Sohail Sakhi Wanted Pakistanis to Own Their Mountains

The mountaineer from Hunza climbed K2 without bottled oxygen, trained children and built a local expedition company before an avalanche killed him on Broad Peak.

On August 15, 2020, Sohail Sakhi stood alone at Darkot Pass, 4,703 meters above sea level. The crossing joins the Broghil Valley in Chitral to the Yasin Valley in Gilgit-Baltistan. Sakhi had walked there because of something that happened when he was a child, although the memory belonged partly to other people. In 1996, his father fell some 200 meters i…