A Norwegian climber defended her decision to continue a record-breaking series of climbs last month after encountering an injured porter who later died during her ascent of K2, the second-highest mountain in the world.
The climber, Kristin Harila, became one of the two fastest people — along with her guide, Tenjin Sherpa — to ascend all 14 of the world’s 8,000-meter mountains in three months and just under a day, surpassing what was already considered an exceptional record of six months and six days set by the Nepalese climber Nirmal Purja in 2019.
But two other climbers who were on the mountain on that day, July 27, said that Ms. Harila, her team and other climbers ignored an injured man — Muhammad Hassan, a 27-year-old father of three from Pakistan — because they wanted to reach the summit rather than abandon their climb to attempt a rescue.
Mr. Hassan fell from a particularly dangerous stretch of the climbing trail on K2 known as the bottleneck and later died.
“There was no rescue mission,” Wilhelm Steindl, an Austrian climber who provided video footage of other climbers stepping over Mr. Hassan on the narrow mountain path, said in an interview with Sky News. “Seventy mountaineers stepped over a living guy who needed big help at this moment, and they decided to keep on going to the summit.”
The authorities in Pakistan’s Gilgit-Baltistan region, where a portion of the mountain is located, identified Mr. Hassan as a “high-altitude porter.” They said they were investigating whether “adequate efforts were made to rescue” Mr. Hassan, whom Ms. Harila said was part of another team.
The authorities said they would examine the conditions of Mr. Hassan’s climbing gear and “ascertain who authorized him to climb with equipment that might have been insufficient for such high-altitude expeditions and his level of experience.”
People frequently die summiting the tallest mountains in the world, including Mount Everest and K2. The treks are so dangerous that the bodies of fallen climbers are sometimes left behind, and some are never recovered.
Weather conditions on K2 the day of Mr. Hassan’s death were so severe that many climbers, including Mr. Steindl, turned back.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Mr. Steindl said that Mr. Hassan could have been saved if Ms. Harila and others had abandoned their climb.
“There is a double standard here,” Mr. Steindl said. “If I, or any other Westerner, had been lying there, everything would have been done to save them. Everyone would have had to turn back to bring the injured person back down to the valley.”
Ms. Harila said in a statement on her website that she and her team did everything they could to save Mr. Hassan. She added that “it is truly tragic what happened, and I feel very strongly for the family.”
Ms. Harila said she and her team spent hours trying to rescue Mr. Hassan after discovering him hanging upside down from a rope after he had fallen off the cliff.
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2023-08-12 16:20:54
Source from www.nytimes.com
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