On Friday morning, Naila Kiani, a Pakistani mountaineer based in Dubai, became the first Pakistani woman to reach the top of Gasherbrum-1, the eleventh-highest mountain in the world at 8080 meters.
Around 7:45 a.m. Pakistan time, Naila scaled G-1.
“Summit, Alhamdulilah,” she texted from her satellite phone.
“Unbelievable, only three weeks after K2. It was harder than K2. No rope on most technical sections,” she added.
She has now conquered three peaks higher than 8,000 meters, all of which are located in Pakistan, becoming the first woman from Pakistan to do so. There are fourteen such peaks in the world.
Before climbing 8611m, K2, the second-tallest peak in the world, last month, Naila, a mother of two, had reached the top of 8034m, Gasherbrum-1, the world’s 13th-highest mountain, in 2021.
She was the second person to climb K2 on the same day after Samian Baig, the first female Pakistani to do so.
The highest peak in the world, Mount Everest, has also been scaled by Samina.
Naila reported that due to extremely heavy winds, scaling Gasherbrum-1, also known as K-5, proved to be more challenging for her than K2.
She pushed for the final summit while saying by satellite device from C3, “It’s much tougher than K2, for sure.”
Naila is the first woman from Pakistan to summit both K2 and Gasherbrum 1 in a 20-day span.
