8 Apr 2017

Sequoia di Angelo - a proud and tragic legacy

From Saturday Morning, 9:09 am on 8 April 2017

Kiwi-born adventurer Sequoia di Angelo is the daughter of renowned NZ/American mountain climber Marty Schmidt and sister of 25-year-old Denali Schmidt, who both died in an avalanche on K2 in 2013.  

After seeing an online promotional video for K2 which featured what she thought were the remains of her brother, Sequoia travelled to the mountain in a bid to recover the bodies.

That trip and the events that followed inspired her autobiographical book Journey of Heart.

The online video which prompted Sequoia's visit to K2 was posted by Mike Horn, a climber who was attempting the mountain in 2015.

"Part of his promotion for climbing K2 was a sponsorship by Mercedes-Benz. They did a promotional video, and in that video there was a clip of a human head on a glacier. When I saw that – having lost my father and brother in an avalanche on that mountain – I was in shock."

Later it was confirmed the remains were not her father's or brother's.

"It's one thing to have a climber pass away on a mountain, even then they shouldn't be photographed. But it's another thing when the remains wash down to base camp. And an avalanche had washed these remains down. So they were sitting at base camp for anyone who was in the area to see. In 2015, some of the climbers had left or I'm not sure what happened, but nobody bothered to bury these remains or attempt to identify them. They simply photographed them and put them on the internet for everybody to see, which I thought was wrong."

"I think whether it's on a mountain or anywhere else, it's something which should be respected."

At the end of Journey of Heart, Sequoia thanks Mike Horn (who she has had no other contact with) because she says without him she would never have made the trip.

"My own journey to Pakistan was motivated by that particular image that I saw that he posted on Facebook, however I felt that I should have visted K2 and I should have taken that trek regardless. The reason I thank him is he was the catalyst for me going."

Sequoia is currently back in New Zealand for the first time in 10 years on an 'aventure tour' of the country, in which she will ascend Mt Aspiring (a mountain her father climbed 18 times), cycle the length of the country and bungy jump.

"My father and I did that as a tandem – my first ever bungy – so I'm going to go back and do it on my own, and I'm really looking forward to that."

While in NZ, Sequoia is reading from Journey of Heart at nine venues around the country.