The Missing Woman of Bear Creek Overlook

Today we're starting in Montana where a woman was hiking just feet ahead of another person and yet somehow she she vanished without leaving a single trace behind. Like how does that happen? Then we're going to be heading to K2 where a camera captured something so disturbing that it sparked one of the biggest controversies in the history of mountaineering. If you've listened to a couple episodes now and you're enjoying the show please consider hitting the follow button and leaving a five-star review. It really helps our standing with Spotify and it only takes two seconds. I'm Kyle, listen on if you dare. One second she was there, the next she was gone. Barbara Bolick was just mere feet away from her hiking partner when in just a matter of seconds she vanished without a trace. And I don't mean that she fell out of sight or she was grabbed by someone, she truly just vanished right in front of her hiking partner. No screams, no footprints, nothing at all. That sounds impossible, right? Well maybe it is, that's the story. Or maybe it's not impossible. I'm going to be telling you the real story of Barbara's disappearance, all of the prevailing theories, and I'm going to be telling you how this story that's been declared impossible by so many experts may not be so impossible after all. So you're going to want to stick around because by the end of this video you're going to hear an easily overlooked detail that changes everything. On a summer day in 2007, Barbara Bolick went on a hike with her new friend Jim in Montana's Bitterroot Mountains. It was a friendship that would be very short-lived. So a few months ago, before I'd even heard of this story before, I took a very short trip to Missoula, Montana, which is just north of the Bitterroot Mountains. It was a beautiful, clear day while our plane was descending into town, and I distinctly remember just kind of looking out over the Bitterroots and noticing just how vast and how empty those mountains looked. Now because I make all of these videos, I can't help but notice when certain mountain ranges just kind of give me a strange feeling inside. Like my gut was just, I don't know, it sounds dramatic and weird, but of course, I didn't really know why at the time, but I now know that my gut feeling was for a reason, because just a few months later, here I am telling you a story about these mountains. But even putting that gut feeling aside, while my plane was landing, I also noticed just how beautiful those mountains looked. And that is something that Barbara Bolick would have agreed with wholeheartedly. I have no problem saying that because it's true. In fact, in 2001, Barbara and her husband, Carl, moved to the town of Corvallis, Montana, which is right at the base of the Bitterroots. And it didn't take long after that for Barbara to fall completely in love with those mountains. The couple had spent most of their marriage in the New York City metro area, where Carl had been stationed in the Air Force and then later worked for JPMorgan Chase. I mean, can you imagine the contrast of their lives in Montana versus their lives in New York City? I mean, going from the hustle and bustle, the skyrise buildings and the crowds, going from all that stuff to slow living, mountain cabins, and almost zero other people around you. I mean, that's incredible. Talk about two opposite worlds, right? Now, the move was initially a little bit rough for Barbara, but she quickly began to thrive in her new home. She started doing things like taking pilot lessons. She started to ski, which is something I enjoy a lot. But actually, speaking of things I enjoy a lot, the hobby that filled Barbara with the most joy was, of course, hiking. And so with that said, I want you to take a very close look at this trail right here, because this trail, it's called Bear Creek Overlook. Well, this trail happened to be Barbara's favorite hike in the entire world. And it just so happens that the spot that you're looking at right now is the last place that Barbara was ever seen. In July of 2007, the Boelicks had some visitors to their home in Montana. Now, these visitors were Carl's cousin, Donna, and Donna's boyfriend, Jim, who I'm not 100%, but I'm fairly certain had never met the Boelicks before. At least he hadn't met Barbara. Now, since the Boelicks lived in such a beautiful area, Barbara was always keen to give their visitors a glimpse into the wild Montana backcountry. I mean, who could blame her? I would do the same thing if I lived there. And so this, coupled with the fact that Barbara's husband, Carl, was no longer able to hike due to some medical issues, well, the fact that she didn't have any hiking partners ever, and the fact that she wanted to show off the beautiful area, those factors drove Barbara to invite Donna and Jim on a very short hike to the Bear Creek Overlook. And at first, Donna and Jim seemed pretty into the idea. They made plans to do the hike the very next day. And then they promptly began tossing back a few drinks, if you know what I mean. And it appears that at least one of them had at least one too many. It's possible that, I'm totally speculating here, but it is possible that if the group hadn't kind of hit the booze that night, well, I wouldn't be making this video right now. But we'll get there. So the next morning rolls around. It's now the morning of July 18th. And Donna informs Jim and Barbara that she was far too hungover to go trampling through the Montana wilderness. And, you know, fair enough. I get it. But this did kind of put Jim and Barbara in a bit of an awkward situation. Have you ever been introduced to a new person by a friend of yours? And then, you know, your mutual friend, the one that knows both of you just like leaves the room and now it's just you and this person you just met. And it's just kind of awkward, you know? Well, I'm kind of imagining this situation with Jim and Barbara being like that when Donna decided that she didn't want to go hiking. But to be honest with you, I'm probably overthinking it because Jim and Barbara decided to go on the hike anyways. They decided to go despite Donna backing out. And thus, around nine in the morning, Barbara said goodbye to her sleeping husband. And she told him that herself and Jim were heading to go hike Bear Creek Overlook. Now, I imagine that some of you might feel uncomfortable, even a bit scared by the prospect of a loved one going off hiking in the Montana wilderness. I mean, there's bears out there. There's all sorts of scary stuff, right? I say that, but it's actually safe to say that this was not the case with Barbara's husband, Carl. Barbara had spent years by this point hiking around in the area. In fact, she had literally done the Bear Creek Overlook Trail countless times before. It was her favorite hike. She knew the trail so well that she basically could have done it blindfolded. And in the event that something did go wrong, Barbara always carried protection. No, not that kind of thing. Get your mind out of the gutter. I'm talking about a firearm. Because this area of Montana is home to grizzly bears and mountain lions, Barbara always carried a.357 Magnum pistol when she was hiking. And so that, combined with her experience on the Bear Creek Trail, combined with the fact that she also had a hiking partner in Jim, well, all of those factors meant that the chances for something going wrong here should have been extremely low to non-existent. to non-existent at all. When Barbara and Jim started the 15-minute drive to the trailhead, Carl, who was still in bed, well, he wasn't worried in the slightest. But the same thing couldn't be said for Donna. Maybe it was just the hangover, anxiety, I don't know what it was, but by 12 o'clock noon, well, Donna was starting to get very worried that Jim and Barbara hadn't returned yet. However, you have to keep in mind that Donna was very unfamiliar with the hiking in this area. She wasn't from there. From there, you know, she was just visiting, right? And Carl knew that they had been gone for a pretty normal amount of time to do this hike, and that they would likely be returning home any minute. But then, another hour passed without any sign of Jim and Barbara coming home. And it's at this point that Carl, too, began to worry. He insisted on waiting until 2 o'clock. And if the pair of hikers hadn't returned home by then, Carl would pick up the phone and he would report them. But, as fate would have it, Carl would never get the chance to make that call. As he was kind of debating about what to do in his head, all of a sudden, Carl heard his phone ring, and he was greeted by a voice that he had never heard before. The person on the other end identified herself as a law enforcement officer for the United States Forest Service, and then she asked Carl if his wife's name was Barbara. When Carl heard that question, he braced himself. Now, I really hope that none of you have ever had to experience this, but can you just imagine a police officer calling you and then asking to confirm your spouse's name? name. I mean, that can only mean that some very bad news is imminent. And unfortunately, that's exactly what happened to Carl. This officer informed Carl that Jim had reported his wife missing. And this came as a total shock to Carl because once again, he was very confident that Barbara would keep herself safe while she was hiking. I mean, if anything, Carl felt that Jim should have been the hiker who became lost. I mean, he was in an unfamiliar part of the country. He had never hiked Bear Creek Overlook before. In fact, I'm not even sure if he had any hiking experience at all. The whole situation was very, very strange. And so at this point, Carl jumped into his car and he drove straight to the trailhead. And once he began to hear Jim's story, Carl's life would be changed forever. Carl and the police listened intently as Jim described a story that was basically impossible. According to Jim, himself and Barbara had made it to the actual Bear Creek Overlook, which I showed you a minute ago and you're now looking at it again. They stopped here to have a snack and they chatted with two young men who had hiked to the overlook with their dog. At some point, these two men began hiking back to the trailhead, leaving Jim and Barbara, behind to enjoy the overlook. And then sometime between 1130 a.m. and 1 p.m., Jim and Barbara decided to also begin making their way back. Barbara led the way as they departed from the overlook, but Jim decided that he needed to take one final look at the beautiful view. So while Barbara was 20 to 30 feet in front of him, Jim kind of turned around again and he spent no more than 45 seconds taking in the view for the last time. And when he looked forward again, when he looked back down the trail, Barbara was gone. Jim hiked a little bit further down the trail, you know, figuring that Barbara might have just kind of pulled ahead of him out of sight. But as he continued to hike further and further, he still saw no sign of her. He began meticulously searching the trail, you know, kind of looking for any sign of what might have happened. But he found no discarded gear. He found no marks on the trail that would indicate a struggle or a fall. He found nothing out of the ordinary whatsoever. He hadn't heard anything after he turned around to look at the view. He didn't hear any screams. He didn't hear any loud or concerning sounds at all. Which is very strange because the area near the overlook has a lot of loose shale. You're going to know what I'm talking about if you've ever experienced this. If you've ever tried to walk. If you've ever tried to walk on this stuff, it's very, like, loud and kind of clanky when you move around on it. Which makes it all the weirder that Jim didn't hear anything. And so he kept hiking back towards the car. And by the time that he reached the trailhead, an unbelievable reality had kind of set in, like, for real. That reality, of course, was that Barbara Bolick had just vanished into thin air. Now, the Forest Service Road that Jim and Barbara had parked on was under construction. And so when Jim emerged from the woods, there were actually a few construction workers nearby. Jim began talking with these construction workers. And of course, he asked them the obvious question, had they seen Barbara? And the answer to that was no, they hadn't seen her. But they had seen those two young men with their dog. Since these two men were the only other possible witnesses besides Jim, the police immediately began working to track them. And this would end up being much more challenging than it sounds. Pretty soon after, a massive search for Barbara was launched. And usually when a hiker goes missing, even if, like, the hiker themselves aren't located, there's usually, like, some sort of evidence that's found. You know, maybe a piece of their gear. Or some prints in the dirt. Or at the very least, their scent is tracked by dogs, which gives some initial clues into. You know, what direction they traveled. What makes Barbara's disappearance so baffling, and I do not use that word lightly, is that despite a professional and very thorough search, none of the things I just mentioned were found. Literally nothing. No tracks, no scent, no discarded gear. Nothing. Literally nothing. Which meant that the only thing the police had to go off was Jim's version of events, and the version of events from those young men, if they could ever find them. So, how could someone just vanish right in front of their hiking partner? I mean, there has to be some sort of explanation, right? And the answer to that question is, well, there's actually a few explanations. And so you better listen closely because it's actually going to be up to you to decide which one of these makes the most sense. Weeks, months, and eventually years went by, and to this day, no sign of Barbara has ever been found. And. to make this case even stranger, no sign of those two men that were on the trail that day has ever been found either. They never came forward, their identities remain unknown, and that's all despite a fairly large media campaign to try and find them, that's all despite a composite sketch, and it's despite a $10,000 reward for identifying them. Somehow, they just never found these men, and that actually brings us into our first, and definitely not our last, theory, about what happened to Barbara Bullock. Now, I need to stress here that pretty much everything that you're going to hear for the rest of this video is going to be speculation. I'll make it clear when I'm telling you a cold, hard fact, but a lot of this is just going to be kind of exploring the possibilities of what might have happened. So the first theory is that those two unidentified young men had something to do with Barbara's disappearance. And I will admit that it is a bit suspicious that, they were the only other hikers on the trail at the time, and that they never came forward and identified themselves. Like, what did they have to hide? The nearby town of Missoula does have a university there, University of Montana, I believe. And so, it's possible that maybe these two young guys were like college aged and they went to school there, but I don't really know. It certainly seems weird that the only two other witnesses disappeared, but at the same time, it is very possible that these two men, just simply never found out about Barbara's disappearance. I mean, they could still be out there to this day, you know, just blissfully unaware of the baffling mystery that they unknowingly took part in. I mean, hell, they could even be watching this video right now. So, if that's you, hey, you might want to call somebody. No, but in all seriousness, it's very likely that these two men just never found out about the case. I mean, maybe they were visiting at the time, and you know, they got back from their hike in the Montana mountains, and then they flew back home, back to Cleveland or wherever they're from, and the news just never spread to them. And in addition to that, there's actually another thing that kind of contradicts this theory, and it actually contradicts the next theory as well. And so, let me tell you about that first. Another common theory that explains Barbara's disappearance, and I guarantee a few of you have already been thinking this, maybe you've even commented it by this point. This theory is that Barbara could have been attacked by an animal, maybe a mountain lion or a bear, something like that. And while this certainly is possible, I tend to think it's pretty unlikely because once again, there were no signs of a struggle found anywhere on the trail. Like there was no drag marks or blood or even any marks in the dirt at all. And once again, Jim heard no noise. He heard no screaming. Barbara was so close in proximity to Jim when she disappeared. Like, I don't know. I just, I feel like if she was attacked by an animal or even by a person, for that matter, going back to the previous theory, I just feel like there would have been some, some, any sign of it, right? The searchers didn't find anything. And don't forget, once again, she was carrying that 357 Magnum, which she certainly would have used if she needed to defend herself. It's for all of those reasons that I think an animal or human attack on the trail is pretty unlikely. If you have any evidence to the contrary, I'd love to hear it in the comments section, genuinely. And so that brings us to our next set of theories, which is that Barbara either took her own life or that she intentionally disappeared, ran off and then started a new life somewhere. Now, the new life theory seems pretty much impossible to me. I don't know how she would have pulled that off. And as far as I'm aware, she didn't have a motive to do this or a motive to take her own life for that matter. Her marriage was stable. She liked her life in Montana. She even loved it, you could say. In addition to all that, she was also looking forward to some future travel plans that she had discussed with her friends and her family. And so based on all that, I think those two scenarios are pretty unlikely. Now, one of the most perplexing aspects of this case is that search dogs were brought in just a few hours after Barbara disappeared, you know, to try to track her, to lock onto her scent and give some indication of where she went. And yet, despite being brought in so quickly, the dogs never identified her scent. And let me clarify what I mean by that. I don't mean that the dogs just, like, couldn't track her scent, they followed her scent for a while and then eventually they lost it i mean that the dogs literally never picked up a scent anywhere including at that overlook that barbara had taken a lunch break at i mean how is that possible she was on the mountain just hours earlier and yet her scent is nowhere to be found it almost seems like it's not possible right and so this folks is where the biggest twist in this entire case comes in this is the twist that's going to make you question pretty much everything i've told you about this story so far there's only one logical theory that explains why barbara vanished into thin air one theory that explains why her scent was never found on the trail and why there was no sounds or signs of a struggle what if barbara was never actually on the mountain that day at all what if she never hiked the bear creek trail on july 18 2007 i could be wrong but in my opinion this is the only possible explanation for her disappearance and that of course begs a few questions like you know where is she then and who took her now the obvious person to point the finger at here is jim of course i mean he was the last person to be seen with barbara and so is it possible that he killed her and then staged the hike so that police would be thrown off or is it even possible that carl and donna were involved as well and they all colluded in order to kill barbara and that explains why she was never actually on the mountain those are very reasonable theories and they've been discussed by people online quite a bit i'm sure they'll be discussed in the comments of this video respectfully please maybe those theories are possible uh but to be honest with you that stuff also seems hard to believe in my opinion the police obviously investigated jim carl and donna and you might be shocked to hear that all of them were cleared of involvement none of them have ever been charged and to be honest with you it doesn't even really seem like they were ever considered suspects jim even volunteered to take a polygraph test though the police didn't take him up on this for some reason i find that a little strange there's been no motives uncovered by any of the three of them you know for why they would want to kill barbara there's never been any hard evidence found that points the finger at them and all of them fully cooperated with the police folks this is a mystery in the truest sense and to be honest out of all of the stories i've told on this channel out of all the hikers that have gone missing that i've talked about this one is by far the biggest head scratcher to me it seems impossible that barbara actually made it onto the mountain that day i mean jim's story just seems impossible and can't be true and yet it also seems impossible that jim could have killed barbara and then covered it up so easily in an unfamiliar environment leaving the police with zero evidence to this day like that doesn't really make sense either i genuinely hope i'm wrong about this but i think that this is one of those cases that will probably go unsolved forever which is tragic my heart goes out to barbara bollock and and guys please leave some love for her in the comments section below i always i i just really appreciate it when you guys do that and i'll see you next time to do that barbara's disappearance leaves us with almost nothing to work with but our next story is the complete opposite on k2 the second highest mountain in the world a camera captured the moment that would ignite one of mountaineering's biggest controversies in history and if you're listening audio only don't worry you don't need to see the the videos and the in the photos to understand the story so here we go i want you to look at this photo very closely you might not see it yet but i promise that this is one of the most controversial photos in the history of mountaineering and the disturbing part is that this is only one of many photos and videos i'm going to show you today and that's because we're talking about k2 the second highest mountain in the world and one of the deadliest and you may think you already know what makes k2 one of the most deadly mountains in the world maybe the steep ice walls or the avalanches or the rock falls or the hurricane force winds and severe high altitude but what if i told you that the biggest danger might not be the actual mountain itself but rather the mountaineers on it and i know that might sound too crazy to be true but this other photograph proves it and i'm about to tell you why at 5 30 in the morning on july 27 2023 a drone lifted towards the bottleneck of k2 it was supposed to capture Norwegian climber Kristen harilla closing in on one of the greatest feats in mountaineering in the world's 8 000 meter Peaks but instead of simply documenting this record the camera captured something else something far more disturbing in fact it would be filming a real-life nightmare unfolding right there on the second highest mountain in the entire world so dozens of climbers were moving single file towards the summit and directly beneath them was a body in a yellow jacket crumpled up against the ice on first look you probably would have assumed that the man was dead after all once again looking at this photograph taken right on the mountain by lakpa Sherpa it seemed like climbers were just kind of stepping over this dead body treating the situation as if the body in front of them was long gone but then in the early hours of the morning that drone operator noticed a leg move a leg move on this body and in fact I shouldn't even call it a body anymore because this person obviously had a name his name was Muhammad Hassan and he had been critically injured for more than three hours by this point but clearly given what the drone operator saw he was still alive and yet one after another climbers were continuing past him towards the summit and it's easy for me to sit here and criticize them for for leaving this guy behind for leaving this guy to die essentially but one piece of context I haven't told you yet is that every single one of those climbers who were stepping over Muhammad's body had been told that today was the last viable Summit day of the 2023 season after this day K2 would be closed the summit would be completely off limits and so it was now or never in the truest sense of the term and so one by one every single climber reached the spot where Muhammad Hassan was hanging from the rope and one by one they all stepped over him and kept going first it was 10 climbers and soon it was 20 and then 30 and then 40 and then hours later Kristen harilla would complete her record she did it she made history but that would hardly be the main headline from this particular day because when that drone footage and all of these photographs reach the internet it would ignite an argument that still has no simple answer that would be did dozens of climbers leave a man to die heartlessly or was there a lot more to the story folks this video isn't just about a climber who died it's not just about Muhammad Hassan this is a human drama playing out on the world's deadliest stage a moment that should have been pure Triumph for climbers like Kristen would become one of the most controversial Summit pushes in modern mountaineering history and it would also produce some of the most controversial photos and to me many of the key details that led to the events of July 27 2023 happened well before the sun came up that morning and well before anyone knew that the cameras were watching and frankly what I'm about to tell you might change how you view Summit chasing in the sport of mountaineering for good maybe so in order to understand what makes those photos and this story so controversial you really need to understand what K2 actually is which is not just a slightly less famous version of Everest by the way K2 is 28 251 feet tall or about 8 611 meters which makes it the second highest mountain on Earth by a margin of less than a thousand feet but honestly I'm sure that some of you knew that and so the thing that you like really need to know about K2 is that it kills people at a rate that makes Everest almost zero the current fatality rate on K2 sits somewhere around 20 percent per Summit attempt which is insane that's like roughly one in five climbers who try to reach the top never come home um to my knowledge that's true I know it sounds crazy but Everest for comparison sits closer to one percent under modern conditions uh K2 is so dangerous that it even has the nickname the Savage Mountain which I know a lot of you have heard before it earned this nickname through decades of disasters obviously like 13 climbers dead in a single season back in 1986 and then 11 more killed in one catastrophic 24-hour period in 2008 and the list goes on and on Allison Hargreaves arguably one of the most accomplished Mountaineers of her generation died on K2 in 1995 in a storm that also killed six other people you get my point the deadliest section of the mountain the section that appears in nearly every K2 fatality in recent memory is a narrow steep couloir called the bottleneck it is the most dangerous but also most unavoidable section of the standard routes you cannot reach the summit without passing through it. Passing through it means spending several hours traversing a slope of slippery ice directly beneath a massive, unstable, hanging serac that can and does release enormous chunks of ice without warning. 13 of the last 14 documented fatal accidents on K2 happened at or near the bottleneck. Every climber attempting K2 knows exactly what the bottleneck is, and that includes Kristin Haverla, who had just turned 37 years old in the summer of 2023. Kristin is a Norwegian, former cross-country skier who, at the time, had, by any reasonable measure, executed one of the most remarkable pivots in the history of professional sports. In 2019, she quit a management job in Norway to pursue mountaineering full-time, and then in 2021, just in the summer of 2020, she quit her first job as a mountaineer. After two years into serious high-altitude climbing, she became the fastest woman ever to summit both Everest and Lhotse, moving between the two summits in under 12 hours. In 2022, she attempted to break Nirmal Purja's record of climbing all 14 of the world's 8,000 meter peaks in six months and six days, and she made it through 12 of the 14 before being blocked from entering China to attempt two more of them. Kristin then came back in 2023 to finish what she'd started, this time with Nepalese climber Tenjen Lama Sherpa as her climbing partner. And by the way, guys, there are a lot of difficult pronunciations in this video. I'm trying my best, but when you're a non-AI voice, sometimes you get the pronunciations wrong a lot of the time if you're me. So starting on April 26th, the pair moved through the world's highest mountains at a pace that doesn't even seem compatible with human biology. And you have to remember, they weren't just climbing. They were also climbing the highest mountains of the world. They were also flying between countries, using helicopters for inter-peak travel, maximizing every single available weather window, also using supplemental oxygen on every ascent. And I'm not sure if I'm more impressed by the climbing or by the travel logistics, because it seems like every single summit was planned down to the minute. I mean, nothing could go wrong if they wanted to achieve this record. And as of July 23rd, 2023, everything had been going to plan. As of the 23rd, 2023, everything had been going to plan. Kristin, and Tenjen Sherpa had summited 13 of the 14 peaks in just 89 days. But K2 had to be the 14th, the last one, the one that would make history. And so at 10:45 AM on July 27th, 2023, Kristin and Tenjen Sherpa reached the summit of K2, completing the 14-peak challenge in 92 days, 1 month, and 1 day. In the previous record, once again, had taken six months and six days, 189 days in total. And so they had effectively tripled the pace of what anyone had thought was possible just four years earlier. But somewhere on the route between Camp 4 and the summit, somewhere in the bottleneck traverse below the Great Serac, well, they passed directly over a dying man by the name of Muhammad Hassan, and this would change everything about the record they had just broken. Muhammad Hassan was not a mountaineer for sports. He lived in the region of Gilgit-Baltistan, which is home to five of the world's 17 8,000-meter peaks, and the economy of the region has organized itself around these mountains for generations. The people who grow up in its villages learn the mountains in the same way that those in other places learn a tradition. Many of these natural-born climbers go on to become porters, who are the workers who make it possible for extreme climbers to even exist in the first place, right? They carry their gear and fix their ropes, stock their camps, all of that really important stuff, and they're able to quickly adapt to the severe altitudes that take wealthy western climbers literally months and months to prepare for. And they do all of that for wages that are, to many people, kind of unacceptably low. And for example, on K2, once again, the world's second-highest mountain, and possibly the most deadly, depending on who you ask, the going rate for the average high-altitude porter is somewhere between 40 and 60 US dollars a day. That's it. And compare that to what the clients are paying, which can be upwards of like $50,000 per person, and yeah, the numbers, they don't really add up. And of course, there are some Sherpas who are more sought-after for their experience and skills and all that, and they're on the higher end of the pay scale, but Mohamed Hassan was firmly not in that category. He was, by all measures, an amateur porter. In fact, before July 27th, Mohamed had never gone higher than K2's base camp. He knew how to carry the gear, and he knew how to adjust to changes in altitude, but 2023's climbing season would be his first time navigating the most technical sections of the mountain, and on July 27th, he was set to make it all the way to the summit. Oh, and speaking of the number 27, Mohamed Hassan was just 27 years old at this time. He had three young boys back at home, and his mother was sick with asthma, which was getting worse in the thin air of northern Pakistan. The entire reason that he was on K2 in the first place was because he needed the money to move his family somewhere that his mother could breathe. It's important to understand how Mohamed got here. So, for the K2 climbing season of 2023, Leela Peak Expeditions hired Mohamed as a porter, and then a separate company called Seven Summit Club contracted his services to assist the rope fixing team during that year's summit push. And this is, as far as I'm aware, the standard commercial expedition model. The clients paid $3.5 million for the summit, and Mohamed was able to make it all the way to the summit during the K2 climbing season of 2023. The clients paid $3.5 million for the summit, and Mohamed was able to make it all the way to the summit, and Mohamed was able to make it all the way to the summit. The clients paid a premium operator to organize their expedition, and then that premium operator hires a logistics company, and then the logistics company hires local workers, and at each step of that chain, the margins land hardest on the people at the bottom, you know, the ones who will actually be in the bottleneck of K2 before dawn. These are the rope fixers who work at the front of the line, installing the safety lines that literally everyone else clips into during their ascent. This is among the most dangerous and most skilled job on the mountain, and frankly, it was one that Mohamed wasn't quite ready for. And I say that not only because he had never been above base camp on an 8,000 meter peak before, but more so because of, well, Mohamed's choice of attire. Let me explain. So on most days that summer, Mohamed was seen wearing regular trousers, and like a normal ski jacket, not the specialized high altitude down suit that is essentially mandatory above 8,000 meters. But it turns out that this particular wardrobe might not have been a choice in the first place, because the company that hired him didn't actually provide Mohamed with a high altitude down suit. During the climbs to Camp 2 and Camp 3 in the weeks before the summit push, it was reported that other climbers noticed Mohamed's appearance, and that he was not wearing a high altitude down suit. He was wearing a high altitude down suit, and he was not wearing any equipment, or should I say, lack thereof. A climber would later tell investigators that he had seen Mohamed ascending the mountain in normal trousers and like a regular jacket, not the specialized gear that he should have been carrying. In fact, some of the Sherpas on the rope fixing team warned Mohamed directly that his gear was inadequate and that he should probably consider turning back. But Mohamed kept going, of course, because, again, his job was to go up, and if he didn't do that, well, he wouldn't be getting paid. And that's the thing that makes what happened next not just a tragedy, but a story that began not on the morning of July 27th, but far, far earlier, all the way in some office somewhere far below the mountain when someone working for one of these companies looked at a cost column and decided that a proper down suit for Mohamed was a line item that they could probably skip. And so early in the morning on July 27th, Mohamed was on his way to the mountain, but he had no idea what he was going to do. So he decided to go up to the mountain and climb the mountain in the dark, straight into the most lethal section of K2. And by the way, I'm talking early, early in the morning, right around 2am, K2 was in complete darkness. The air was frigid and thin, and 80 climbers in full expedition gear moved in single file through the bottleneck by the light of their headlamps, each one clipped into the fixed rope. At the front of that line, again, in the pit, Mohamed was able to climb the mountain in the dark, straight into the most lethal section of K2. Black dark was the rope fixing team and Mohamed was with them, but seemingly while no one was looking, he, he ended up falling and the exact mechanics of his fall are still disputed. At least as far as I could tell, it might've been just a slip or a misstep or possibly a small Serac fragment falling and then taking his feet out from under him. We don't really know exactly what happened, but the aftermath is a different story. Mohamed found himself hanging upside down from the fixed rope, his oxygen mask shattered, his thin jacket riding up to expose his skin to the cold. And he remained in that position and for over an hour. And to be clear, that wasn't the case because everyone ignored him, but rather because getting an inverted, incapacitated person back onto a fixed rope on a 60 degree ice face at altitude is not a simple thing to do, even for people who are trained for it. At this time of super early morning, communication between climbers was very difficult through oxygen masks and wind noise and of course the darkness. At this altitude, the human brain is already running at reduced capacity, decision making is a lot slower, and the instinct to push upwards to keep climbing is very hard to override. And on top of this, again, this was the last viable day of the season. The summit was only 400 meters above where the climbers were, and so the combination of all of those factors made it that much more difficult to fathom stopping anywhere below the summit itself. And that is exactly what happened, as a line of climbers waited for Muhammad to be untangled. But things were about to get a lot worse. At around 2:35 am, only 15 minutes after Muhammad had fallen, a large avalanche released directly above the bottleneck, blasting snow dust into the face of every climber on the mountain basically. Lucy Westlake, an American master climber, was on her way to the summit, but she was unable to find her way up to the summit. Mountaineer was hit directly by the powder cloud, and her team decided to descend as soon as they were able to after this happened. Several more climbers also thought about turning back, except for, of course, Kristin Harula and Tenjen Sherpa. While most teams were debating amongst one another about the safety of the climb ahead, what to do, turning around, all that stuff, the record-chasing duo kept their eyes on the prize ahead of them. Almost 90 minutes passed before things started to get going again, and the whole time, a man's life was hanging in the balance. Eventually, Halong Dorchi-Sherpa of the 8K Expeditions team and Gabriel Tarzo, a Brazilian cameraman embedded with Kristin's group, managed to untangle Mohamed, dragging him back up onto the fixed rope and into a position on the traverse where he was no longer hanging upside down. However, that doesn't mean that Mohamed was out of the woods. No, far from it. He was now severely hypothermic due to his lack of a proper jacket and proper clothing and gear. He also had broken legs, and he was completely unable to move under his own power. Gabriel stayed with him as long as he could, trying to warm him up, trying to get a response of some sort, but to him, it felt like there was pretty much nothing he could do. Mohamed was breathing but he wasn't exactly responding, you know. And there were antsy climbers behind Gabriel, anxious to continue past them and to make their summit pushes before it would be too late. And so Gabriel knew that he alone couldn't have brought Mohamed down the mountain, especially in the middle of this chaotic morning, like all this crazy stuff going on. And so Gabriel clipped himself back onto the rope, the rope that Mohamed had helped to fix earlier that morning, and he climbed further on, hoping that another group of climbers would be better equipped to respond to Mohamed's situation. And with this, almost as if a red light had suddenly turned green, the line of climbers behind Gabriel, which had been stopped for nearly two hours by this point, began moving. Each of them stepped right over Mohamed, who was lying just there on the mountainside. And for those of you who might have trouble picturing this kind of scene unfolding on the second-highest mountain on Earth, well, you'll have Lakhpa Sherpa and Philip Flamig to thank. Lakhpa Sherpa was the expedition leader for 8K Expeditions, and his job was to get all of their company's clients safely up and down the Savage Mountain. But along the way, he was also taking photographs of the journey, documenting what would be the most important moments in many of his clients' lives. And in that process, he snapped this photo. And this is a photo that would very soon be blasted all over the internet and for all the wrong reasons. And that's because it shows people climbing right past Mohamed Hassan's body. And by the way, my understanding is that this wasn't actually just a still photo, it was a screenshot from a short little video clip that he took. But the way that it exploded online and was reposted and all of this stuff was more in the context of just like that still frame shot. And so that's kind of how I'm presenting it to you here, but I do want you to know the full story there. And speaking of the full story, actually, this one single frame, or even the entire video clip, only tells part of the story. So back to Philip for a second. Philip Flamig was operating a drone from a thousand feet below the traverse on K2, and he was intending to just simply provide expedition documentation that day. After all, Kristen and Tenjen Sherpa were chugging up the mountain set to make history, and Philip wanted to get that wide angle summit day footage that gets cut into highlight reels. But instead, right around 5:30 AM, 45 minutes after sunrise, his drone captured something else entirely. That would be a man in a yellow jacket, still lying on the traverse, still on the fixed rope, directly in the path of everyone moving in either direction. The man, of course, was Mohamed, but this is the thing that stopped Philip cold when he reviewed the footage on his screen. He saw the man moving, just barely, but clearly moving. His leg in particular. This man was still alive. In fact, he had been alive for at least three hours by this point. And in the footage and the images, stretching away from Mohamed's body in both directions was, again, the unbridled broken queue of climbers. That's what made the footage undeniable. What no amount of conditions were difficult, rescue was impossible, arguments can fully absorb. I'm talking about the scale of all of this. Dozens and dozens of climbers passed Mohamed Hassan while he was still alive on that rope. And the footage doesn't show a single person being cruel necessarily. It shows something, arguably, even more. But that's not to say that there weren't any attempts to help, of course. Gabriel's efforts were most notably documented, since he was the one holding up the line in order to try and help. And another man was visible in the drone footage, rubbing Hassan's chest, trying to keep him warm, so he didn't get hurt. But with that said, at least as far as I'm aware, to this point in the story, there was no organized rescue effort, no team turning around to mobilize a carry down, no group decision to abandon the summit in order to focus on getting this injured man off the mountain while they still had time. When Philip sat down with his footage and fully understood what he was looking at, he reached out to his teammate, Wilhelm Steindl. Steindl was an Austrian climber who had turned his back on Mohamed Hassan, and he was able to get rid of him. He was able to turn back that morning due to the dangerous weather conditions, and he watched the drone clips and said what many people would eventually say, that this was not inevitable, that the summit pushes could have been abandoned, that if an organized effort had been made by the dozens of trained and equipped climbers on that mountain, Mohamed would possibly at least have been a lot better off, possibly survived. And you can't say for sure, obviously, but Steindl even told the media that quote, "If I or any other Westerner had been lying there, everything would have been done to save them. Everyone would have had to turn back to bring the injured person back down to the valley." But instead, the first reports of how things went down glossed right over this entire controversy. Basically, initial media coverage told the world that on July 27th at 10:45 am, Kristin Haarela and Tenjen Sherpa summited K2 and became the fastest people. They were the fastest people in history to climb all 14 of the world's 8,000 meter peaks. And the reports also threw in after the fact, kind of, that sometime just before noon, a porter had died approximately 150 meters below the summit that he never ended up reaching, and of course his name was Mohamed Hassan. But then, Philip's drone footage hit the internet, and the onslaught of controversy, investigation, and legal trouble quickly became inescapable firestorm. Now, even though many climbers stepped over Mohamed on this particular day, Kristin Haarela became the scapegoat, at least in the eyes of the media and the public. I mean, she was the one out there chasing this record. She was the one that was getting the most publicity even before this whole controversy happened. And so, a lot of people pointed the finger directly at her. And her immediate response was actually very direct back, and depending on where you stand on what happened that day, either entirely reasonable or a case study in deflection. so kristen said that she and her team did everything they could to help muhammad given the conditions she rejected the accusation that he had been ignored or deliberately abandoned she pointed out that carrying an unconscious or incapacitated person down from 8 000 plus meters on k2 is like nearly impossible i mean at that altitude without supplemental oxygen especially and also with conditions deteriorating and the traverse already made more dangerous by the recent avalanche activity the people on that mountain were already at the limit of what their bodies could safely do and she also made a point that got a lot less coverage than the footage itself than the photos that i've showed you that point was that muhammad should not have been on that mountain in the first place again he had no proper equipment he had no high altitude experience he had no understanding at least according to the investigation that would follow of what the conditions above 8 000 meters would actually demand of his body and so kristin redirected any criticism of her to those who had sent muhammad up there in the first place the expedition company the operators who had assigned an inexperienced under-equipped porter to one of the most dangerous jobs on one of the most dangerous mountains on earth and that argument those points they're not wrong but it also doesn't fully answer the question that philip's footage asks which is not about what kristin specifically did or didn't do but rather about what all of the climbers on k2 that day collectively did or didn't do as a group in the presence of a dying man on the only path to the summit bulgarian climber sylvia as driva who summited k2 that day with the elite expat team said out loud the practical reality that most summit day climbers were privately working through or at least most likely were anyways she said quote there is no one to save you so quickly you have to wait for days and she was right about that and then she went on to describe what it was like for her that day quote one moment muhammad was the only one to save her and then on the way back we had to jump over his corpse on the ice edge that we were passing and that sentence like the shift from he was alive to jumping over his corpse captures something about what k2 does to your moral framework that no you know lower altitude mindset can fully account for and what i'm getting at here is that essentially it's easier to think ethically when you're not the one standing above eight thousand meters with a record-breaking summit 150 meters above you and a dying man that you can't physically carry down that is the contradiction that the footage and photos and everything forced the the entire internet essentially to sit with and it doesn't resolve cleanly either because both things were now true a rescue was enormously difficult to the point of nearly impossible and a human being died over the course of three hours while dozens of people stepped around him and continued towards their personal goals the pakistani regional government formed a five-member investigating committee in august of 2023 which included officials from the tourism department the alpine club of pakistan and representatives of expedition tour operators its mandate was to determine among other things whether more could have been done to save muhammad hassan and if any parties were liable for what happened to him the committee collected testimony from eyewitnesses on the mountain reviewed phillips drone footage and interviewed multiple climbers who had been in the bottleneck on that particular day including a detailed written account from gabrielle tarzo that british cameraman who had made the most documented effort to help hassan before moving on the committee submitted its findings in early september just about six weeks after the incident and its conclusions were layered in ways that the early viral outrage hadn't really anticipated so on the central question of criminal or direct personal responsibility for hassan's death kristin and her team were completely cleared the investigation found no negligence on her part that could you know hold them accountable for hassan's death and the committee concluded that muhammad hassan died accidentally from a fall in a location and under conditions that made rescue genuinely like near impossible extraordinary difficult we'll say actually because it's not impossible as you're about to find out and the report didn't stop there either uh the parts that came after the clearance were very significant so the investigation confirmed that muhammad hassan was on his first 8 000 meter expedition with no prior experience above base camp it confirmed that not only was he inadequately equipped but also that he had no true understanding of the importance of high altitude clothing and gear and the investigation confirmed that muhammad hassan was on his first year it even confirmed and this is really crazy that other climbers not just other porters but other climbers had warned him before the summit push that his equipment was dangerously insufficient and finally it found multiple violations of the international mountaineering declaration regarding the safety of local workers on climbing expeditions lila peak expeditions the company that had hired muhammad and sent him to the hospital and he was not able to get him to the hospital and he was not able to get him up the mountain without adequate equipment was banned from operating in the region and this ban cited three specific failures sending an inexperienced porter to work at altitude failing to provide adequate equipment and failing to ensure him this was a warning to every other expedition operator working in pakistan's high mountains that these same standards would now be enforced across the board and in my opinion for what little it's worth i would have considered like a decades-long ban maybe even a complete ban of the company from ever operating on k2 again because again at least according to this report their negligence led just about directly to a man's death now there's another part of this story i haven't really gotten into yet um and that has to do with body recovery kind of similar to rescue although it's different obviously because body recovery means the person's already died but for the last couple of years lives that are lost on the bottleneck on k2 body recovery missions are usually impossible again because of the terrain and the conditions but about a year after muhammad died his body was actually retrieved from the mountain by legendary climber murad sadpara this was an amazing accomplishment and one that kind of threw a wrench into the story that had been told about just how impossible it was to rescue muhammad from the mountain the bottleneck but rather it's just to show that it was in fact possible at least in theory and tragically murad lost his own life only a week after recovering muhammad's body on broad peak only a few miles away from k2 which is just like a super tragic even ironic twist like can't make this stuff up now muhammad's brother said something in the aftermath of all of this that has stayed with me longer than any of like the the expert arguments about rescue logistics and oxygen levels and all that stuff he said quote it is a tragedy that the team which hassan was a part of could not even bring his body with them when they descended from k2 if someone from an affluent family were to face such a tragedy a helicopter would have been used to rescue the body in this country no one cares about the poor and so to me this is the thing about muhammad hassan's story that gets lost once it becomes a a controversy about drone footage and record-breaking climbers and social media outrage the investigation was right that kristin and her team weren't responsible for muhammad's death the investigation was also right that muhammad's expedition company effectively sent an untrained under-equipped young father up one of the world's most lethal mountains and then handed him a job that he had no realistic preparation for and on top of these two truths 80 climbers with full oxygen equipment and proper gear passed a dying man because it was the last day of the season and they had summits to reach and money on the line and nobody organized a rescue because there's no one on k2 whose job it is to like make that definitive call and if all of that wasn't enough to make you cringe it was said to be impossible over and over again to bring a dead weight body down from the bottom of the mountain to the top of the mountain to the top of the mountain bottleneck on k2 but then just a year later that was proven completely false to me and again i'm no expert on high altitude mountaineering i will never go up k2 i can say that confidently but for for what little my opinion is worth this is all the outcome of an industry that commercialized extreme mountaineering at a speed that didn't allow them to build out you know proportionate safety infrastructure you could say and it's also the outcome of an industry that has historically treated local workers porters fixers sherpas as numbers rather than people and to try to combat all of this there are some organizations out there like the juniper fund for instance who are doing good work to make sure that the lives of the essential workers on these mountains carry the same weight as the clients they're there to support i've made a donation to them by the way i'll have their link in the description if you want to join me but for the most part the problems for essential mountain workers persist kristin's record stands to this day she remains the fastest person in history to climb all 14 of the world's highest mountains and again it is very impressive 92 days 14 summits and well one indirect death on the route depending on who you ask i guess and as for philip flamig and wilhelm steindl the mountaineers who captured that crucial drone footage well after making it back down from the mountain they decided to take action they visited muhammad hassan's widow and his three boys and set up a crowdfunding campaign for the family to ensure that muhammad's wish you know to provide for his family would be fulfilled even if their wish you know to have him back would never come true also please show muhammad and his family some love in the comments please keep your again comments respectful thank you for being the best audience out there guys