Kristin Harila has had quite a career.
The Norwegian climber is the world’s fastest person to scale the 14 tallest peaks.
Harila and guide Tenjen ‘Lama’ Sherpa ascended the world’s 14 peaks that stand at more than 8,000 meters (26,246 ft) – known as eight-thousanders.
The pair beat the previous record by mountaineer Nirmal ‘Nims’ Purja featured in the hit Netflix documentary ’14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible’.
Harila did it in just 92 days last year. It saw her take on world’s most dangerous climbs like the Mount Everest Khumbu icefall and the unforgiving K2.
But the climb ended in controversy after claims were made accusing Kristin and her team of climbing over the injured and dying porter Muhammad Hassan on the mountainside of K2.
She told Metro.co.uk: ‘The accident we had on K2 – we know it should not have happened. We know now that the guy who died he never went above base camp.
‘To go from base camp at 5,000 m to 8,000 and 8,600 m on a technical mountain without oxygen, without a down suit. One thing is the risk that you put yourself in.
‘And the other thing is the risk that you put everyone else in.’
She said that going up to 8,000 meters without having been higher than base camp is like ‘suicide.’
Harila denied the accusations claiming she was one of the dozens of people who walked over the Pakistani porter, labelling them ‘misinformation and hatred’ in an interview with CNN last year.
The past year has been ‘very challenging,’ the 38-year-old skier-turned mountaineer said.
After the tragedy at K2, Harila continued for ‘more than two months.’
‘When I said to my team now we stop, I cannot do anymore interviews about what happened on K2, then a few days after Lama died.’
Death in Tibet
Tenjen, or Lama as Harila calls her friend who is like a ‘younger brother’ to her, was swept away in an avalanche on Tibet’s Shishapangma mountain on October 7 last year together with Gina Marie Rzucidlo just meters away from the summit.
Harila, who took the first plane to Kathmandu after the news, wanted to ‘go and try search for him straight away but they closed the mountain.’
‘It was anyways better to be in Kathmandu with his family and be close to them.
‘But it was a huge shock that he was gone, and still is.’
Determined the to try find his body, she has been raising money for a search mission that was meant to take place this spring, but the team did not get a permission, and now face a longer wait.
Bodies of dead climbers are often left on the mountains because of the costs and dangers linked to repatriation in extreme conditions.
The search mission could cost up to $287,600 (£244,000), Harila estimates on her GoFundMe page.
14 peaks in 92 days
The list of 14 peaks scaled by Harila and Lama:
- Shishapangma 8,027 m
- Cho Oyu 8,188 m
- Makalu 8,481 m
- Kangchenjunga 8,586 m
- Mount Everest 8,848 m
- Lhotse 8,516 m
- Dhaulagiri I 8,167 m
- Annapurna I 8,091 m
- Manaslu 8,163 m
- Nanga Parbat 8,126 m
- Gasherbrum II 8,035 m
- Gasherbrum I 8,080 m
- Broad Peak 8,051 m
- K2 8,611 m
Until the team have at least tried to find him ‘everything is a bit on hold.’
‘We have to try again in the autumn.’
‘A lot of accidents could have been prevented’
Harila calls for rules to ensure that foreign climbers heading to big mountains like Everest have gone to 6,500 meters before attempting to summit the world’s highest peak at 8,849 m – something the Nepalese government was looking into before Covid-19 pandemic hit.
She said: ‘We know that when something happens, a lot of these accidents could have been prevented if they had more experience and know that when people go too slow it makes it higher risk, and we know that when something happens it’s so often the Sherpas who have to go up and do the rescue.
‘So it’s a higher risk for them when people are not in a good enough shape or experienced enough to go up.’
Having summited Everest three times, Harila has been on top of the monstrous mountain alone with a Sherpa only two times.
Most often than not, the famous exposed section leading to Everest summit called Hillary Step is plagued by queues – like in 2019 when shocking images went viral showing hundreds of climbers stuck on the rockface in a dangerous traffic jam.
It led to 11 deaths, with some survivors saying the chaos was caused by inexperienced climbers.
Harila claimed Nepal’s plan to introduce the additional rules failed because ‘they had so many problems with climbers coming from the Alps saying “I have climbed this and this and I have so much experience” so it did not continue.’
‘Even if you have climbed a lot in the Alps and you are super good technically, it’s totally different to climb on a 4,000 than 8,000. Totally different.
‘Nepal is a very poor country. They need us to come, they need us to come there as trekkers, hiker and climber forever, but we need to make sure to do it in a better way, to not leave trash and make it safer for the people who live off the mountain.’
Quitting mountaineering
Harila said that professional climbers ‘know the risk and often get used to accidents happening.’
‘I don’t know how many I have known I have lost in the mountains. It’s too many. So we need to do what we can to reduce the risk for climbers and sherpas.
‘As long as the mountains are there people are going to climb them.’
For the foreseeable future, she won’t climb.
‘I’m finished climbing high mountains. I’m totally finished, I’m not going to climb,’ she said.
‘If, at a later stage, I get to a point I feel I want to climb I will.
‘I went now and I was looking up the mountain and thinking ‘I’m not going up.’
‘If you’re going to climb and eight thousand meter or a high mountain, you need to be so motivated in so many ways. Much more thatn just getting in the newspaper for summiting Everest.
‘You need to be very motivated. And if you’re not, you will not do all it takes to be safe’
Mount Everest – world’s highest dump site
For now, Harila is focused on the clean-up project to help eradicate rubbish left by climbers on all mountains.
She said the trash tends to multiply as old trash makes it ‘easy for people to leave behind more.’
More than fifty tonnes of waste cover Mount Everest alone, giving it the dubious nickname the world’s highest garbage dump.
The Nepalese army recently removed eleven tonnes of rubbish, four corpses and one skeleton from the mountain, the BBC reports.
More than 200 bodies are still thought to be on Everest.
Harila reminded that picking up any rubbish in the ‘super hard conditions up there’ is ‘very hard,’ with most people having just enough energy and time ‘for surviving.’
‘To get it all cleaned up, we need a big dedicated team.
‘But of course it’s very important what the climbers do also, if everyone does a little bit, it’s possible,’ she told Metro.co.uk.
When asked about plans for a Netflix documentary of her own, she said the team has been filming and have a ‘production company working on that now.’
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