two feet during the march in. … Each time he put me down after a hard carry, he would turn around with a sympathetic boyish grin and inquire, ‘Tik sahib?’ (Everything okay, sahib?) It was impossible not to say yes.”

More than 20 years later, another American team was attempting K2 when one of their porters became dangerously ill. When it was clear he needed to be evacuated, 12 porters bundled him into a sled and started hauling him down the glacier. But when they reached the loose, bouldery moraine, Mohammed Hussein—the same man who had carried George Bell in 1953—hoisted him onto his back. At 50, he was still carrying people off K2 yet his name was largely unknown.

The next generation of Sadpara climbers ushered in Ali Raza Sadpara, born in 1968. As a child, his school was destroyed in a fire, effectively ending his education. He and his classmates spent much more time in the hills, making regular treks up to 6,000 meters to tend to their livestock.

Ali Raza’s first mountain job was at age 16, hauling loads on the glacier beneath K2 and Broad Peak before eventually becoming a high-altitude porter on K2. With no formal training, he picked up mandatory climbing skills—self-arresting with an ice axe, belaying, and crevasse rescue— as needed on the job. “I did not even know how to wear crampons,” he admitted. Nevertheless, he climbed above 8,000 meters on that trip. As Ali Raza climbed with people from all over the world, he brought important lessons back to Sadpara and shared them with less experienced climbers.

Ali Raza dreamed of climbing all 14 8,000ers, but he needed sponsorship to pay for expensive permits and replace the wages he would lose as a high-altitude worker. Uneducated, he lacked the marketing prowess to promote himself. So he abandoned his dream and stayed closer to home, working on foreign expeditions and eventually making 17 ascents of Pakistan’s 8,000-meter peaks.

While many would prefer to climb lower, more technical peaks, the best paychecks come from expeditions on the 8,000ers. There is no shortage of work in the Death Zone.

In an interview in 2021, Ali Raza indicated that he would only climb for four more years. Two years later, while training for K2, he was critically injured in a fall on a local cliff, fracturing his spinal cord and several ribs. He died in the Skardu hospital a few weeks later. Pakistan’s mountaineering community was stunned. Naila Kiani, the first female Pakistani to summit one of her country’s 8,000-meter peaks—Gasherbrum II—called Ali Raza her teacher, guide, and friend. “You taught climbing to so many people…rescued so many people in the mountains. A true hero, a legend. Chacha, your name will live forever.” Pakistan’s most successful high-altitude climber, Sirbaz Khan, called Ali Raza ustaadon ka ustaad—teacher of teachers. Upon hearing of his death, Sirbaz said, “Ali Raza, my friend, thank you for teaching me how to climb and even more importantly for teaching me how to live. . . . I have rarely loved and respected any mountaineer as much as I have loved and respected Apo Ali Raza.” One of Pakistan’s finest climbers and a man committed to coaching the next generation was dead at 56.

It seems that Ali Raza taught well, for both Naila and Sirbaz have become leaders in the Pakistani mountaineering community. Naila has climbed 11 of the 14 8,000ers and is an ambassador for Ascend, a not-for-profit organization based in Skardu that is committed to empowering girls through mountaineering-based leadership training and community service. Naila intends to be part of that empowering process: “This wonderful journey has given me the chance to realize my lifelong dream,” she says. “I intend to make the most of this opportunity to inspire and encourage other girls as they begin writing their own stories of success.”

Sirbaz was on his way to Shishapangma to climb his last 8,000er this spring when the Chinese rescinded all permits for the mountain. Instead, Sirbaz climbed Everest without supplemental oxygen. Exuding a quiet confidence, he is breaking new ground for Pakistani climbers, but he is respectful of those who came before him. He dedicated his Annapurna summit in the spring of 2021 to Ali Sadpara. His Dhaulagiri summit in the fall of 2021 was dedicated to Amir Mehdi, the forgotten hero from the first ascent of K2. And his Makalu summit in 2022 was dedicated to Ali Raza Sadpara. Sirbaz is determined to honor his mentors and elevate their names into prominence in the history of high-altitude climbing. “Now I am fully committed to winning honor and pride for my country, my people, and especially the underprivileged mountaineering community of Pakistan,” he says. He feels responsible to the younger climbers of his country. “The coming period is ours,” he declares. “We will try our best to leave a better field for the coming generation.”

Back in the village of Sadpara, blue-collar construction work is gradually replacing the shepherding lifestyle of young men. However, these jobs pay poorly, and high-altitude work remains the occupation of choice. While many would prefer to climb lower, more technical Pakistani peaks, the best paychecks come from expeditions on the 8,000ers. There is no shortage of work in the Death Zone.

Now, with Sadpara’s greatest mentor, Ali Raza, no longer able to pass on his knowledge, that work has become more dangerous—especially given the lack of financial support these climbers get from the expeditions. Murtaza Sadpara, who started climbing in 2021, managed to pick up some crucial skills from Ali Raza on Gasherbrum II but struggled to equip himself adequately. Eventually, Murtaza acquired enough knowledge to be hired by Sky Tours to accompany two Mexican clients up Broad Peak in 2023. He was paid $178 USD for the duration of the expedition plus tips, and, unable to afford the needed equipment, he made do with used clothing from a shop in Skardu. He carried two bottles of oxygen for his clients but none for himself since he didn’t have money for a mask and canister, and Sky Tours hadn’t provided him with one. After 10 hours of climbing, Murtaza and the clients stopped on the summit ridge for an hour while bad weather swirled around them. Murtaza’s old, ratty gloves soon soaked through and froze his fingers. According to Fernando J. Perez of the Basque newspaper El Correo, “When the clients saw [Murtaza] couldn’t go on, they took the oxygen bottles and proceeded to the summit, leaving Murtaza behind.”

Austrian climber Lukas Woerle eventually reached the summit ridge and discovered Murtaza lying in the snow. “It was not possible to communicate properly with him,” Lukas reported after the trip. “He was unable to remember his name, so I started dragging and pushing him back down.”

With badly frostbitten fingers, Murtaza was taken to a hospital in Skardu, where doctors recommended amputation. The 24-year-old father of two was speechless. He refused and left the hospital. Back home in Sadpara, his fingers turned black. Murtaza’s cousin, Sajid Sadpara, Ali Sadpara’s son, stepped in to help. One of Sajid’s friends, Alex Txikon, who made the first winter ascent of Nanga Parbat with Sajid’s father, arranged for Murtaza to come to Bilbao in Basque country for medical care.

But the damage to his fingers was too serious to save them. Murtaza now faces a questionable future. Even before losing his fingers, he couldn’t earn enough from high-altitude work to support his family, supplementing the work by crushing rocks for road construction. Without fingers, he won’t be able to crush rocks, and he certainly won’t be able to carry loads or fix lines at altitude. His fate is symptomatic of the ongoing system in Pakistan, where some employers are neither training their high-altitude workers sufficiently nor outfitting them with proper equipment.

So far, Murtaza’s cousin, Sajid, has respected his mother’s wishes to avoid climbing high mountains in winter. But he has been busy nonetheless, climbing Gasherbrum I and II, Manaslu, Broad Peak, Annapurna, Everest, and Nanga Parbat a second time, all without supplemental oxygen. In his case, forgoing oxygen is by choice rather than necessity. As the son of Pakistan’s most famous alpinist, he wants to climb in good style.

Sajid dreams of qualifying as an internationally certified guide, a goal that demands extensive and costly training both in Nepal and overseas. However, because he is financially responsible for his entire family, he has to prioritize working in the mountains rather than chasing his personal aspirations.

While the recent development of the Sadpara Mountaineering and Climbing Institute may not directly impact Sajid, it has the potential to alter the trajectory of younger climbers like him. The brainchild of Mohammad Ghulam, it was unveiled on World Mountain Day in December 2023. Funded in part by the Pakistan army, the institute aims to teach climbing skills to youth from Sadpara and nearby Baltistan, offering hope for local climbers at no cost to them. The first eight-week session, taught by experienced Sadpara climbers and language instructors from the University of Baltistan, started on February 4, 2024. By equipping young climbers with necessary expertise and fostering confidence to make informed decisions in challenging high-mountain terrain, they could edge closer to achieving what Nepali climbers have done. They have an unprecedented platform on which to build their future, thanks to Nisar, Ali Raza, Mohammad Hussein, Ali Sadpara and so many others. Now it’s up to them.

Bernadette McDonald is an award-winning author based in Banff, Canada. Her latest book, Alpine Rising, chronicles the lives of Sherpa and Balti climbers in the Greater Ranges.

Related: Mount Everest is on AllTrails. The Reviews Are Priceless.