GILGIT: The Gilgit-Baltistan government on Monday formed a five-member committee to probe the death of Pakistani high-altitude porter Mohammad Hasan near the bottleneck of K2 after a video clip went viral on social media showing climbers crossing over his body to conquer the peak on July 27.

According to a notification, the GB secretary tourism, sports, archaeology and museum department constituted the committee headed by Iqbal Hussain, director of the department.

Members of the committee are: Rahat Karim Baig, deputy director Baltistan, and representatives from the divisional and district administration, Baltistan tour operators association and the Alpine Club of Pakistan.

The committee has been asked to submit its report and recommendations within 15 days.

Viral video shows climbers crossing over body of Mohammad Hassan to conquer peak on July 27

The video shared on social media by Lakpa Sherpa from Nepal, who headed 8K Expedition Team, showed the climbers crossing the bottleneck situated above 8,000 metres to conquer K2 pasing over the body of Hassan from Shigar.

Hassan reportedly lost his life when he fell down at the bottleneck during an attempt to scale K2.

Hassan was an employee of Lela Peak, however, he had been assigned the task of assisting rope fixers with Seven Summit Club. The rope fixing team from various expeditions had started their mission from camp 3 on July 26.

According to Explorersweb, at roughly 2:30am on July 27, a long line of climbers moved slowly above 8,000m on K2, the second-highest mountain in the world and one of the most dangerous.

They were focused on their goals. Some were pursuing records. Most knew that they would have to summit that day or go home. Their expeditions wrapped up at the end of the month.

Explorersweb reported that Silvia Azdreeva of Bulgaria scaled K2 that day as a member of the EliteExped team.

“During the summit push, there were five avalanches next to us below the bottleneck,” Azdreeva told Explorersweb.

“One of them hit some of us on the way up. Luckily, we weren’t injured and managed to dig out of the snow. We debated if we would continue or give up.”

“[Then later,] a person died in front of my eyes. One moment he was alive and then on the way back we had to jump over his corpse on the ice edge that we were passing.” Hassan reportedly fell down and broke his O2 mask.

According to the fellow foreign climbers, at first Hasan was alive and was asking for help, but no one came to his rescue or provided him oxygen. Everyone was in a hurry and they continued their summit push. Then everyone had to step over him to head toward the summit.

Mingma G, the owner of Imagine Nepal, told Dawn that he was at base camp at time of the accident. He said Hassan had inadequate climbing equipment and was not trained.

He said tour companies should ensure equipment of climbers and their training before adventurers. He said what happened at K2 was shamful.

Published in Dawn, August 8th, 2023