Mourning for Hassan Sadpara
Hassan Sadpara (1963 – 2016)
Pakistan mourns for one of its most famous climbers. Hassan Sadpara died yesterday at the age of 53 in a military hospital in Rawalpindi. He suffered from blood cancer and tuberculosis. Hassan was the only Pakistani to date who climbed six of the 14 eight-thousanders. After having reached the summits of the five 8000ers in his home country, all of them without bottled oxgend, – K 2 (in 1994), Nanga Parbat (in 1999), Gasherbrum II and I (both in 2006) and Broad Peak (in 2007) – , he asked Asif Zardari, then President of Pakistan, for financial support to climb Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world.
Second Pakistani on top of Everest
Hassan on the summit of Mount Everest in 2011
In fact, Hassan received money to travel to Nepal. In spring 2011, he stood on the 8850-meter-high summit of Everest, as the second Pakistani after Nazir Sabir in 2000. Originally, Hassan had planned to ascend again without breathing mask, but due to bad weather he used bottled. Afterwards he dreamt of climbing even all 14 eight-thousanders, with the financial backing of the government. But nothing came of it. The current President of Pakistan, Mamnoon Hussain, paid his respects to the deceased climber. Hassan’s merits would be remembered forever, he said.
Never visited a school
Hassan came from the small village of Sadpara, just a few kilometers away from the city of Skardu in the north of Pakistan. Skardu is the starting point of most expeditions to the Karakoram. Hassan’s family did not have enough money to send him to school. He first worked as a normal porter, later as a high altitude porter for expeditions. In 1996 Hassan broke the 8000-meter-mark for the first time when he was the only member of a Korean expedition who reached the 8031-meter-high foresummit of Broad Peak.
Ali Sadpara: “We lost a hero”
Muhammad Ali, called Ali Sadpara, comes from the same village as Hassan. Ali succeeded the first winter ascent of Nanga Parbat along with Italian Simone Moro and Spaniard Alex Txikon at the end of February. “We lost a big international hero,” Ali “Sadpara” writes on Facebook about Hassan’s death. “He was my climbing partner. We climbed together on Gasherbrum II and I. I am very sad.”
