Five Climbers Died Racing to the Summit of K2. A New Film Examines Who Is at Fault.
The most gripping scene from the new mountaineering documentary K2 Winter: The Final First occurs in the deathly freezing dark of Camp 3 at 24,000 feet on the world’s second-tallest mountain.
A gaggle of climbers from the Nepali guiding company Seven Summit Treks lurches into the high camp, well past nightfall, amid a violent storm. The temperature has plummeted. The climbers are exhausted. The stakes of the situation are more than evident: if they don’t seek shelter soon, some will die.
Then, the Seven Summits guides reveal their deadly mistake: they didn’t bring tents.
The following scenes capture the tone and overall thrust of K2 Winter: The Final First, which debuted on Apple Plus on October 2. Footage shot during those frantic life-or-death moments shows the Seven Summits Treks clients and guides begging other climbers in the camp to allow them into their shelters. Over this, interviews with the climbers already in camp levy harsh criticism at Seven Summits Treks and its expedition leader, Dutchman Arnold Coster, for the mistake. Coster, who is managing the expedition from Base Camp via a radio, criticizes the clients and guides for not having retreated after missing their prescribed turnaround time. Few punches are pulled, and accusations fly freely.
Eventually, the stricken climbers cram into three tents to wait out the night, but amid the chaos, nobody is able to recover for the next day’s arduous climb.
“If you commercialize K2 the way that you’ve commercialized Mount Everest, bad things are going to happen,” Elia Saikaly, a Canadian adventure filmmaker who was in K2 Base Camp during the ordeal, says into the camera.
K2 Winter: The Final First chronicles the events in November, 2020, through February, 2021, when multiple expeditions raced to become the first to ever ascend the 28,251-foot peak in winter. Five climbers died amid this rush to the summit. The film’s narrative arc follows two men at the heart of the tragedy: Icelander John Snorri Sigurjonsson and Ali Sadpara of Pakistan, both of whom perished.
The film interrogates these deaths and then blames the individuals and broader dynamics that contributed to each fatality. Much like in the scene at Camp 3, the film presents an unflinching assessment of what went wrong throughout the season, and who is at fault. Watching it at times feels like wading into a Reddit thread or reading the comments on an Instagram post. The film has sharp elbows, and most people interviewed in it point fingers again and again.
But the film doesn’t simply tell you how to feel about each mistake. Footage of the events on K2 shows viewers exactly how a blunder or a bad judgment call at 25,000 feet rips open the margin between life and death.
Which is probably needed in 2026. The past few months have produced a series of mass-casualty events on the high peaks: ten people died in July on Broad Peak in Pakistan, followed by four on Manaslu in September, and then another 16 at the Base Camp of Himlung Himal in the Himalayas.
K2 Winter: The Final First shows just how fragile life is on the flanks of a massive peak—a fact that’s often overlooked amid stories of record-breaking summits on Everest and other peaks.
The film’s accusatory tone also sets it apart. The most recent crop of mainstream documentaries about high-altitude mountaineering have focused squarely on heroic climbers and their quest to conquer tall mountains. Think 2023’s Race to the Summit, which chronicles the rivalry between Swiss climbers Ueli Steck and Dani Arnold, or the 2019 Nirmal “Nims” Purja vehicle 14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible. Even the 2023 film Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa, which dives into Lhakpa Sherpa’s tragic backstory, follows her on a trip up Everest.
In many ways, K2 Winter is the antidote to these works. The film portrays the desire to climb K2 in winter not as brave, but rather as suicidal. The mountaineers who attain the greatest glory on the peak aren’t heroes, but rather greedy and fame-hungry grifters.
The film’s harshest assessment is levied at Purja, who died this past July in the Broad Peak disaster. The film shows how Purja and his team of Sherpa climbers won the race to the top by convincing Snorri and Sadpara that the two teams would attack the summit together.
Footage shows Snorri and Sadpara in Camp 2, waiting by their radio for Purja’s signal to begin their ascent. The message never arrives. In reality, Purja and his Sherpa squad have bamboozled the two men. The Nepali team secretly ascends beyond Snorri and Sadpara and enjoys the summit to themselves.
Be forewarned: K2 Winter is not a feel-good movie. I guarantee the film will not convince you to book a guided expedition to the Karakoram anytime soon.
Perhaps that’s the point.
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