Alpine Club says no evidence Karachi woman scaled 7,027m Spantik peak

The Alpine Club of Pakistan (ACP) has refuted the claim of a Karachi-based woman who declared to have successfully summited Spantik Peak, a 7,027-metre mountain in Gilgit-Baltistan.

In a video statement posted on Facebook, ACP Secretary General Ayaz Shigri said the organisation launched an inquiry after seeing social media posts by the trekker, Sohniya Mehreen, announcing that she had reached the summit.

“Many people approached us after seeing her social media posts and we also reached out to her for proof of the summit. After gathering all the information and completing our inquiry, we found the claim to be false. She did not summit Spantik Peak,” Shigri claimed.

Shigri expressed disappointment over, what he described, an attempt to misrepresent an achievement in a field where climbers often risk their lives. “It is very disheartening.

These mountains have history and significance. We welcome everyone, including women climbers, but making false claims is an injustice to the mountaineering community and disrespectful to the mountains themselves,” he said.

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He added that the ACP’s responsibility was to investigate and verify summit claims, and in this case, the organisation concluded that the claim was untrue. “We have asked her to delete the posts and apologise publicly, but that has not been done so far,” he noted.

Speaking to a digital platform, trekker Sohniya Mehreen said that she did not have photos of her summit because her phone had run out of charge. She added that the images were with a porter, adding that the pictures that she shared were taken at Camps Two and Three.

A controversy came arose on social media after the trekker failed to provide any evidence of reaching the summit.

She had also claimed the distinction of being the first woman from Sindh to climb the peak. However, it later emerged that another woman from the province had successfully scaled Spantik Peak in 2017.