Famed Mountaineer Accused of Faking His Summit Photos with Photoshopped and Stolen Images

A famed mountaineer has been accused of using stolen photos and editing himself into other people’s selfies to exaggerate the number of peaks he has climbed.

Last month, Marco Confortola — who is one of Italy’s most well-known mountaineers — announced that he had scaled all 14 mountains higher than 8,000 meters in the Himalaya and Karakoram ranges, including Mount Everest. Fewer than 50 climbers worldwide have accomplished this feat.

The 54-year-old Italian mountaineer’s achievement was seen as especially remarkable because he lost all of his toes to frostbite during a storm on K2 (the second-highest mountain on Earth after Everest) in 2008.

But, according to a report by The Times of London, fellow Italian climber Simone Moro has accused Confortola of lying about six of the summits he listed, including Kangchenjunga and Annapurna.

Moro claims that Confortola used a summit photo taken by a Pakistani climber, cropping him out, and also Photoshopped himself into a selfie of Lhotse taken by Spanish climber Jorge Egocheaga after removing Egocheaga from the shot.

“Confortola added some snow blowing in the wind, but the shading on the mountain is exactly the same,” Moro tells The Times of London.

The dispute arose after veteran climber Silvio Mondinelli raised doubts about whether Confortola had truly reached the summit of Annapurna in 2010. Moro also claims that sherpas who climbed Kangchenjunga with Confortola later reported he did not make it to the top.

In an interview with La Stampa, Confortola denied all of the claims made by Moro and says his climbing record is real.

“I know where I went and what I did. I was up there, not with him, of course. And now I’m being smeared with mud and accusations,” Confortola tells the Italian news outlet.

He adds: “What if the opposite had happened, my photo replaced with someone else’s? Who knows? But enough with these mountaineering phenomena, these champions. I’ve never accused anyone, and now these people are doing it?”

In the same interview with La Stampa, Confortola dismissed Moro’s claims as jealousy, alleging that the fellow mountaineer made the accusations: “Because I’m nice, and I talk about my exploits in companies that hire me to motivate their employees. Because I’ve written five books for Mondadori, a publishing house that appreciates me.”