ISLAMABAD — An investigation has been introduced into the loss of life of a Pakistani porter close to the height of the arena’s maximum treacherous mountain, a Pakistani mountaineer stated Saturday, following allegations that dozens of climbers keen to achieve the summit had walked previous the man after he used to be gravely injured in a fall.
The accusations surrounding occasions on July 27 on K2, the arena’s second-highest height, overshadowed a file established by Norwegian climber Kristin Harila and her Sherpa information Tenjin. By mountain climbing K2 that day, they changed into the arena’s quickest climbers, scaling the arena’s 14 perfect mountains in 92 days.
Harila rejected any duty for the loss of life of the porter, Mohammed Hassan, a 27-year-old father of 3 who slipped and fell off a slim path in a in particular unhealthy space of K2 referred to as the bottleneck. In an Instagram post Friday, she wrote that she felt “angry at how many people have been blaming others for this tragic death” and that nobody used to be at fault.
Harila used to be protecting herself in opposition to allegations from two different climbers who had been on K2 that day, Austrian Wilhelm Steindl and German Philip Flaemig. The pair had aborted their climb as a result of of tricky climate prerequisites, however stated they reconstructed the occasions later by reviewing drone photos.
The photos confirmed dozens of climbers passing a gravely injured Hassan as an alternative of coming to his rescue, Steindl advised The Associated Press on Saturday. He alleged that the porter can have been stored if the opposite climbers, together with Harila and her staff, had given up makes an attempt to achieve the summit.
Steindl added that the photos presentations “a man trying to rub (Hassan’s) chest, trying to keep him warm, to keep him alive somehow. You can see that the man is desperate.”
“We know by now that this was his friend, also a Pakistani high altitude porter,” Steindl advised AP. “And what you also see in the drone footage is a line of 70 climbers marching towards the summit.”
“There is a double standard here. If I or any other Westerner had been lying there, everything would have been done to save them,” Steindl said. “Everyone would have had to turn back to bring the injured person back down to the valley.”
Steindl also said that July 27 was the only day in this season on which conditions were good enough for mountaineers to reach the summit of K2, which explains why there were so many climbers who were so eager to get to the top.
“I don’t want to kind of directly blame anybody,” Steindl said. “I’m just saying there was no rescue operation initiated and that’s really very, very tragic because that’s actually the most normal thing one would do in a situation like that.”
Harila told Sky News that Hassan had been dangling from a rope, head down, after his fall at the bottleneck, which she described as “probably the most dangerous part of K2.” She said that after about an hour, her team was able to pull him back onto the trail.
At some point, she and another person from her team decided to continue to the top while another team member stayed with Hassan, giving him warm water and oxygen from his own mask, the climber said.
Harila said she decided to continue moving toward the summit because her forward fixing team also ran into difficulties which she did not further detail in the interview.
Asked about Hassan’s gear, Harila said that he did not wear a down suit and he didn’t have gloves, nor did he have oxygen. “We didn’t see any sign of either a mask or oxygen tank,” she said.
Meanwhile, an investigation has been launched into Hassan’s death, said Karrar Haidri, the secretary of the Pakistan Alpine Club, a sports organization that also serves as the governing body for mountaineering in Pakistan. The investigation is being conducted by officials in the Gilgit-Baltistan region which has jurisdiction over K2, said Haidri.
Anwar Syed, the head of Lela Peak Expedition, the company handling Harila’s expedition, said Hassan died about 150 meters (490 feet) below the summit. He said several people tried to help, providing oxygen and warmth, to no avail.
Syed said that because of the bottleneck’s dangerous conditions, it would not be possible to retrieve Hassan’s body and hand it to the family. He said his company gave money to Hassan’s family and would continue to help, but did not elaborate.
Asked about Hassan’s apparent lack of equipment, Syed said the expedition company pays money to porters to buy gear, and that Hassan was paid the agreed upon amount.
Steindl’s fellow climber, Flaemig, alleged in an interview with the Austrian newspaper Der Standard that Hassan had no high-altitude revel in. “He wasn’t equipped properly. He did not have experience. He was a base camp porter and for the first time was picked to be a high-altitude porter. He wasn’t qualified for this,” he said.
Steindl visited Hassan’s family and set up a crowd-funding campaign. After three days, donations reached more than 114,000 euros ($125,000) Saturday.
“I saw the suffering of the family,” Steindl advised 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.”
___
Grieshaber reported from Berlin.
post credit to Source link
