A record-breaking mountaineer has denied allegations that her team climbed over a dying porter to reach the summit of K2 in Pakistan to become the world’s fastest climber to scale all peaks above 8,000 metres.
Kristin Harila climbed the world’s second highest mountain on 27 July along with her Nepali sherpa Tenjen (Lama) Sherpa, 35, to complete her 14th highest peak in just over three months to secure a new world record.
During the Norwegian’s ascent, porter Mohammed Hassan fell off a sheer edge at a height of about 8,200 metres. Harila, 37, has insisted her team did everything they could to save Hassan but conditions were too dangerous to move him.
Images have emerged of climbers clambering past Hassan on a ridge during Harila’s ascent.
Austrian climbing duo Wilhelm Steindl and Philip Flämig, who were also on K2 that day, said footage they later recorded using a drone showed climbers walking over his body instead of trying to rescue him.
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.”
Steindl added: “Such a thing would be unthinkable in the Alps. He was treated like a second-class human being.
“If he had been a westerner, he would have been rescued immediately,” he added. “No one felt responsible for him. What happened there is a disgrace. A living human was left lying so that records could be set.”
According to Steindl, who visited the porter’s family after descending the mountain, Hassan took the job of rope fixer in order to pay for his diabetic mother’s medical bills despite his lack of experience.
Harila rejected the allegations on Thursday and insisted her team did everything they could to save Hassan.
“It is simply not true to say that we did nothing to help him,” she told the Telegraph. “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.
“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.”
Harila said when her team found Hassan he was not wearing either gloves or a down jacket and did not appear to have been given oxygen.
K2 is widely regarded as the one of the hardest peaks in mountaineering, and is the deadliest of the five highest mountains in the world, with data from 2018 showing just over a fifth of attempted ascents ending in a death.
Experts say the topography on K2 is more difficult than Everest because less of the mountain flattens off. It is also avalanche and rock fall-prone.
This article was amended on 11 August 2023. The previous version incorrectly described Mohammed Hassan as a sherpa rather than a porter.
