K2 is the world’s second-highest mountain and, until 2021, the last 8,000-metre peak never climbed in winter. That season, Elia Saikaly joined an international team on its slopes as the expedition’s filmmaker. What he documented there, and across the two seasons that followed, became three seasons of work in Pakistan: a winter expedition and filming block, a summer search and recovery funded and initiated by Elia, and a final return to support the Snorri family. This is the record of all three.
The filming was initiated with the support and permissions of the Snorri and Sadpara families, including Ali Sadpara’s manager, Rao Ahmed. John Snorri and his wife, Lína Móey, invested in the project.
Three expeditions, one mountain. Start with the season that changed everything.
K2 had never been climbed in winter. In the 2020 to 2021 season, climbers from around the world gathered at Base Camp to attempt it. Elia reached the mountain through the Sadpara management, arranging a barter flight with Pakistan’s ISPR to join the international team led by John Snorri, alongside Ali Sadpara and his son Sajid Sadpara. He contracted Covid on the way and arrived late, joining the expedition after it was already under way. That season K2 was climbed in winter for the first time. It was also a season of profound loss: John Snorri, Ali Sadpara, and Juan Pablo Mohr did not return from their summit attempt.
Elia’s cameras recorded it all from Base Camp, as it happened. Among the footage are some of the final intimate portraits of John and Ali: the two of them speaking softly about their loved ones, Ali’s love for his country and its institutions, and lighter moments of play and dancing during a rare window of good weather.
The record also holds testimony from John, Ali, and Sajid on why they did not summit on January 16, alongside accounts from the witnesses embedded in their camp. And then the aftermath: the disappearance, and part of the search and recovery effort that followed.
The timeline below follows Winter K2: The Disappearance in chronological order, from arrival at Base Camp to the summit push. Scroll through it to move through the climb day by day.
Retrieved on July 28, 2021 from approximately 8,400m on K2. One of the most significant records from the expedition.
Coming soon
In the months that followed, Elia worked closely with Lína Móey and the Sadpara management, monitoring the situation and each family’s plans. In June, with his own sponsorship efforts exhausted, Sajid Sadpara reached out to Elia for help. Elia pulled together a budget of close to $100,000 for a minimal, safe expedition and stepped in to support Sajid’s search for his father.
They returned to K2 that summer, and filming was the only way to fund the search. Elia’s climbing partner, a qualified IFMGA mountain guide, led the effort on the mountain. The climbers were located by the Sherpa rope-fixing team. The rope-fixing team, the IFMGA guide, and Elia examined and documented the scene, together beginning to form a picture of what may have happened. Some of their devices were recovered; John Snorri’s Thuraya satellite phone and Juan Pablo Mohr’s action camera remain unaccounted for. Ali Sadpara was laid to rest high on the mountain, near Camp 4.
The full account, not yet shared publicly, is told in Death Zone Witness, Elia’s memoir and record of the events.
The timeline below follows Summer K2: The Search Mission in chronological order, from the return to Base Camp through the operation on the mountain. Scroll through it to move through the search day by day.
A single file, recovered from the camera and filmed on the Bottleneck during the final ascent. The footage and audio tell their own story.
Coming soon.
A year later, the story came full circle. In the summer of 2022, Elia returned to K2 once more with John Snorri’s family. With air travel facilitated by the Pakistan Army, Lína Móey and Halla journeyed to Base Camp to stand at the foot of the mountain where John was lost, and to raise the Icelandic flag in his memory. Elia joined them as their Base Camp guide, to document and support them. An earlier attempt by a commercial operator to recover John Snorri’s body had been unsuccessful. The return closed a chapter that had begun two winters earlier, and marked the end of Elia’s years on K2.
The timeline below follows Summer K2: The Return in chronological order, from the journey to Base Camp to the days at the mountain. Scroll through it to move through the return day by day.
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