Their doubts add to those previously brought forward by rival Edurne Pasaban, which moved Himalayan chronicler Elizabeth Hawley in the spring of 2010 to tag the summit as "disputed".
The summit of K2 was not reached again until 23 August 2011, when Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner (Austria, 14th eight-thousander), Maxut Zhumayev and Vassiliy Pivtsov (Kazakhstan, both 14th eight-thousander) and Darek Zaluski (Poland) topped out K2 via the North Pillar.
The following year, he returned to Nepal and reached the summit of Ama Dablam (6,856 m) and in 1997, he stood on top of his first eight-thousander – Manaslu (8,163 m).
Having trekked to Mount Everest base camp and reached the summits of a number of notable mountains, including two of the world's fourteen 8,000 meter peaks (Shishapangma and Cho Oyu), she decided to build on her passion for mountaineering and set herself the challenge of achieving the Explorer's Grand Slam.