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 this planet.
The climber, Kristin Harila, grew to become one of many two quickest individuals — 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-about an distinctive report of six months and 6 days set by the Nepalese climber Nirmal Purja in 2019.
But two different climbers who have been on the mountain on that day, July 27, mentioned that Ms. Harila, her group and different climbers ignored an injured man — Muhammad Hassan, a 27-year-old father of three from Pakistan — as a result of they wished to achieve the summit fairly than abandon their climb to aim a rescue.
Mr. Hassan fell from a very harmful stretch of the climbing path on K2 often known as the bottleneck and later died.
“There was no rescue mission,” Wilhelm Steindl, an Austrian climber who offered video footage of different climbers stepping over Mr. Hassan on the slim mountain path, mentioned 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 area, the place a portion of the mountain is positioned, recognized Mr. Hassan as a “high-altitude porter.” They mentioned they have been investigating whether or not “adequate efforts were made to rescue” Mr. Hassan, whom Ms. Harila mentioned was a part of one other group.
The authorities mentioned they’d study the circumstances 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 steadily die summiting the tallest mountains on this planet, together with Mount Everest and K2. The treks are so harmful that the our bodies of fallen climbers are generally left behind, and a few are by no means recovered.
Weather circumstances on K2 the day of Mr. Hassan’s loss of life have been so extreme that many climbers, together with Mr. Steindl, turned again.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Mr. Steindl mentioned that Mr. Hassan might have been saved if Ms. Harila and others had deserted their climb.
“There is a double standard here,” Mr. Steindl mentioned. “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 mentioned in a press release on her web site that she and her group did the whole lot they might to avoid wasting Mr. Hassan. She added that “it is truly tragic what happened, and I feel very strongly for the family.”
Ms. Harila mentioned she and her group spent hours attempting 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 properly equipped” to climb the 28,251-foot tall mountain, noting that he had no gloves, no oxygen masks and no down swimsuit once they discovered him.
In Ms. Harila’s account, a gaggle of Sherpas forward of them instructed her that they have been turning round, and “as we understood it that meant there was more help going to Hassan.”
Another member of Ms. Harila’s group who helped to drag Mr. Hassan again on the path gave him his personal oxygen, Ms. Harila mentioned, and stayed with him till the group member himself started to expire of oxygen.
“We decided to continue forward as too many people in the bottleneck would make it more dangerous for a rescue,” she mentioned. “Considering the amount of people that stayed behind and that had turned around, I believed Hassan would be getting all the help he could, and that he would be able to get down.”
She added that her group handed Mr. Hassan once more on the way in which down. By then, he was lifeless however her group was “in no shape” to get well the physique, she mentioned.
“You need six people to carry a person down, especially in dangerous areas,” Ms. Harila mentioned. “However, the bottleneck is so narrow that you can only fit one person in front and one behind the person being helped. In this case, it was impossible to safely carry Hassan down.”
Experienced 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 almost 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.
Source: www.nytimes.com