Death of porter left on K2 sparks debate on climbing ethics
In the drone footage, a grisly scene unfolds.
On the sheer upper slopes of one of the world's most unforgiving peaks, mountaineers, determined to reach the world's second-highest summit in a recordbreaking string of ascents, appear to step over the prostrate body of Muhammad Hassan — a Pakistani porter who later died.
The video, released by other climbers, ignited a fierce debate over the facts of the case, and beyond that, the behavior of foreign mountaineers who attempt Himalayan peaks and their relationships with local guides and porters.
In a late July accident, Hassan, a married Pakistani father of three, took his last breath, joining the more than 300 climbers who have perished on K2. Second only to Everest in height, the mountain, which spans territory administered by China and Pakistan, looms 28,251 feet in altitude, more than 5 miles.
Hassan was working as a porter, hired to carry gear and otherwise assist those attempting the summit. During his climb, he fell and was injured.
Hundreds of people were attempting to summit, crowding the mountain during a narrow weather window. Among them was record-seeking Norwegian mountaineer Kristin Harila, whose team, sponsored by the outdoor company Osprey, was trying to summit the world's 14 tallest peaks in the shortest-ever span of time. Hassan was not a member of her group.
“We have reached summit number 14,” Harila said in footage taken at the K2 summit on July 27, standing beside her guide, Tenjin “Lama” Sherpa. They had climbed all of the peaks together, and celebrated reaching the top of K2 in three months and one day. The previous record was held by Nirmal Purja, who took just over six months to summit the tallest 14 peaks in 2019.
Harila's celebration was short-lived. As the drone footage of the incident earlier in the day spread online, many people expressed outrage at the cost of the accomplishment following the horrific incident hours earlier, saying her record paled in comparison to the loss of life.
In a lengthy blog post on her website, Harila said she had received death threats over the incident.
In statements to media and on her website, Harila lamented Hassan's death, but denied critics’ accusations that she and her team had left him to die, arguing that the footage could not capture the nuance of the situation or the difficult, life-or-death decisions that must be made in environments that only a small fraction of people could ever imagine traversing.
“It is simply not true to say that we did nothing to help him,” Harila 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.”
Ultimately, Harila said, scrutiny needed to be directed at those who sent Hassan up the mountain. She said Hassan was not “properly equipped” to make the trek, pointing to his lack of a down suit, oxygen mask, and gloves.
Harila was defending herself against allegations from two other climbers who were on K2 that day, Austrian Wilhelm Steindl and German Philip Flaemig. The pair had aborted their climb because of difficult weather conditions, but said they reconstructed the events later by reviewing drone footage.
The footage showed dozens of climbers passing a gravely injured Hassan instead of coming to his rescue, Steindl told the Associated Press on Saturday. He alleged that the porter could have been saved if the other climbers, including Harila and her team, had given up attempts to reach the summit.
Steindl added that the footage shows “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 said. “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.
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 that Hassan was working for, said he died about 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 had given 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.