The pride of the Karakoram
THE HEROES
The mountain legends of the North — record-breakers and torch-bearers, fathers and sons, the ones who carried a nation to the top of the world, and the ones who carry its memory down.
NIRMAL
PURJA
Ex-Gurkha and SBS soldier who climbed all fourteen 8,000-metre peaks in six months and six days, led the first winter ascent of K2, and stood on all fourteen a second time without a breath of oxygen. This was to be his third passage over 8,000. He asked the mountain for nothing but safe passage.
ALI
SADPARA
A shepherd’s son from Sadpara village who made the first winter ascent of Nanga Parbat and climbed eight of the fourteen giants of the Earth. He gave his last climb to K2, and his son brought him home.
SHEHROZE
KASHIF
Broad Peak at seventeen, K2 at nineteen, all fourteen eight-thousanders by twenty-two — the youngest climber Pakistan has ever produced, and a son of Lahore who grew up to carry his country’s flag on the highest rock on Earth.
SAJID
SADPARA
K2 at nineteen, a winter attempt beside his father on the Savage Mountain, and the hardest descent in the Karakoram — bringing Ali Sadpara down from the mountain that kept him. The flag never stopped climbing.
More heroes of the North
SOHAIL
SAKHI
Guide · Son of Hunza
The mathematician who read the mountain in numbers, and stayed beneath it for a love of the lines.
NADHIRA
AL HARTHY
First Omani Woman on Everest
She carried a nation on her shoulders and a whole continent in her boots.
MALLORY
GEIS
Client · Photographer
An artist who framed the vertical world, and gave her last frame to it.
KILI
PEMBA
Guide · 14-summit finisher
Eighteen Everest passages. He carried the dream of the summit, if not his feet.
WANG
ZHONG
Client · 13 / 14
One peak from a full spine of the Earth — broad, and now sleeping.