Watch: On Dangerous K2 Mountain Where Dad Died, Pakistan Climber Now Cleans Garbage

Gazing up from K2 Basecamp, Sajid Ali Sadpara sees Earth's second-highest mountain, his father's final resting place, and a blight of litter on the furthest reaches of the natural world. Sajid dons a down coverall stitched with Pakistan's green flag to scale the 8,611-metre (28,251-foot) spur of rock, clearing an icebound grotesquerie of spent oxygen canisters, mangled tents and snarled rope discarded over decades by climbers questing for the summit.

Over a week some 200 kilograms (400 pounds) of litter is hacked from the pinnacle's frozen grip by his five-strong team and ferried precariously back down, he says, a rare act of charity in one of Earth's most unforgiving environments.

K2 CLEAN UP 2023K2 is among the toughest vertical steep climb among all 8000ers. It's a tough mountain with extreme and unpredictable weather conditions, while it's cleaning up is challenging and complex phenomenon particularly due to climatic conditions, the scale of pollution pic.twitter.com/tfhiimJpdy

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 told an AFP team at K2 Basecamp, where 5,150 metres 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."

Two years ago Sajid was attempting a perilous winter ascent of K2 with his father and two foreigners when illness forced him back.

The three men who carried on were later discovered dead below the "bottleneck" -- an overhang that looks like a