Webdesk: Last month’s K2 death of Pakistani high-altitude porter Muhammad Hassan prompted the Gilgit-Baltistan administration to form an investigating committee.
A group of climbers passed Hassan after he fell off a ledge, according to horrifying social media videos and images.
The porter perished hours later at the 8,200-metre-high bottleneck.
After the viral films, GB’s Tourism, Sports, and Culture Department formed an investigating committee.
According to the August 7 ruling, “distressing” recordings and photographs of Hassan’s death have been spreading on social media, making it “crucial to ascertain the facts surrounding the incident.”
Mountaineers Philip Flamig and Wilhelm Steindl, who shared photos of the event, said Hassan was alive when people climbed over him and left him behind.
“We observed a guy alive, lying in the transverse in the congestion. He trampled on the way to the summit. “No rescue mission,” Steindl told the BBC.
“I’m shocked, depressed. I cried because people passed him and there was no rescue mission.”
Flamig told Austria’s Der Standard newspaper that one climber treating Hassan “while everyone else” rushed to the summit in a “heated, competitive summit rush”.
The committee will investigate what occurred to Hassan on July 27 and if his mountaineering skills should have permitted him up there.
Committee responsibilities include:
a) Examine the accident and mountain conditions. especially avalanches and disaster causes.
b) Assess Mr. Muhammad Hassan’s expedition group. after he slipped while mending ropes.
c) Assess Mr. Hassan’s climbing gear and determine who allowed him to climb with gear that may have been inadequate for high-altitude excursions and his experience.
b) Confirm porters’ and sherpas’ accounts of Mr. Hassan’s uniform/kit and oxygen mask during the accident.
a) Report on the 30 Snow School Rattu-trained HAPs’ services and employment. List these trained porters’ expeditions.
f) Assess whether HAP training has improved high-altitude expedition safety, readiness, and safety protocol.
Kristin Harila’s response
On July 27, Norwegian climber Kristin Harila and her Nepalese mountain guide Tenjen Sherpa summited K2 and became the quickest climbers to summit all summits above 8,000 metres in just over three months. They and over 100 other climbers who passed Hassan have been condemned for not helping the Pakistani porter.
Harila told the BBC she and her staff attempted “everything” to save Hassan.
“It’s a horrible accident… a father, son, and spouse died on K2. “It’s sad,” she said.
We tried for hours to save him, but it’s a tiny path.
How will you climb, traverse, and transport someone? No way.”
In order to stop “misinformation and hatred” on Instagram, Harila provided an update.
Harila claimed Hassan “was hanging upside down” on a rope between two ice anchors with his harness “all the way down around his knees.” She didn’t know how the incident happened. His stomach was exposed to snow, wind, and cold temperatures without a down suit, making it highly risky”.
Harila said her crew spent an hour-and-a-half fastening a rope to Hassan and feeding him hot water and oxygen until “an avalanche went off around the corner”.
Harila moved forward “considering the number of people who had stayed behind and that had turned around” and believed that “Hassan would be getting all the help he could” to avoid overwhelming the bottleneck.
“We came back down and saw Hassan had passed and we were ourselves in no shape to carry his body down,” Harila said.
