Meet the youngest mountaineer to climb Everest and K2

Lahore, Pakistan (AFP) .- The young Pakistani mountaineer Shehroze Kashif had already faced many dangers on the ridges of the highest mountains in the world, but it was in K2 (near where the body of his idol is), where he lived his worst experience, when he was about to break a record.

On July 27, at 19 years and 138 days, he became the youngest person to summit the two highest mountains in the world, Everest (8,849 m) and K2 (8,611 m).

At the time, he was on the dizzying slopes of K2, below the fearsome “Bottleneck,” a narrow corridor on the ascent route dominated by a serac (a large, cracked block of ice).

It was in this channel that the worst catastrophe in the history of the mountain occurred, when in 2008 11 climbers died.

Shehroze Kashif was near where the bodies of three mountaineers who died in February, the Icelandic John Snorri, the Chilean Juan Pablo Mohr and the Pakistani mountaineering legend, Muhamad Ali Sadpara, had also been found.

“The moment that moved me the most was when I passed these climbers, when I saw the body of the Pakistani national hero,” says Kashif during an interview with AFP.

“I am moved by the idea of ​​thinking that they came here motivated by the same passion as me,” he adds. “I thought, why not fulfill his dream? So I took his dream with me. “

Now, the Guinness Book of Records has just made Kashif’s record official: the youngest person to climb K2, and the youngest to have crowned the two highest peaks on the planet, since in May it reached the summit of Everest.

“A blessing from God”

Although K2 is less high than Everest, this mountain, located in the Karakorum mountain range (on the border between China and Pakistan) is called “the wild mountain”, due to its reputation for being dangerous.

Although Kashif promoted her in summer, when she returned she suffered from so-called “snow blindness” (caused by ultraviolet rays) and they were about to amputate a toe.

“I no longer had the strength, it was a difficult time (…) One misstep and you disappear,” he says at his home in Lahore, in northeast Pakistan.

His passion for mountaineering was born to him at the age of 11, when he ascended with his father the Makra Peak (3,885 m), in Pakistan.

At the top of those mountains he felt “privileged”. “Mountains are a blessing from God”, it states. “I go where I feel most alive, and the mountains are where I feel most comfortable,” despite the risks, which is very much in mind.

For this reason, he is not satisfied with Everest and K2, he wants to become the youngest person to tread the top of the 14 peaks of more than 8,000 meters, five of which are in Pakistan.

A brand that only about forty people hold. Of these, the Nepalese Mingma Gyabu “David” Sherpa is the one who achieved it when he was younger, in October 2019, when he was 30 years and 166 days old, according to the Guinness World Records.

Shehroze Kashif, who already has four of the 14 peaks in his track record (with Manaslu at 8,163 m and Broad Peak at 8,047 m, in addition to K2 and Everest), has a decade to spare to make his remaining ascents. Although, ambitious, he hopes to have achieved it by 2024.