Footage shows climbers clambering past the injured Pakistani porter Mohammed Hassan on a treacherous ridge on K2 on the same day that Norway’s Kristin Harila ascended the mountain. Video / @northerner_the
A top mountaineer has been forced to defend herself after accusations that her team climbed over a dying Sherpa as they headed to the summit of the K2 mountain to secure a new world record.
Images of climbers clambering past the injured Pakistani on a treacherous ridge on the same day that Norway’s Kristin Harila ascended have been condemned by fellow mountaineers.
They claimed a Western climber would not have been left to die and said the scenes would be unthinkable in the Alps, igniting a row about how local Sherpas are used in the Himalayas.
Footage shows climbers clambering past the injured Pakistani porter Mohammed Hassan on a treacherous ridge on K2 on the same day that Norway’s Kristin Harila ascended the mountain. Photo / 8K Expeditions
Harila, 37, climbed Pakistan’s K2 on July 27, securing her 14th highest peak in just over three months to become the world’s fastest climber to scale all peaks above 8,000 metres.
During her ascent porter Mohammed Hassan fell off a sheer edge at the top of the area known as the bottleneck, some 8200 metres high.
Harila said her team did everything they could to save Hassan, but conditions were too dangerous to move him.
However, two climbers who were also on K2 that day claimed fellow mountaineers were more interested in setting records than saving lives, in an apparent dig at Harila.
Wilhelm Steindl and Philip Flämig, an Austrian climbing duo, say drone footage they later recorded hours after Harila and her team had passed the ridge showed climbers walking over his body instead of trying to rescue him.
“It’s all there in the drone footage,” Flämig told Austria’s Standard newspaper.
“He is being treated by one person while everyone else is pushing towards the summit. The fact is that there was no organised rescue operation although there were Sherpas and mountain guides on site who could have taken action.”
Among those who passed him was Harila.
“Such a thing would be unthinkable in the Alps. He was treated like a second-class human being,” Steindl added.
“If he had been a Westerner, he would have been rescued immediately. No one felt responsible for him,” he said.
“What happened there is a disgrace. A living human was left lying so that records could be set,” he said.
Norwegian mountaineer Kristin Harila, right, and Nepali mountaineer Tenjen Lama Sherpa gesture upon their arrival at the airport in Kathmandu, Nepal, after breaking the record. Photo / Getty Images
Harila defended her actions on Thursday, saying that her team did everything they could to save Hassan.
“It is simply not true to say that we did nothing to help him. We tried to lift him back up for an hour and a half and my cameraman stayed on for another hour to look after him. At no point was he left alone,” she told the Telegraph.
“Given the conditions, it is hard to see how he could have been saved. He fell on what is probably the most dangerous part of the mountain where the chances of carrying someone off were limited by the narrow trail and poor snow conditions,” she said.
K2 Summit Reel ❤️ ⛰️ (Taken on July 27th)
The final summit reel... It feels a bit emotional posting this 😅 thank you everyone for following this journey and this whole process 🥰
Reports by several climbers have raised questions about the standard of equipment that Hassan had been provided with before he set off up the mountain ahead of the western climbers, who often pay thousands of dollars for a guided ascent.
Harila said when her team found Hassan he was not wearing either gloves or a down jacket and didn’t appear to have been given oxygen.
“If he were my Sherpa I wouldn’t have sent him up in that condition,” she said.
According to Steindl, who visited the porter’s family after descending the mountain, Hassan took the perilous job of rope fixer in order to pay for his diabetic mother’s medical bills, even though he lacked the experience to perform the job.
“His family cannot afford medicine or food. Harila and many of the climbers flew over us and the family in helicopters. What a symbolic image. The helicopter to fly out costs up to $12,000 per person,” he said.
Thaneswar Gurugai, the general manager of Seven Summits which organised Harila’s trek, told the Telegraph that Hassan was suffering from frostbite and hyperthermia when he died.
“In normal cases [other porters] would save them unless it is quite impossible to do.”
Mohammad Hassan died on K2 after falling off a sheer edgeon K2. Photo / Adventure Alpine Guides
In 2006, New Zealand’s Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to the summit of Mt Everest, criticised New Zealand climber Mark Inglis and others on the mountain after they left British mountaineer David Sharp to die.
Double-amputee Inglis was one of many who passed the dying Briton near the summit without trying to rescue him. Inglis said his party could do nothing as Sharp had neither oxygen nor proper gloves when they came across him sheltering under a rock.
But Sir Edmund disagreed with Inglis.
”On my expedition, there was no way that you would have left a man under a rock to die.
”It simply would not have happened. It would have been a disaster from our point of view.
Edmund Hillary and Nepalese Sherpa Tenzing Norgay conquered Mt Everest in 1953. Photos / Supplied
”People had completely lost sight of what was important, he said.
”There have been a number of occasions when people have been neglected and left to die and I don’t regard this as a correct philosophy.
”I am absolutely certain that if any member of our expedition all those years ago had been in that situation we would have made every effort.
”I think you have to have your priorities. If the priority is just to get to the summit and let another man die, okay, you do it.
”But if you have someone who is in great need and you are still strong and energetic, then you have a duty, really, to give all you can to get the man down, and getting to the summit becomes very secondary.”
