A Norwegian climber defended her determination to proceed a record-breaking collection of climbs final month after encountering an injured porter who later died throughout her ascent of K2, the second-highest mountain on the earth.
The climber, Kristin Harila, grew to become one of many two quickest folks — alongside along with her information, Tenjin Sherpa — to ascend all 14 of the world’s 8,000-meter mountains in three months and slightly below a day, surpassing what was already thought of an distinctive file of six months and 6 days set by the Nepalese climber Nirmal Purja in 2019.
However two different climbers who had been on the mountain on that day, July 27, mentioned that Ms. Harila, her workforce and different climbers ignored an injured man — Muhammad Hassan, a 27-year-old father of three from Pakistan — as a result of they needed to achieve the summit quite than abandon their climb to try a rescue.
Mr. Hassan fell from a very harmful stretch of the climbing path on K2 often called the bottleneck and later died.
“There was no rescue mission,” Wilhelm Steindl, an Austrian climber who supplied video footage of different climbers stepping over Mr. Hassan on the slim mountain path, mentioned in an interview with Sky Information. “Seventy mountaineers stepped over a residing man who wanted large assist at this second, they usually determined to maintain on going to the summit.”
The authorities in Pakistan’s Gilgit-Baltistan area, the place a portion of the mountain is positioned, recognized Mr. Hassan as a “high-altitude porter.” They mentioned they had been investigating whether or not “ample efforts had been made to rescue” Mr. Hassan, whom Ms. Harila mentioned was a part of one other workforce.
The authorities mentioned they’d study the situations of Mr. Hassan’s climbing gear and “verify who licensed him to climb with gear which may have been inadequate for such high-altitude expeditions and his degree of expertise.”
Individuals incessantly die summiting the tallest mountains on the earth, together with Mount Everest and K2. The treks are so harmful that the our bodies of fallen climbers are generally left behind, and some are by no means recovered.
Climate situations on K2 the day of Mr. Hassan’s loss of life had been so extreme that many climbers, together with Mr. Steindl, turned again.
In an interview with The Related Press, Mr. Steindl mentioned that Mr. Hassan may have been saved if Ms. Harila and others had deserted their climb.
“There’s a double customary right here,” Mr. Steindl mentioned. “If I, or some other Westerner, had been mendacity there, every thing would have been achieved to avoid wasting them. Everybody would have needed to flip again to carry the injured individual again right down to the valley.”
Ms. Harila mentioned in an announcement on her web site that she and her workforce did every thing they might to avoid wasting Mr. Hassan. She added that “it’s really tragic what occurred, and I really feel very strongly for the household.”
Ms. Harila mentioned she and her workforce spent hours making an attempt to rescue Mr. Hassan after discovering him hanging the wrong way up from a rope after he had fallen off the cliff.
Ms. Harila additionally mentioned that Mr. Hassan gave the impression to be “not correctly outfitted” to climb the 28,251-foot-tall mountain, noting that he had no gloves, no oxygen masks and no down go well with once they discovered him.
In Ms. Harila’s account, a bunch of Sherpas forward of them informed her that they had been turning round, and “as we understood it that meant there was extra assist going to Hassan.”
One other member of Ms. Harila’s workforce who helped to drag Mr. Hassan again on the path gave him his personal oxygen, Ms. Harila mentioned, and stayed with him till the workforce member himself started to expire of oxygen.
“We determined to proceed ahead as too many individuals within the bottleneck would make it extra harmful for a rescue,” she mentioned. “Contemplating the quantity of people who stayed behind and that had circled, I believed Hassan can be getting all the assistance he may, and that he would have the ability to get down.”
She added that her workforce handed Mr. Hassan once more on the way in which down. By then, he was useless however her workforce was “in no form” to get well the physique, she mentioned.
“You want six folks to hold an individual down, particularly in harmful areas,” Ms. Harila mentioned. “Nonetheless, the bottleneck is so slim that you may solely match one individual in entrance and one behind the individual being helped. On this case, it was unimaginable to securely carry Hassan down.”
Skilled mountaineers have complained in recent times that overcrowded mountain paths in Nepal — with too many inexperienced climbers — have contributed to avoidable deaths.
Climbing guides are additionally more and more leaving the trade, pushed off by the risks of the job and a scant security web for the households of these guides who die or who’re left disabled.
In June, Gelje Sherpa and different guides rescued a Malaysian climber on Mount Everest at an elevation practically as excessive as K2’s peak, abandoning their very own climb and taking turns carrying the climber again to camp in a five-hour descent.
