An investigation has been launched into the death of a Pakistani porter earlier this week near the top of the world’s most treacherous mountain, a mountaineer said.
It follows allegations that dozens of climbers eager to reach the summit had walked past doorman Mohammed Hassan, despite him lying on the ground after being seriously injured in a fall.
The allegations surrounding July 27 events on K2, the world’s second-highest mountain, eclipsed a record held by Norwegian climber Kristin Harila and her Sherpa guide Tenjin. By climbing K2 that day, they became the world’s fastest climbers, climbing the world’s 14 highest mountains in 92 days.
Ms. Harila disclaimed any responsibility for Mr. Hassan, a 27-year-old father of three who slipped and fell off a narrow track in a particularly dangerous area of K2 known as the bottleneck.
In an Instagram post on Friday, she wrote that she was “angry about how many people have blamed others for this tragic death” and that no one was to blame.
Footage appeared to show dozens of climbers passing a badly injured Mr Hassan instead of coming to his aid during the climb to K2 on July 27
Dozens of climbers make their way up K2 on July 27, appearing to pass the stricken Mr. Hassan
Ms. Harila defended herself against allegations from two other climbers who were on K2 that day, Austrian Wilhelm Steindl and German Philip Flaemig. The pair had their climb cut short due to difficult weather conditions, but said they later reconstructed events by reviewing drone footage.
The footage appeared to show dozens of climbers passing a badly injured Mr. Hassan instead of rushing to his aid. He claimed that the porter could have been saved if the other climbers, including Ms. Harila and her team, had given up trying to reach the top.
‘There are two standards here. If I or any other Westerner had been lying there, every effort would have been made to rescue them,” Steindl told the Associated Press. “Everyone should have returned to take the wounded back to the valley.”
Ms Harila told Sky News that Mr Hassan was dangling head down from a rope after his fall at the bottleneck, which she described as ‘probably the most dangerous part of K2’. She said her team was able to pull him back onto the trail after about an hour.
At one point, she and another person from her team decided to continue to the top, while another team member stayed with Mr. Hassan and gave him warm water and oxygen from his own mask, the climber said.
Ms. Harila said she decided to continue to the top because her forward fixation team also ran into difficulties which she did not elaborate on in the interview.
When asked about Mr. Hassan’s equipment, Ms. Harila said he was not wearing a down suit and had no gloves or oxygen. “We didn’t see any sign of a mask or oxygen tank,” she said.
Meanwhile, an investigation into Mr Hassan’s death has been launched, said Karrar Haidri, the secretary of the Pakistan Alpine Club, a sports organization that also acts as a governing body for mountaineering in Pakistan.
This image, which is used extensively in news reports in the Pakistani media, is said to show Mohammed Hassan before he died on K2 last month
The climbers were just 400 meters from the top of K2, the second highest mountain in the world
The video shows clouds several thousand feet below them, showing how high they were when the footage was taken
The investigation is being conducted by officials in the Gilgit-Baltistan region, which has jurisdiction over K2, Mr Haidri said.
Anwar Syed, the head of Lela Peak Expedition, the company that handled Ms Harila’s expedition, said Hassan died about 500 feet below the peak. He said several people tried in vain to help, providing oxygen and heat.
Mr Syed said that due to the dangerous conditions at the bottleneck, it would not be possible to collect Mr Hassan’s body and hand it over to the family. He said his company gave money to Mr. Hassan’s family and would continue to help, but did not elaborate.
Asked about Mr Hassan’s apparent lack of equipment, Mr Syed said that the forwarding company pays money to porters to buy equipment, and Mr Hassan has paid the agreed amount.
Norwegian mountaineer Kristin Harila, 37, and Nepalese mountaineer Tenjen (Lama) Sherpa, 35, with their country’s flags, arrive at the airport after becoming the world’s fastest climbers to summit all peaks over 8,000 meters in the shortest time. climb
K2 – imaged from the town of Askole in the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan – gained fame as the ‘Savage Mountain’ after American mountaineer George Bell descended from the summit in 1953
Mr Steindl’s fellow climber, Mr Flaemig, claimed in an interview with the Austrian newspaper Der Standard that Mr Hassan had no high altitude experience. ‘He wasn’t well equipped. He had no experience. He was a base camp carrier and was first selected as a high altitude carrier. He wasn’t cut out for this,” he said.
Mr. Steindl visited Mr. Hassan’s family and set up a crowdfunding campaign. After three days, donations reached more than 114,000 euros (£98,000) on Saturday.
“I saw the suffering of the family,” Mr Steindl told the AP. “The widow told me that her husband did all this so that his children would have a chance in life, so that they could go to school.”