I thought it was common practice to leave them because a rescue attempt would usually kill everyone involved. You either come prepared to go all the way up and all the way down, or you stay on the mountain.
Which just highlights how exploitative the whole endeavour is. Rich Westerners hire poor locals to risk their lives for no good reason beyond clout. These aren't scientific expeditions, there's no actual value in them.
I agree, all of these 'hikes' should be banned. It's absurd.
Of course, people will claim that these hikes provide jobs and a healthy economy for people who would otherwise not have work but it just once again shows how these hikers are exploiting desperate people who are literally willing to die for a job.
K2 is an incredibly dangerous mountain. The possibility of a rescue attempt would depend on many factors that we have no way to know. In these sorts of situations even other climbers nearby might have a complete different opinion. In many cases like this people are often not thinking correctly believing they saw something that wasn't even there or just completely misperceived due to attitude or exhaustion or illness.
You're thinking of the Himalaya above a certain height. There it's impossible to rescue.
On K2, multiple knowledged people have said in interviews that usually you would only need to give him oxygen and then he should have been able to descend himself. Eyewitnesses say that to their knowledge he couldnt move by himself anymore. But those eyewitnesses also said he was dead within an hour, which has been proven to be wrong.
The critical thing here is that no one was asked for help. The crews trying to summit simply decided to continue upwards, and no one tried to bring him down the mountain or ask for help from the basecamp.
When interviewed by Norwegian media she explained that they tried helping, but after a while they had to move since it was one of the most dangerous parts of the route and the queue was building up behind them, which could lead to a far worse situation.
This isn't like walking past someone on your afternoon trip with 1000 meter elevation.
Another expert questioned why the man was allowed to join the journey in the fist place as his equipment was below the usual standard needed to ascend K2. You can't easily bail out once you are up there.
Tonnes of hikes and Parks around Vancouver now require a pass to enter in order to control the crowds. My partner and I refer to this as "nature's full". It really sucks.
this is a stupid accusation. the video shows only several seconds of the situation while they claim to have attended to him for hours, removing all context. and they obviously don't understand how difficult it is to save someone on the top of such a high elevation mountain
Yes but I also remember when a pair of climbers got sick on Nanga Parbat and they flew rescue team in a helicopter from K2 base camp to help them. They managed to get one climber down. For me it's clear that if the Norwegian lady got injured the ascent would be cancelled and no one would be stepping over her. But he was just a porter so tough luck, the show must go on.
A record-breaking mountaineer has denied allegations that her team climbed over a dying porter to reach the summit of K2 in Pakistan to become the world’s fastest climber to scale all peaks above 8,000 metres.
During the Norwegian’s ascent, porter Mohammed Hassan fell off a sheer edge at a height of about 8,200 metres.
Austrian climbing duo Wilhelm Steindl and Philip Flämig, who were also on K2 that day, said footage they later recorded using a drone showed climbers walking over his body instead of trying to rescue him.
Flämig told Austria’s Standard newspaper: “He is being treated by one person while everyone else is pushing towards the summit.
According to Steindl, who visited the porter’s family after descending the mountain, Hassan took the job of rope fixer in order to pay for his diabetic mother’s medical bills despite his lack of experience.
He fell on what is 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.”