The record-breaking Norwegian climber alleged to have ‘stepped over’ a porter as he lay dying during a climb of K2 has rubbished the claims, saying she is a victim of ‘misinformation’.
Kristin Harila, 37, became the fastest climber to scale the world’s 14 tallest mountains, finishing on Pakistan’s K2 mountain on July 27 after just 92 days.
But Harila and her team have faced strong accusations they walked around 27-year-old Muhammad Hassan as he died, tangled in ropes 1,300ft from the summit.
Hassan, part of the team ahead of them, was unable to talk or hear after falling from a narrow ledge on a bottleneck part of the mountain, dying after two hours.
Video has since emerged of Harila’s team appearing to step over the father-of-three, with fellow mountaineers accusing them of being more focused on the record than saving his life.
Harila says that she has been the victim of ‘hatred’ and death threats for celebrating her feat, and wrote on Instagram: ‘This was no one’s fault, you cannot comment when you do not understand the situation, and sending death threats is never okay.’
She said that her team stayed behind for 90 minutes trying to pull the Sherpa up before an avalanche nearby forced them to move on.
Critics accused Norwegian climber Kristin Harila (pictured celebrating her summiting of K2) and her team of being ‘more interested in setting records’ than helping a dying Sherpa
Video showed Harila’s team approaching the bottleneck where Muhammad Hassan was trapped
Harila wrote that the incident ‘happened at the most dangerous part of the deadliest mountain in the world’, urging critics to ‘remember that at 8000+ metres, your survival instincts impact the decision you make.’
She said: ‘I did not see exactly what took place, but suddenly Hassan had fallen and was hanging on the rope between two ice anchors,’ she said.
‘At first, nobody moved, probably out of shock and fear, then we realised he was hanging upside down and was not able to climb up by himself.
‘We decided to continue forward, as too many people in the bottleneck would make it more dangerous for a rescue.’
She said: ‘The bottleneck is a dangerous place to be, there is snow and ice hanging over you, and you are walking on an extremely narrow path, on snow that can collapse below you at any time.’
‘Every minute you stay there increases the risk of accidents, not only for yourself, but for everyone above and below you.’
Even after the group moved on, she said two stayed behind trying to help Hassan for some two and a half hours.
She added: ‘Considering the amount of people that stayed behind and that had turned around, I believed Hassan would be getting all the help he could, and that he would be able to get down.
‘We did not fully understand the gravity of everything that happened until later.’
Harila described Hassan as ‘a person who was important to so many people and he should not just be remembered as a person who passed on K2’.
Harila also shared a link to a GoFundMe page raising money for Hassan’s family, set up by climber Wilhelm Steindl.
Steindl, who participated in the climb but had returned to the base camp earlier due to the dangerous conditions, previously told Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf that he was sickened by the inaction of the fellow climbers.
‘It was a very heated, competitive race to the top. What happened there is scandalous.
‘A living person is left behind so records can be set. It only took 3 or 4 people to save him.
‘Had I seen it, I would have climbed up to help the poor man.’
But Harila defended her actions to The Daily Telegraph, saying ‘we did all we could for him’.
She added: ‘It is simply not true to say that we did nothing to help him.
‘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 that given the conditions it was unlikely he could be saved as he had fallen on to what was ‘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’.
Harila is also accused of holding a party shortly after clinching the record – despite Hassan’s death.
On Instagram at the time, she posted a final summit reel celebrating their success.
The post received backlash from users, one of whom accused her of ‘crossing him twice without helping’.
Anwar Syed, of Lela Peak Expedition, told MailOnline that two climbers ‘tried their hardest to bring him down but they couldn’t do it and he passed away after two hours’.
The expedition group claims it offered payment to other porters to retrieve the body but ‘everyone said that it’s impossible to bring him down’.
Syed said that Hassan was much higher up than three climbers whose bodies were previously deemed unrecoverable from the mountain in Pakistan.
Muhammad Hassan lay dying after he slipped at a dangerous point on the mountain
Harila also said that she had only found out Hassan had died as she climbed back down the mountain.
She said her team was unable to recover the body as it was ‘impossible to safely carry him down’.
‘Back in Base Camp, we heard that people thought no one had helped him but we had. We had done our best, especially Gabriel [the cameraman].
‘It is truly tragic what happened, and I feel very strongly for the family,’ she said.
‘Please, please, please. Be kind. Not just to those who went up to K2 that day and who have all lived through something very difficult.
‘But most importantly, to Hassan’s memory and those close to him. Be respectful.’
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Read more at DailyMail.co.uk