ISLAMABAD: Nineteen-year-old Pakistani mountaineer, Shehroze Kashif, has become the youngest person to summit the world’s second highest mountain, K2, only two months after scaling the mighty Mount Everest.

Kashif reached the 8,611-metre (28,251-foot) summit at 8:10am on Tuesday, according to the Alpine Club of Pakistan.

The teenage mountaineer had earlier scaled the world’s 12th highest mountain, 8,047-metre (26,400-foot) Broad Peak, when he was only 17.

As he became the youngest Pakistani to scale the world’s highest mountain in May, Kashif now holds an additional record of being the youngest person to have scaled both K2 and Everest.

Several youngest Pakistani climbers have been on K2 in recent days. Among them, Sajid Ali Sadpara, who in 2019 became the youngest to climb K2 at the age of 20, is part of an expedition there to find the body of his father who went missing along with two other climbers in February.

On Monday, sherpas affixing ropes for climbers about 300m below an obstacle known as the Bottleneck discovered the bodies of Mohammad Ali Sadpara of Pakistan, Iceland’s John Snorri and Chile’s Juan Pablo Mohr. The same day, Samina Baig, 30, said she was abandoning an attempt to summit the mountain because of dangerous conditions. Baig became the youngest Pakistani woman to scale Mount Everest in 2013.

Earlier on Sunday night, the body of Scottish climber, Rick Allen, 68, was recovered after he was swept away by an avalanche while attempting to traverse a new route on K2’s southeastern face. Also this month, Kim Hong-bin, 57, a South Korean Paralympian, had gone missing after falling from the nearby Broad Peak.

Published in Dawn, July 28th , 2021