Alex Txikon has just announced that Sajid Sadpara of Pakistan will join his team on Manaslu this upcoming winter.
On the way, they will trek together to Nanga Parbat’s Base Camp. Here, they will pay tribute to Sajid’s father, Ali Sadpara, who achieved the first winter climb on that peak with Txikon and Simone Moro in 2016.
This will be Sajid Sadpara’s return to winter 8,000m climbing, one year after his father perished on K2. Sajid himself returned to K2 in July and succeeded in finding and burying his father’s remains above Camp 4. He also reached the summit of K2 for the second time.
Sadpara father and son during the ill-fated winter K2 expedition. Photo: Sajid Sadpara
A farewell to winter at altitude?
For Txikon, this might be his farewell to winter climbing at high altitude. “It’s time to close this period and I would like to do it by getting off the thorn in my side and reaching the summit of Manaslu at last,” he told journalists in Spain.
After his first winter summit on Nanga Parbat, Txikon has attempted Everest and K2 twice each in the cold season, plus Manaslu last year, without summiting.
Sadpara will join Txikon, Iñaki Alvarez, Simone Moro, and two still-unnamed Sherpas. They will start their climb on December 22, at the very cusp of winter. However, Sadpara and Txikon will join in just a few weeks for the trek to Nanga Parbat and some charity work in the area.
Crevasse on Manaslu in winter 2021. Photo: Phelipe Eizaguirre/Alex Txikon expedition
On Manaslu, Txikon intends to follow the same variation they used last year to evade the highly crevassed area between Camp 1 and Camp 2. This way, they may avoid climbing beside the Seven Summit Treks commercial team. However, conditions on those sections remain uncertain. It’s not impossible that in the end, everyone will follow the same route.
