[1] While working on a cruise ship, she met her future husband Bruce Klorfine, who was a jazz and event piano player.
[3][2][6] Shah-Klorfine was also a businesswoman who started "SOS Splash of Style Inc."[1] She was also a candidate during the 2011 Ontario general election in the riding of Mississauga East—Cooksville.
Shah-Klorfine solicited donations via the website myeverestexpedition.com, which included a digitally-altered photo of her purportedly in front of Mount Everest, and also organized several fundraising events which raised little or lost money.
[6] One issue noted by the guide firm and other climbers that day was long waiting times on the mountain, caused by slow passage through certain bottlenecks on the climbing route.
[15] In a 2012 documentary,[16] Bob McKeown travels to Nepal and pieces together what happened, including video of Shah-Klorfine's final hours on Everest.
[18] Another analysis questioned the common sense of a novice going with an inexperienced guiding firm,[4] also noting that there has been an increase in "tourists" attempting to summit mountains like Everest to seek glory despite their lack of ability.
Widely resented by professional mountaineers, the "tourists" are seen as clogging out routes and being a potential danger to themselves and others while their self-promotional behaviour also violates alpine traditions.