Norwegian recording-breaking mountaineer Kristin Harila has shut down allegations her team climbed over a dying sherpa during a world record attempt in Pakistan.
Harila, 37, climbed the world's second-highest mountain on July 27, to reach the summit of K2 in a bid to become the world's fastest climber to scale all peaks above 8000 metres.
The Guardian reports during Harila's climb, a separate group's porter Mohammed Hassen fell off a sheer edge of about 8200 metres high. The Norwegian mountaineer said her team did all it could to save Hassen - but conditions were too dangerous to move him.
Austrian climbing duo Wilhelm Steindl and Phillip Flämig were also on K2 at the time. The pair recorded footage using a drone that showed climbers walking over his body instead of trying to rescue him.
Footage published by The Guardian shows mountaineers scaling the edge of the mountain with Hassen's body laying in the middle of the narrow track.
"He is being treated by one person while everyone else is pushing towards the summit. The fact is that there was no organised rescue operation although there were sherpas and mountain guides on site who could have taken action," said Flämig.
"Such a thing would be unthinkable in the Alps. He was treated like a second-class human being," said Steindl.
But Harila rejected the allegations on Thursday when speaking with the Telegraph and said her team did all they could to save Hassan.
"It is simply not true to say that we did nothing to help him," she said.
"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."
Harila said the conditions made it hard to "see how he could be saved".
"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."
She said when her team found Hassan he had no gloves or a jacket on, he did not appear to have been given oxygen.
