'You fall here and you will die': Canadian filmmaker on K2's bottleneck
August 05, 2021
Canadian filmmaker Elia Saikaly, who recently accompanied Sajid Sadpara to K2 on his search for the bodies of Ali Sadpara and his companions, on Sunday shared a picture of K2’s bottleneck – the most dangerous part of the route.
Elia Saikaly recently accompanied Sajid Sadpara on his K2 summit in an effort to recover the lost bodies of Ali Sadpara and his companions, who had gone to summit the mightily K2 in February this year.
The K2 bottleneck is the most utilised route to reach the summit of K-2. Despite being the most dangerous part of the route, the bottleneck is the fastest route as it allows climbers to minimise the time spent above 8000 meters – called the “death zone”.
Saikaly wrote in his Instagram caption: “This traverse is one of the most iconic and dangerous obstacles in high altitude mountaineering. You fall here and you will die.”
He narrated his experience traversing the bottleneck and simultaneously trying to capture it with his camera.
Elia Saikaly added that as a filmmaker, he doesn’t have the luxury of only climbing, he has to think of video, shots, and storytelling. Mentioning Ali Sadpara’s son, Saikaly added that he wanted to capture “Sajid crossing the traverse under the serac with the sunrise beneath him”.
He got Sajid’s interview standing at the edge of “the foot and a half wide path” sharing his feelings about coming face to face with his father after crossing the most dangerous section of the K2.
Elia Saikaly narrated his feelings at that moment and wrote: “I didn’t have time to feel any pain or discomfort up there” and all he was thinking of at that moment was to adapt to every move made by Sajid.
He concluded that as a climber, a human being, and a storyteller, all his life experiences come together to ensure that he tells a story.
Elia Saikaly wrote: “I felt like the sum total of all of my experiences, in life, in loss, grief, creativity, and performance all came together to ensure we had both the logistics safely in place and the recorded media we needed to tell this story.”
