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DEATH ON THE SAVAGE MOUNTAIN: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED ON K2, AND WHY 100 CLIMBERS
STEPPED OVER A DYING MAN ON THEIR WAY TO THE SUMMIT

Matthew Loh
Aug 22, 2023, 3:00 AM GMT+2
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A view of K2, taken in 2014. Alan Arnette

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 * On July 27, more than 150 people tried to summit K2 as a man lay dying in
   their path.
 * Footage from the mountain would later shock the world when it showed climbers
   walking past him.
 * But Insider's investigation reveals a far grimmer story of neglect, fear, and
   desperation.

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In the darkness, they rose. More than 150 men and women advanced warily through
the ice, grasping lines that had been anchored into the mountainside just hours
before.

Some had waited months for this ascent. They had a small window: Winds had
finally calmed on the morning of July 26, giving teams their first chance to
summit K2, the King of Mountains, in the Pakistani-administered area of the
Kashmir.

A storm would hit the mountain on the 28th, they were told. It was now, or next
year.

In the vanguard was the rope-fixing team, a handpicked squad of the strongest
Sherpas and guides. Working through the thick snow, they opened a route by
securing ropes along the rocky Abruzzi Spur, the most common path to the peak.

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Behind them, a column of headlamps peppered the Pakistani mountainside like
fireflies in the fog. Up and up they went — eager athletes, Nepali Sherpas,
Western mountain guides, and their foreign clients.

Near the front of the pack was the Norwegian climber Kristin Harila. By sunrise,
she and her guide, Tenjen "Lama" Sherpa, would become the fastest people to
reach the world's 14 tallest peaks.

Then there was Mohammad Hassan. A Pakistani porter tasked with carrying
equipment for the rope-fixing team, the 27-year-old climbed the frigid heights
while positioned somewhere between the veteran climbers and Harila.

They would find him upside down that night, dangling at 27,000 feet, hanging
above an abyss, his face buried in the snow.

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By the end of the summit window, at least 102 people had conquered K2. All
paying climbers would descend the mountain safely, and regroup at base camp.

Mohammad did not.

His death would shake the mountaineering industry in the weeks to come, and
eventually make headlines worldwide. The climbers who summited K2 that day were
swept into the heart of a bitter debate. Speculation churned as people argued
whether a man more than 8,000 meters above sea level could have been saved from
the Mountain of Mountains — or whether greed for glory had blinded more than 100
climbers and left Mohammad stranded on the ice.

Insider spoke with seven climbers and mountain guides who were on K2 that night,
including two who witnessed the immediate moments after Mohammad's fall.

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Through further conversations with mountaineering experts and a friend of the
dead porter, a clearer picture has emerged of the events that unfolded in that
night of confusion and tragedy on K2. Mohammad's employer, Lela Peak Expedition,
didn't respond to multiple requests for comment.


THE SAVAGE MOUNTAIN

K2 is no Mount Everest. Or rather, Mount Everest is no K2.

"The trite saying is, if you want bragging rights, you climb Everest. If you
want respect, you climb K2," said the climbing coach Alan Arnette, a mountaineer
since 1997 who is the oldest American to summit K2.

Dubbed the "Savage Mountain," K2 is significantly more difficult and technical
to summit than Earth's tallest mountain, Arnette told Insider. Everest has a 3%
death rate, while K2's was 25% before 2021. It now hovers at about 18% after
becoming a far more popular option for climbers, Arnette estimates.

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"K2 is only 800 feet lower than Everest, but it is incredibly steep," Arnette
said. "It starts steep, it's steep in the middle, and it's steep at the end."
Everest, on the other hand, features many relatively flat areas, such as the
Western Cwm.


K2 is the second-tallest mountain in the world, but the most difficult to
conquer. JOE STENSON/AFP via Getty Images

And the weather is notoriously unpredictable, Arnette said. Western winds
charging into the Karakoram range hit K2 head-on, forming swirling gales and
increasing the risk of an avalanche.

These factors considered, mountaineers wait for winds under 30 mph, seizing upon
those tiny pockets of opportunity to push for the summit.

"This year was highly unusual, with only one day during the season, July 27,
when the winds were low enough," Arnette said.

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The climbers who were on K2 concurred. "The information that we got going up was
that the 28th would be a pretty bad storm," said Lucy Westlake, who attempted to
scale K2 with a US company, Madison Mountaineering.

Most teams believed July 27 was the last day of that window to summit, Westlake
said.

And with almost every climber thinking they had only one shot, summit hopefuls
flooded the way up.


Climbers make their way up K2. Lucy Westlake

Oswaldo Freire, an Ecuadorian mountain guide with the Nepali group Seven Summit
Treks, told Insider he counted at least 41 tents at Camp 3, this season's final
resting point before the summit.

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That many tents easily meant 120 to 160 people were gathered for the push,
Freire said.

A mountaineer for 31 years, Freire was part of the rope-fixing team carving the
route between the lower and upper camps. Seeing the severe weather and the
people needing space for shelter, the veterans gave up trying to construct Camp
4 on The Shoulder, a plateau traditionally used as the launching point for
summit pushes.


Oswaldo Freire, left, was one of those fixing lines to the upper camps in near
white-out conditions. Climbers, right, make their way to the upper camps. L:
Oswaldo Friere, R: Lucy Westlake

The risks on the Savage Mountain were compounding drastically, Freire said. Snow
had fallen days before, leaving barely enough time for it to pack and provide
solid footing.

Those who wanted to reach the summit would have to climb from Camp 3, then up a
deadly wall of ice and rock known as the Bottleneck, then alongside a steep
traverse, before hiking two more hours up 60-degree terrain.

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And with every additional person on the trail, climbing at night, the danger of
avalanches or rockfalls had risen significantly.

"I'd be scared to death," Arnette said. When he summited K2 in 2014, only 10
people were pushing to the peak the same day.

Sensing the danger, Freire was on the verge of packing his equipment and
descending from Camp 3.

He ultimately decided to take the summit push, wanting to help Westlake — his
friend and the youngest American woman to conquer Everest — break the same
record for K2. They would try for the peak, but agreed to assess conditions as
they ascended.

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Like most clients and guides, Lucy Westlake used supplemental oxygen for her
summit push. Lucy Westlake

As the afternoon came on July 26, scores of climbers departed Camp 3 for the
peak. Mohammad and the rope-fixing team would have been among the first groups
to move, before 3:30 p.m., per Freire's estimate.

Harila's team, consisting of her, Tenjen, and a Brazilian cameraman named
Gabriel Tarso, started their push at 8 p.m., she said. Just days before, they
had finished an ascent on another 8,000-meter mountain in Pakistan, Broad Peak.

Freire and Westlake left at midnight, hoping the delayed start would provide
hours of buffer space between them and the other teams, thus making the climb
safer.

They were wrong.

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THE GREAT SERAC — 2 A.M.


Climbers approaching the Bottleneck and the traverse in 2014, with a giant ice
cliff hanging over them. Alan Arnette

At about 2 a.m., Harila suspected something was amiss. She had reached K2's
giant serac, a monstrous ice cliff hanging off the side of the summit, some 300
meters below the peak.

Ahead, the rope-fixing team was making time.

But the few climbers in front of Harila had stopped. To examine the cause of the
holdup, her team started passing other mountaineers to reach the front of the
line, Harila told Insider.

Her account of the events that immediately followed was corroborated by footage
seen by Insider, alongside an interview from another climber on a separate team.
This other climber was at the front of the entourage and asked to remain
anonymous, citing the death threats Harila has received in recent weeks. The
climber will be referred to as Doe, but their identity has been verified and is
known to Insider.

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One of the first three people in line on K2, Doe was one of the initial few
people to see the porter close to death. Through the dark, they could make out a
figure stuck below the trail.

"At some point we heard somebody saying, 'Ah, ah!' as though something was
wrong. We went ahead and I saw this person hanging upside down, with his belly
uncovered," Doe said.

Mohammad had fallen on a precariously steep section of K2 known as a traverse,
where slopes are slanted to about 70 degrees and spill far below. Roughly two
hours from the summit, it spans between 50 to 100 meters across, and climbers
must walk, balancing on the side of the extreme incline to reach their goal.


A view of the traverse, as seen in 2014 when Alan Arnette summited K2. Alan
Arnette

The porter hung there, unable to help himself, about 5 meters beneath the trail,
Doe said.

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A companion of Mohammad's stood farther down the mountain path, seemingly unsure
of how to mount a rescue. He, too, was a porter for the rope-fixing team.
Insider has identified the man but isn't publishing his name because of privacy
and safety concerns.

Doe saw that an ice screw holding the fixed ropes had come loose near Mohammad,
indicating that it may have been yanked out as he fell. His jumar, a handheld
device for gripping fixed ropes, still dangled from the lines anchored above,
Doe added.

Why Mohammad was incapacitated after falling just a few meters is still unclear.
At 8,000 meters and above, altitude sickness can take hold, or pulmonary or
cerebral edema, when fluid fills the lungs or brain. Preexisting medical
conditions can also become fatal in the mountains.

With Mohammad upside down, his clothes had begun to slip and gather around his
upper torso, exposing his lower abdomen, Doe said. His legs were twisted in the
ropes, Harila added.

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His clothing also seemed odd to both climbers. Mohammad wasn't wearing a down
suit — a vital piece of equipment for 8,000-meter mountains that covers the
climber's body to keep them warm, Doe said. You didn't climb K2 without one,
several mountaineers told Insider.

"We weren't sure who this person was, or even if they were a he or she," Doe
said. "I was wondering why this person was between us and the rope-fixing team
because we thought we were the first batch of clients."

Harila also said Mohammad had neither a down suit nor supplemental oxygen with
him, which is another essential piece of equipment for high-altitude climbs.

"He didn't have a regulator or mask or bottle — we didn't see him before and
didn't know if he had it earlier and lost it," Harila said. "But there wasn't
any sign of oxygen there. And he didn't even have gloves at the time."

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RESCUE ABOVE THE ABYSS — 2:15 A.M.

Harila said she and her team decided to help Mohammad, since they were some of
the strongest climbers and Sherpas present.

Doe remembers the same. As a Sherpa's client and not an experienced mountaineer,
they said they focused on making sure they did not get in the way. "My biggest
contribution would be to make sure I'm not the cause for another rescue," they
said.

The attempt would take hours, and the already-exhausted rescuers had to move
cautiously, especially since an ice anchor had become unsecured. The treacherous
slopes continued hundreds of meters below, and if anyone were to somehow come
loose, death would almost be guaranteed.

Early into the rescue, a young Sherpa attempted to add another ice screw but
slipped in the fresh snow, both climbers said. He was visibly shaken, both
recalled.

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Harila, Tenjen, Tarso, and several Sherpas worked to add the ice screw, secure
additional lines on Mohammad, turn him around, and pull him up one inch at a
time.

"Think about pulling a 150-pound bag," Arnette said when assessing the rescue
attempt. "More than likely he was virtually unconscious, if not unconscious. He
was unable to help himself."

"You're at what, 8,300, 8,400 meters? You're using supplemental oxygen," he
said. "You've got your goggles on. It's the middle of the night. She, her
Sherpa, and her photographer, this was now their fifth 8,000-meter mountain in
two weeks."

Doe took a photo of the scene. The image was taken at 2:15 a.m., per a time
stamp seen by Insider.

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This image was shot at about 2:15 a.m. Doe (Anonymous)

Harila's team shot its own footage, also seen by Insider, of climbers assessing
Mohammad's fall.

In the footage, Mohammad's companion can be seen pitching in, helping to hold
ropes.

As the veteran climbers hauled Mohammad from the slope, the porter was at least
partially lucid and cried out as though "he was not in good shape," Harila said.
Tarso gave Mohammad his oxygen mask and tried to calm the man, she added.

Meanwhile, rows of people were forming behind Doe. "When I turned back, I saw
the huge queue behind. I was trying to move one step back. Nobody could move,"
they said.

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Minutes later, the avalanche struck.


THE BOTTLENECK — 3 A.M.

It was about 3 a.m. when Westlake and Freire arrived at The Shoulder, the
plateau that would have served as Camp 4. The route was jammed with climbers.

"As soon as we crested you could basically see this line of headlamps going up
the mountain," Westlake said. "Probably most of the people going to the summit
were right there."


Westlake and Friere saw a chain of headlamps filling the Bottleneck and the
traverse. Lucy Westlake

Freire recalled the confusion on the radios. "We started hearing on the radio
about an accident," he said. Someone had fallen from the path, and no one could
get him up, he remembered hearing.

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Along the chain of climbers, anxiety was beginning to set in. The rescue was
blocking the climbing entourage, and Mohammad had fallen just beyond what is
known as the Bottleneck, a steep rock gully that's 100 meters tall and
considered the most dangerous part of the ascent.

And almost every climber was now stuck inside the Bottleneck, or at its exits.
It sits just under the Great Serac, making it especially unsafe when slivers of
the ice cliff break off.

Debris from the serac can get funneled into the gully — giving the Bottleneck
its name — sweeping away fixed ropes and killing essentially anyone caught
inside, Arnette said.

"When that sliver falls down like it did in 2008, it just wreaks havoc on
everything below because you've got tons of ice, and it's falling down with
massive velocity," Arnette said.

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Eleven climbers died in the Bottleneck when a section of the Great Serac fell in
2008, marking one of the mountain's worst disasters. "The trick there is to get
through the Bottleneck as quickly as possible," Arnette said.


A view of the Great Serac in 2014, shot just below the Bottleneck. Alan Arnette

Perhaps the climbers could have spaced out and descended to wait. Yet they did
not, or could not. The size of the crowd in the Bottleneck, the inexperience of
many client climbers there, the dark of the night, and confusion over Mohammad's
fall made it difficult to organize a dispersal.

"Sometimes people get this thing that's called summit fever," said Freire, the
Ecuadorian climbing veteran. "That you think because there's a lot of people you
are safe, because everybody's kind of doing the same thing. But you're not."

At The Shoulder and peering up into the night, Westlake and Freire had little
idea of what was transpiring on the traverse, much less how Mohammad had fallen.
Freire surmised the group at the top might not have brought extra ropes, which
would greatly assist a rescue.

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He decided to clip around the climbers on the Bottleneck and bring the gear up.

But as Freire was gauging the distance to the top, Westlake saw the rumbling
snow.

"Lucy asked me, 'Is that an avalanche?'" Freire said. "And I looked up and saw
the white wall of snow coming at us."

The avalanche missed the Bottleneck, avoiding mass catastrophe, and was filled
only with powdered snow that washed onto the climbers at The Shoulder, including
Westlake and Freire.

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By the time the avalanche subsided, both Westlake and Freire were covered up to
their knees. They called off their summit push. Other smaller avalanches would
occur that night, and at least three Western companies would abandon their
climbs because of the risk, bringing their clients back down the mountain.


Westlake shot this photo of the mountains at Camp 3 upon her return from the
Bottleneck. Lucy Westlake

Among those who returned early were Wilhelm Steindl and Philip Flämig, Austrian
mountaineers under Furtenbach Adventures, who would later make the allegations
that shocked the world.


SPLIT UP — 3:30 A.M.

Back at the top, Harila's team received radio calls from the rope fixers.

"The fixing team was around the corner where the avalanche came from," Harila
said. "We got in contact with them on the radio, and we heard they had
problems."

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There were now two potential disasters needing attention. It was 3:30 a.m.,
about 90 minutes since Mohammad was found on the traverse, but the hostile
conditions meant he was still not pulled out of harm's way.

So Harila's team split up. She and Tenjen moved ahead to check on the fixers,
while Tarso stayed to help finish pulling Mohammad, she said. Doe, who said they
remained with the rest of the climbers on the traverse, recounted the same
sequence of events to Insider.

Together with Mohammad's companion and another Sherpa, Tarso eventually brought
Mohammad to the path. But the porter could no longer speak or move on his own,
Doe said.

"That's when we realized, 'Oh shit, this is bad,'" Doe said. "Even if you
carried him with five or six people, I can't see a way without risking other
people's lives to actually do a rescue."

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Meanwhile, Harila said, she and Tenjen met with the fixers farther along the
path and realized they were unharmed.

The controversy stems from the next moments. With Mohammad moved onto the path,
the jam began to open up.

Doe said their Sherpa scouted ahead and, seeing a clear route, ushered them
forward on the traverse. The atmosphere was tense. Other climbers, who had
waited hours under the Great Serac, were eager to get out of danger.

The entourage began pressing forward, while Tarso stayed with Mohammad and his
companion, attempting to warm up the porter. But about a half hour later,
Tarso's oxygen, which he shared with Mohammad, was almost out.

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An extra bottle was with Tarso's Sherpa, who was part of the rope-fixing team
approaching the summit. So Tarso left to find him, while Mohammad's companion
remained with the dying porter.

At 4 a.m., the morning sun broke on K2. Climbers along the traverse began
shooting videos of the breathtaking, bleak beauty of the mountainside.

In one video seen by Insider, a man in a green jacket is seen tending to
Mohammad, whose legs appear to move — indicating he may still have been alive at
the time. The unknown man's jacket and boots match the clothes of Mohammad's
companion, as seen in the photo provided by Doe.

Flämig and Steindl, the Austrian mountaineers who turned back at The Shoulder,
shot drone footage of the traverse while they descended. When they reviewed the
shots in base camp the next day, they were horrified.

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DISTRESSING DRONE FOOTAGE

The drone footage showed dozens of climbers, one by one, walking past Mohammad's
body on the path. Insider saw a still of the footage.

To Flämig and Steindl, the mountaineer's code of ethics was being violated
before their eyes. Speaking with Insider, Steindl said an attempt should have
been made to bring Mohammad down as soon as possible.

"But if a rescue mission had started at this point, the people behind the
traffic jam, they have to turn around and they have to go down," he said.
"Nobody would reach the summit."

"I don't know if you could bring him down alive. But there must have been a
rescue mission," he said. "If someone is dying, it's quite normal to stop the
expedition to bring someone down. They did not stop."

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Clients from at least five climbing companies completed summits by the month's
end.

Harila would break her world record, and Doe would crest K2's peak for the first
time.


The final stretch, as seen in this photo taken in 2014, involves about two hours
of climbing up steep snow. Alan Arnette

At the summit, Tarso caught up with Harila and Tenjen and told them Mohammad was
alive but in bad shape, Harila said.

Harila added that she received word from her support team via satellite phone
that "everyone was OK."

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But when she descended and returned to the traverse, Mohammad was dead. His
companion was nowhere to be seen, she said.


FIREWORKS

As it turned out, the storm that was earlier expected to sweep the area on the
28th never came. A few remaining mountaineers successfully made the climb in the
following days, bringing the total number of summits this year to at least 102.

But back at base camp, Mohammad's death still hung over the minds of the
climbers, many of whom said they learned he was a local porter only when they
returned.

"Some people were traumatized because they had to pass him when he was
agonizing," Freire said, recalling what people said at base camp. "He was trying
to reach out to people, and so everybody talks about that."

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Death is a stark reality climbers face when attempting any 8,000-meter mountain.
And it's even more likely for those who dare to attempt K2, Westlake said.

"But it was the conditions and the circumstances around this, where everyone
walked past a man that was still alive and was dying, who died a few hours
later," Westlake said. "That's a big deal."


A view of base camp on K2 this year. Lucy Westlake

Several expeditions held summit celebrations for their clients, though five
climbers on K2 told Insider the overall mood was tepid. Harila said her team did
not celebrate at base camp.

Steindl was aghast.

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"A guy died — those people who are partying now, they were stepping over him to
reach the summit," he told Insider. "They are celebrating the success now? You
cannot be serious."

Fireworks were used, Steindl said, a detail that other climbers on K2 confirmed.
They added that the displays were small. Still, the celebrations deeply
disgusted Steindl.

"It was completely crazy at this point," Steindl said. "I was just happy to
leave base camp."

Steindl said that on their way down to civilization, he and Flämig met a friend
of Mohammad's family, who told them where the deceased porter's family lived.

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They, Tarso, and a fourth climber traveled to the village of Tisar to offer
their condolences.

Now, as Mohammad's past comes to light, questions linger as to why he was even
sent to scale that mountain at all.


A WORLD AWAY FROM WHERE HE PERISHED ON K2, MOHAMMAD'S FAMILY GRIEVES

Mohammad was a father, leaving behind three young boys and a widow, the climbers
learned. His wife probably won't be able to find work in their traditional
Muslim village, and his mother, whom Mohammad cared for, has diabetes, Steindl
said.

"When we went there it was heartbreaking," Steindl said. He said he'd left all
of his cash with the family and promised to care for their education.

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The mountaineer launched a GoFundMe for Mohammad's family, which has since
raised $150,000 for their legal fees, schooling, and future expenses.


Mohammad leaves behind three young boys and a widow in Tisar, Pakistan. M.H.
Balti/Associated Press

Mohammad, known as Mahsan to his friends, was a shy, quiet man in his early 20s
when he first met a Norwegian hiker named Jutta Vanessa Tørkel in 2017.

She was visiting the Karakoram range with her husband, and Mohammad had worked
as one of the porters for their team, she told Insider.

The couple struck up friendships with Mohammad and the other porters, who all
lived in extreme poverty and made arduous treks to base camps while woefully
under-equipped.

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While other porters could be jovial or mischievous, Mohammad was keenly aware of
his low social status as a poor villager in Pakistan, and would always bow and
smile and obey the instructions of others, Tørkel said.


Mohammad and Jutta Vanessa Tørkel. Jutta Vanessa Tørkel

This was Mohammad's first year being assigned at high altitudes on K2, or any
8,000-meter mountain for that matter, Tørkel said. It made no sense to her that
he would be told to join a summit push.

"He should never have been anywhere up there," she said. "Maybe he could have
learned to go to Camp 1."

Porters are no Sherpas. Where Nepali Sherpas are suited to life up in the
mountains, many porters in Pakistan come from surrounding villages below base
camp, at far lower altitudes.

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Mohammad would typically work ad-hoc construction jobs in the Shigar Valley and
travel to the 8,000-meter mountains every climbing season. Like his fellow
porters, he was paid less than $70 over three weeks to carry equipment to base
camps.


A Pakistani porter looking toward K2 on July 15. JOE STENSON/AFP via Getty
Images

It was big money for men like Mohammad, Tørkel said. If they were lucky enough
to be hired as high-altitude porters, where they are tasked with ferrying loads
to the upper camps, they could earn as much as $20 in a single day, or $840
during an extended season.

"On one hand, they become happy and think, 'I will earn 6,000 rupees per day,'"
Tørkel said. "On the other hand: 'Oh shit. I have to climb K2.'"

Climbers like Freire would often be alarmed by how ill-prepared porters seemed,
even among those who went only to base camp.

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"To be light, they don't bring much stuff for themselves," Freire said. Some
often carry loads up to base camp in sandals, arriving with bleeding feet, he
said.

"You see them a lot with altitude sickness, you see them with a lot of problems
in people that are not experienced or well prepared to be at that altitude,"
Freire said.


A Pakistani porter rolling dough in the evening of July 9 on the trail between
Askole and K2. JOE STENSON/AFP via Getty Images

"It's kind of an unwritten law that you cannot trust the Pakistani high-altitude
porters to deliver the loads," Freire added. "Because they can get cold, or get
scared, which is totally normal."

Porters don't have even the most basic sets of equipment, such as gas canisters
or stoves to make water, and expedition teams would give them whatever spare
supplies they could scrounge up, he said.

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They often sell their base-camp equipment to make more money for their families,
Tørkel said, though she added that the porters she befriended wouldn't dare sell
precious gear for high-altitude work.

And porters are not part of any expedition team, working as something akin to
freelancers.

"Truth be told, you can help them, we help everybody, but you cannot be
responsible for them," Freire said. "Because you are responsible for your
members, for a lot of logistics to work around."

Karrar Haidri, the secretary of the Alpine Club of Pakistan, a sports NGO that
governs the local mountaineering scene, told Insider that high-altitude porters
"typically have expertise up to roughly 7,000 meters," though he said some might
be trained for higher elevations.

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When asked about Mohammad's equipment, he denied that porters were often
unprepared, saying they would have "down jackets and oxygen."


Instead of tents, some porters opt for a sheet of plastic. Joe Stenson/AFP via
Getty Images.


LELA PEAK EXPEDITION

Expedition teams hire porters through local companies, which relay instructions
to their men and choose who is a base-camp porter and who works at high
altitude, Tørkel said.

Mohammad's employer was Lela Peak Expedition, founded by twin brothers named
Akbar and Anwar Syed. A porter teammate of Mohammad's told Tørkel the
high-altitude porters were given $750 this year to buy equipment.

For reasons unknown, Mohammad did not have a down suit, Tørkel said. Days before
the summit push, another high-altitude porter with Mohammad had called Tørkel
from Camp 2, saying the pair was too under-equipped to carry on. The porter and
two other Pakistani porters quit.

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Pakistani porters hiking on the Baltoro Glacier along the trail between Askole
and K2. JOE STENSON/AFP via Getty Images

But Mohammad kept going. It was his first time being paid as a high-altitude
porter.

"It's easy for us to judge them as crazy," Tørkel said. "I wouldn't do it. You
wouldn't do it. But what choice do they have?"

With his inexperience on the mountain and lack of proper equipment, it's unclear
why Mohammad was sent up to assist the rope-fixing team at an altitude above
8,000 meters.

Being a rope fixer is the hardest job on the mountain, veteran climbers like
Freire said.

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And with paying clients waiting just behind them, the fixers on K2 would have
been under immense pressure to open the route quickly.

Sherpas and guides navigating the treacherous terrain would have neither time
nor headspace to watch out for a porter, Freire said.


Porters, like this man photographed in mid-July, often trek up to base camp with
little equipment for themselves. Joe Stenson/AFP via Getty Images.

But even if the local men knew they faced grave danger, most of the men Tørkel
knew would tend to obey the orders of their Pakistani bosses. Most are born of
low status and are sometimes treated like disposable resources in the local
community, she said.

"They never have a chance — they are told what to do," she said. "They have
learned all their life that there is a hierarchy."

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Lela Peak Expedition and the Syed brothers didn't return repeated requests for
comment and calls. When contacted on a local line, Anwar Syed told Insider to
reach him on WhatsApp. The number, however, was not registered on WhatsApp, and
further attempts to reach Syed and Lela Peak Expedition were directed to
automated voicemails.


THE 7 SUMMITS CLUB

Freire told Insider he saw a Russian company, 7 Summits Club, telling fixers at
base camp that it couldn't spare any Sherpas or guides for the rope-fixing team.
Instead, they offered three high-altitude porters for the job.

Mohammad, under Lela Peak Expedition, was one of the porters assigned.

Alex Abramov, founder of the 7 Summits Club, confirmed that his company had
contributed three high-altitude porters to the fixing team, reported
ExplorersWeb's Angela Benavides, a climbing journalist well known in the
mountaineering community.

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"We don't know what really happened because he was ahead of our members and
Sherpa group," Abramov said of Mohammad's death, per ExplorersWeb.

The 7 Summits Club didn't respond to calls and requests for comment to Abramov
and its Alaska and Moscow offices.

On social media and its website, 7 Summits Club wrote that at least 10 of its
clients and guides conquered K2 in July.



The expedition team didn't appear to address Mohammad's death in videos shot of
its triumphant arrival back in base camp.

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"We are waiting for the heroes at home!" the club wrote on July 31.


A MAELSTROM OF BACKLASH BEGINS

As news spread of Mohammad's death, along with the morning footage of the
traverse, the climbers on K2 quickly became the target of the online world's
fury.

Steindl and Flämig gave interviews to Austrian newspapers stressing that
Mohammad should have been rescued.

Harila, the most prominent climber of the day, became a lightning rod for online
hate and the subject of rife speculation and misinformation. This included an
unsubstantiated allegation that she was one of the climbers filmed walking past
Mohammad's body, though she was already past the traverse at that point.

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The Norwegian climber Kristin Harila and Tenjen Sherpa set the record for the
fastest summit of all 14 of the world's 8,000-meter peaks. Beside them is Nima
Rinji Sherpa, who is breaking records as the youngest climber to summit the
8,000-meter mountains. Sanjit Pariyar/NurPhoto via Getty Images

She would release a statement August 10 explaining the events of that evening.
But by then, the damage was done. She said that she'd received death threats and
that her and Tenjen's legacies had been marred, possibly forever.

Sajid Hussain, the deputy director of the Sports and Tourism Department of the
Gilgit-Baltistan region, said an investigation was launched into Mohammad's
death and its findings would be submitted August 22, per The Associated Press.

In an email to Insider on Tuesday, the tourism secretariat of Gilgit-Baltistan
wrote that the committee's inquiry was underway. "A final report will be made
public by the end of this month," the email added.

The exact cause of Mohammad's death has still not been determined.

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Harila stands by an assessment she said she'd reached that night: that it was
impossible to carry Mohammad down K2.

"It's not like on Everest," she said. "I shouldn't say it's easy on Everest, but
it's not like climbing on K2. To carry someone across the Bottleneck, it's
impossible."

The sheer number of climbers in the way of a rescue would have posed serious
risk as well, she added.

Arnette agrees. "It's night and day from what goes on in Everest," he said.

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Pragmatically, it would have taken four to six people using a makeshift sled,
perhaps from a sleeping pad or bags, to drag Mohammad down, he said.

While a helicopter has landed on Everest before, it would be close to impossible
to precisely drop a longline to a spot above 8,000 meters, and Mohammad would
need to be brought to Camp 2 or 3 before he could be airlifted out, Arnette
added.

"Sherpas are paid thousands, if not tens of thousands, of dollars to do body
recovery or rescues on Everest," he said. "But nobody has been dragged from that
altitude near the traverse and the Bottleneck."


Rescuers carrying a Sherpa injured by a 2015 avalanche that flattened parts of
Everest Base Camp. ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP via Getty Images

The rocks in the Bottleneck would cause serious damage to the body, so rescuers
would have needed to lift Mohammad off the ground while descending the gully.
Then they would need to bring him down to The Shoulder, then down to Camps 3 and
2, while navigating the Black Pyramid — a landmark along the way that's
infamously difficult to cross even for an able-bodied person, Arnette added.

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"Could it have been done? It's not out of the realm of possibility," Arnette
said. But he added that a high number of Sherpas — known for jumping in to help
— had been on the mountain that day, and none started a rescue effort, most
likely because it was too dangerous.

"And I know a lot of these guys," Arnette said. "I just for the life of me do
not think that they would have looked at him and said: 'Oh he's a Pakistani.
Leave him.' I totally reject that."

Reflecting on the ascent, the climbers who spoke to Insider continue to wonder
whether Mohammad might have been saved if only one risk factor had been removed.
Could they have organized a rescue if fewer people had been pushing for the
summit? Or if they'd known the impending storm wouldn't arrive? What if Mohammad
had worn a down suit? What if there had been a Camp 4?


Tourists eating lunch while on the trail between Askole and K2 on July 12. JOE
STENSON/AFP via Getty Images)

Freire disapproved of how no one tried to bring Mohammad down but said he
understood it was a mammoth effort.

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"First of all, you would need everybody turning back, then maybe going up again
to rescue," he said. "And then making everybody understand that the rescue
situation needs to have priority over the summit."

"But it's very difficult to do crowd control," he added. "Unluckily, I think
nobody was there with sufficient authority to say we are all going down."

Westlake felt that with so many veteran mountaineers on K2 that day, the key
difference maker could have been someone taking charge of the 150 people on the
slopes.

"I don't know if they even would have been able to bring him down," Westlake
said. "But I do agree that it seems like there should have been some sort of
more organized effort to help him."

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AN INDELIBLE STAIN AND A SOURCE OF SHAME FOR THE MOUNTAINEERING WORLD

Steindl said he worried for the future of mountaineering. "I think the system up
there failed. Because nobody felt responsible," he said. "That's the big thing.
You have to stop and say: 'Nobody is passing this point. You turn around and we
bring him down, we try to help him.'"

Fatalities on the ascent could easily have been much worse, said Arnette, who
spoke reprovingly of the teams that pressed on despite the dangers. Had an
avalanche hit the Bottleneck that night, dozens would have died.

"They were incredibly lucky. They dodged a bullet," he said.

The accident on K2 has deeply ashamed many in the mountaineering industry,
Arnette said. He lamented that respect for the sport was fading, if not long
gone.

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Mountaineers making their way up a slope on Mount Everest in 2021. LAKPA
SHERPA/AFP via Getty Images

Commercialization of the 8,000-meter peaks, where companies flood the deadly
mountains with manpower to pave the way for amateur clients, has led to a rise
in less experienced and more dependent climbers, he said. And though Pakistan's
mountaineering industry is decades behind Nepal's, K2 is becoming a hot spot
like Everest for tourists seeking a hardened challenge.

"We've crossed the Rubicon, because there's no way back because of this greed,"
Arnette said.

Tørkel hopes Mohammad's death will spur change in the industry and plans to
approach famous climbers and expedition companies to join a petition for a
fair-trade certificate. Those obtaining it would have to ensure their porters
are given the right equipment and pay them a certain portion of the money
received from clients.

Arnette believes governments should limit the number of mountaineers permitted
to attempt a summit, especially on K2.

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All parties involved — porters, clients, and guides — must be fully aware of all
the specific dangers the mountains present, he said.

"If you go to an 8,000-meter mountain, and you don't think that you might die,
then you shouldn't be there," he said. "You've got to understand that this is
the bargain you're making with the universe."

 

 

Correction: August 23, 2023 — A previous version of this article incorrectly
stated the length of the K2 traverse. It is between 50 to 100 meters, not 500
meters. The distance between the traverse and the summit is around 500 meters.

A previous version of this article also incorrectly spelled a climber's last
name. He is Oswaldo Freire, not Friere.

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