An elite Norwegian mountaineer has had to defend herself after being accused of climbing over a dying sherpa on K2 to secure a world record.
The mountaineering community has blasted images of Kristin Harlila and other climbers moving past an injured sherpa on a treacherous ridge.
The images were taken near the summit of the mountain, which is the world's second highest and has the nickname “savage mountain”.
It was Harlila’s last climb in her world-record-breaking attempt to summit all peaks above 8,000 metres in just 92 days.
The Daily Telegraph UK reports at around 8,200 metres in an area called “the bottleneck”, sherpa Mohammed Hassan fell off a sheer edge.
Harila has said her team did “everything they could” to save Hassan, but conditions were “too dangerous” to move the injured man. He died on the mountain, reportedly suffering from frostbite and hypothermia.
He reportedly took the job of rope fixer on the mountain so he could pay his diabetic mother’s medical bills.
But two Austrian climbers say drone footage they recorded on the day appears to show a different story.
Wilhelm Steindl and Philip Flämig claim the footage shows Harlila and her team walking past Hassan 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.”
In an apparent dig at Harilia, the pair said some climbers were more interested in breaking records, instead of saving lives.
Hassan’s death has sparked fresh debates about the treatment of sherpas by Westerners when climbing.
“Such a thing would be unthinkable in the Alps. He was treated like a second-class human being,” Steindl said.
“If he had been a Westerner, he would have been rescued immediately. No one felt responsible for him.
“What happened there is a disgrace. A living human was left lying so that records could be set,” he said.
However, speaking to the Telegraph, Harlila defended her actions, saying the accusations against her are “simply not true”.
“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 said.
“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 also denied claims Hassan was treated differently do any other climber on the mountain that day.
“We did all we could for him,” she said.
The quality of his gear has also been called into question by Harlila. Reportedly, the man wasn’t wearing gloves or a down jacket and wasn’t equipped with oxygen.
“If he were my Sherpa, I wouldn’t have sent him up in that condition,” she said.
SHARE ME