K2 BASECAMP: Sajid Ali Sadpara looks at the Earth's second-highest mountain from the K2 Basecamp in Pakistan, also his father's final resting place blighted by litter.
Donning a down coverall stitched with Pakistan's green flag, Sajid scales the 8,611-metre (28,251-foot) spur of rock, clearing oxygen canisters, mangled tents, and snarled rope discarded over decades by climbers.
In a rare act of charity in one of Earth's most unforgiving environments, Sajid and his five-strong team spend a week precariously ferrying back down some 200 kilograms (400 pounds) of litter hacked from the pinnacle's frozen grip.
It is a high-altitude tribute to Sajid's father, legendary climber Ali Sadpara, honouring the place where they bonded in nature and where his body remains after a 2021 father-son expedition fell foul of the "savage mountain".
"I'm doing it from my heart," Sajid said the team at K2 Basecamp, where 5,150 metres (m) of elevation labours breathing and avalanches tremor off an amphitheatre of surrounding slopes.
"This is our mountain," the 25-year-old said, sizing up the task above. "We are the custodians."
His voice, unbruised with emotion, is hard to make out in blaring Islamabad restaurants or the resort town of Skardu where a mural of his father looks on as expeditions jump off in growling jeeps.
"This simple life and this natural life we spent here," Sajid said. "This whole world was my village."
"I am most connected with nature in this village," he said.
But K2 exerts a gravitational pull: a place of extreme risk but also the promise of absolute zen in the curious, adrenaline-addled climber's psyche.
"We want to be on mountains just for mental peace," Sajid said. "If we see any rubbish the feeling is totally different."
Abbas Sadpara said "K2 is no longer as beautiful as it once used to be. We have destroyed its beauty with our own hands."
But Sajid has climbed half the 8,000-metre peaks without supplemental oxygen, a daredevil undertaking, and holds no ill will towards those who jettison gear on the slopes.
"After a summit you are totally exhausted," he said. "The main thing is survival."
But there is a saying in Islam he is fond of recalling: "Cleanliness is half of faith."
"Climbing to the top is a different thing," he explains. "Cleaning is something that you feel personally from the heart."
One day before that moment, the young Sadpara sets eyes on the mountain after days of trekking through glacial wilderness. "I see K2 and I think a different way," he says. But "from distance you can't see the garbage".
"K2 is more than a mountain for me."
