The Last Man on the Mountain: The Death of an American Adventurer on K2

by Jennifer Jordan

  Every day, Dudley found himself walking further and further away from the boys. The scenery reminded him of Shangri-La and its silence was so wondrous that he found, when he stayed near the others, the majesty of where he was and what he was doing spoiled by the pranks between the other team members. Their shrieking laughter sounded like hyenas and their persistent game of tag invariably left them in a heap on the rocks, gasping and choking for air with histrionic exaggeration. Dudley wondered why Fritz didn’t warn them about wasting so much energy, but he kept his concern to himself and each day would either leave camp early or lag behind, content in his solitary marveling at the new sights around every corner. Because he was often alone during the day, he would set up his Kodak movie camera on his tripod, frame the shot, and then walk through the scene, enabling the viewer to see not only the landscape, but the action of the trek.

  On May 17 the team said goodbye to the ponies and crossed the swollen Shigar River at Dassu on boats made of inflated goatskins used as pontoons. It was a wild ride made all the more so by the Muslim oarsmen shouting loud prayers to Allah as they navigated through the torrent. All the loads and men made it without even getting wet.

  For the final ninety miles to base camp, the loads would be carried entirely by men. They soon discovered why. Not only had the wide river valley become a narrow gorge, but the only way to cross the raging river was on “rope” bridges actually made of woven twigs. With one rope for the feet and two ropes as handrails, the bridges had existed for centuries. Told that the rope twigs were replaced only after they broke, not proactively, the men watched with dread as the porters and their loads teetered across first. Only inches from the rushing currents beneath, the men’s feet and hands swung wildly as they tried to find the perfect balance between the three points of contact. A few lost their balance and flipped the bridge and themselves entirely over, hanging onto the twigs for dear life before righting the whole thing again. When the last porter was across, the men handed their packs off to the Sherpas in order to reduce their imbalance and inched across, clinging to the handrails, their hearts in their throats. Dudley went first so he could film everyone else’s traverse. On the other side, he filmed the team and urged each man to wave as he crossed, but only Jack would let go of the rope to do so. For one of the only times the men witnessed on the expedition, Fritz showed real fear when it was his turn, clutching the bridge with white knuckles and grinding his jaw as he inched across. Celebrating their successful crossing that night, Tony made them all rum toddies.

  Their last village before the mountain was Askole. It too was a miserable collection of mud huts and fetid streams, but because the area was rich in grain fields, it was actually more prosperous than many of its neighboring villages downriver. The men camped in a dusty field swarming with flies and were constantly watched by the curious “natives” around them. Even though they tried to keep a watchful eye on their gear, food and equipment mysteriously disappeared in the night, and when the team left in the morning George and Jack were glad to be rid of the “robbers” and their squalid village.

  In the third week of May, the team left the narrow gorges and entered the wide floodplains of the Braldu River. Instead of rope bridges the men crossed the one-to four-foot-deep glacial streams through the water. The closer to the mouth of the glacier they got, the more frequent and the more frigid the crossings became. Each time they approached a stream they took off their boots and socks, tied the shoelaces together, and slung the boots over their shoulders, and then braved the near-freezing water as they navigated the slippery rocks and low rapids which threatened to pull them off their feet with every cautious step. Still, the men all but ran across, screaming in agony as they danced through the icy torrents, the water feeling like knives stabbing their feet and lower legs. Sometimes the water was so deep their groins were submerged, and after stripping from the waist down the men shrieked with real and theatrical shock at the numbing pain as they waded half-naked through the water, their pants and boots held high over their heads. Reaching the other side, they danced about, slapping themselves on the buttocks and thighs until blood finally tingled back. As excruciating as it was wading through the rivers, it became a rite of passage, and the men performed it gamely and even a bit humorously, each daring the next to strip and scream his way across.

  After one particularly long, deep, and painful crossing, the men sat rubbing their legs and feet and drying between their toes as they put their boots back on. Looking back across the stream, they saw Wiessner approach from the other side and take stock of the water. Instead of bending to take off his pants and shoes, he motioned to one of the porters and then, as Dudley and the other men watched with growing disbelief, Wiessner handed off his pack, jumped on the back of the porter, and rode the poor man across the stream, like a damsel in distress faced with a mud puddle. Dudley had seen many a Napoleonic tyrant during his time on the front lines and in the French Foreign Legion, but the younger men were astounded. They were learning that Fritz often acted more like a petty dictator than a leader; between his barking of orders and his deaf ear toward criticism, he was becoming a difficult personality for the young, brash Americans. At the next crossing, Fritz again handed off his pack and hopped onto the unfortunate porter’s back to be carried across. This time, the porter teetered on the slick, rocky bottom and, with a great splash, both men fell into the frigid stream. The rest of the team nearly fainted from laughing in the thin air. Fritz emerged from the stream soaking and furious and gave the men a withering look as they slapped their thighs and wiped tears of laughter from their eyes. At the next crossing, Fritz didn’t even hesitate; he just kept walking, boots, socks, and all, across the stream, and continued hiking when he got to the other side, all without a word.

  After seemingly countless days trekking across this exotic wilderness, the team finally stepped onto the forty-mile-long Baltoro glacier, one of the greatest ice fields outside of the polar regions, and began their last fifty miles to base camp. Using their long, wood-handled ice axes as walking sticks, they navigated over the rocks and around crevasses following the Duke of Abruzzi’s hand-drawn map and the notes Charlie Houston had provided. Every day they climbed they gained another 1,000 feet in elevation, the maximum that could be expected of the porters with their 55-to 65-pound loads (after the ponies left them in Dassu, each porter’s load increased to avoid having to hire more men). The days grew cooler and the nights downright cold, cold that seeped up from the rocks and ice through their rubber air mattresses and sleeping bags and settled into their bones. They started wearing most of their clothes, their hats, and even gloves to bed. The porters didn’t have the luxury of extra clothing so the team distributed tarps which, Jack noted, “held in their warmth and their Balti stench” as they nestled together on the rocks and ice like sardines against the cold.

  After their second night on the glacier, the team was waylaid for two days by storms at a rocky outcropping called Urdukas camp. The men felt a bit stir-crazy during the long days and restless nights as their bodies struggled with the increasing altitude.

  In any gathering of men, be it an army unit, a college fraternity, or a mountaineering expedition, a repartee often develops where each man is assigned, and sometimes earns, a label: the funny one, the moody one, the quiet one, the difficult one, the controlling one. The 1939 expedition was no exception, particularly given the stark contrast in personalities: Fritz was undoubtedly “the moody boss,” Jack “the sharp-tongued wit,” George “the lighthearted party man,” Chap “the quiet and wise divinity student,” Tony “the fussy old man,” and, finally, Dudley “the reserved good egg.” As they got to know one another and learned how far each could be pushed with jokes, ribbing, and public humiliation, it was quickly determined that Fritz’s ability to laugh at himself was limited to a grunt of acknowledgment, while Jack’s tendency to jab and deride someone until their ribs were bloody and their feelings raw was endless. The men were finding that Jack was somewhat of a bully,
quick to ridicule but loath to confront. While Chap and George’s personalities and the fact that they knew each other from Dartmouth provided comic relief after Jack’s acerbic attacks, Dudley remained aloof from most of the immature banter. Quick repartee and verbal volleying were not his style, so he simply withdrew. While his money had made the other men’s travel more enjoyable and some of their equipment possible, it probably also caused a lot of resentment, particularly from Jack, who had the least resources of any of them. As is often the case with resentment, it can surface as an attack. Then, when altitude is thrown into the mix, teams quickly become powder kegs of emotion, ambition, bravado, and humiliation. In short, expeditions can get ugly, in large part because high altitude often causes the same physical and emotional reactions as too much alcohol. While Jack had all the team members on a daily dose of vitamins, minerals, and yeast, he thought that perhaps a “temperance pill” might also be in order, given the team’s early personality conflicts.*

  As the 1939 team got closer to K2, its members were already feeling uneasy. George complained that the Sherpas were as bad as “natives” and couldn’t make a decision to save their lives. Jack was not only being eaten alive by fleas, he was already suffering many of the classic symptoms of altitude sickness: headaches, insomnia, and a flu-like ache in his shoulders. And Dudley was becoming increasingly bothered by Fritz and Tony’s talk about the team being broke and about their use of his films and photographs once back in civilization. With the expedition’s debt high (and the Urdukas delay potentially costing each of them another $100*), a few on the team were planning lectures and articles to help offset the team’s debt, not only to Dudley but to the American Alpine Club for Jack’s reduced fare. Some of the men apparently assumed they would have free access to the film that Dudley had bought and was now shooting on the expedition. Always getting the best of everything, from his commissioned yachts to his monogrammed Brooks Brothers shirts, Dudley had brought two top-of-the-line Leica cameras, a Zeiss Ikon box camera, and a Kodak 16mm movie camera, one of the first models to shoot color film. After their second day marooned at Urdukas, when mail runners took a load of letters back to Srinagar, Dudley sent several rolls of exposed film to his secretary, Henry Meyer, and included vehement instructions in the letter:

  Under no circumstances whatsoever allow any person to borrow these films from the office. I do not care who the person may be—the American Alpine Club, the leader of this expedition, or any member of it. I do not care what excuses they may make—even if they say that they have written permission from me to take them. DO NOT let these films go out of the office. DO NOT let anyone have them.

  I have secured these pictures myself at much expense, hard work, and risk and I want them untouched till I return.

  This was harsh language indeed for Dudley, particularly as he gave Henry no explanation as to why he was so concerned about the film getting into other hands. But with George, Jack, Tony, and Chap taking their own pictures, the only member left about whom Dudley could have been concerned was Fritz, the man who hated all things mechanical and who was never seen with a camera or even taking a single picture by any of his family or climbing partners in his entire life. Dudley, who already felt used by Fritz and perhaps the team, was not about to give the leader carte blanche with his photos or movie films.

  After the storms cleared out of Urdukas the team continued up the glacier toward K2. As they got deeper into the Baltoro glacier valley, over forty 20,000-to 25,000-foot mountains rose around them, each more spectacular than the last. While Dudley, George, and Jack shot countless pictures, each admitted that there wasn’t a camera on earth that could capture the magnificence of these peaks and that their true beauty would live only in the men’s memory.

  Three days up the glacier they neared Concordia, the confluence of the Baltoro and the Godwin–Austen glaciers, which, at 15,500 feet, sits higher in altitude than any point in the lower forty-eight states. There they spotted odd and fascinating ice formations. Getting close, the men again pulled out their cameras, trying to capture their beauty and solve their mystery as they clicked image after image.

  Shaped like enormous frozen ships at full sail, these formations rose anywhere from 20 to 150 feet in the air, the light shimmering off their smooth blue-white opalescence as if from a giant gemstone. Jack, putting his mountain knowledge to the test, surmised they were formed by the pressure of the glacial movement pushing huge chunks into the sky which then melted into enormous, sail-like cones under the hot sun. George doubted the pressure theory but, not having any better explanation, he and the rest of the team let Jack have his geological guesswork as they climbed to the tops of the towers to take one another’s pictures.

  As the men ticked off the last of their 330 miles they realized that except for the expected tired bones and fleas, they had traveled well. Finally, on May 30, the team rounded the last bend at the end of the Baltoro glacier and looked left.

  There she stood, K2, still another ten miles down the Godwin–Austen Glacier, 28,250 feet rising out of the earth like a pyramid out of the desert—alone, majestic, and utterly in command of the lower peaks and glaciers at her feet. Nearly one thousand square miles of rock, ice, snow, avalanche gullies, hanging glaciers, crevasses, and constant wind, K2 sat before them as terrifying and spectacular as anything they had ever seen.

  The men stood looking at the mountain as many explorers had before them—in silence as its power reverberated through their bellies. When they could speak, it was in hushed phrases: Christ, just look at it, and, It’s unbelievable. A few of the men later admitted to thinking, What the hell am I doing here imagining I can climb that? Even the sight of it terrifies me.

  In his journal, George wrote almost callously what he thought they were in for: “A trip like this, I believe, changes boys to men—they either come through or they don’t, and if they don’t, it is too damn bad. But if they do, they’ll be men. We shall see.”

  On their last day of the trek, the lack of glacier goggles became a critical issue, as one porter after another fell to the snow holding his eyes and moaning in pain. Snow blindness occurs when the cornea and conjunctiva are burned by prolonged exposure to reflected light off the ice and snow. Like the severe sunburn it is, snow blindness inflames the eyes, can even swell them shut, and feels as if acid were being poured into them. The only cure is to cover the eyes completely, protecting them from all light with cool, damp cloths, while waiting for the inflammation and pain to subside.

  The porters sat on the rocks, refusing to move another inch without glasses. With Fritz, Tony, and Chap far ahead, Jack, George, and Dudley set about cobbling together some makeshift eye protection out of cardboard, strips of polarized celluloid from a pair of Jack’s extra sunglasses, and string. They cut rectangles out of the cardboard, then narrow slits through which the porters could see, covering the slits with celluloid and then strapping these “glasses” to the porters’ heads. With base camp only a few hours further, the porters who could still see roped the blind men together and led them the final miles up the glacier. But five of the porters had pain so severe they could only lie writhing on the rocks. George scolded them to “Get up and get moving!” not quite understanding the degree of their anguish. Finally each man was given an aspirin and a cigarette, had his load taken from him, and was sent back to Askole. Then, burdened with double loads and a chain of battle-weary porters, the last members of the 1939 American expedition to K2 limped into base camp.

  It was May 31. After nearly three months getting there, the team established itself on the cold, barren strip of undulating rock and ice at the base of the great K2. After 330 miles they now had “only” 12,000 vertical feet to their goal: the summit.

  Chapter 6

  The Climb

  The struggle of man against man produces jealousy, deceit, frustration, bitterness, hate. The struggle of man against the mountains is different…Man then bows before something that is bigger than he. When he does that, he finds ser
enity and humility and dignity too.

  —WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS

  Climbing through the ice fall above base camp. (Courtesy of the George C. Sheldon Family)

  Eventually K2 would become known as the Savage Mountain, for its unrelenting list of victims. But even in 1939, before a single man had climbed or been lost on the mountain, the mountain’s shape, size, weather, and remoteness reflected a savagery. As did its name: while other 8,000-meter peaks have lyrical names bestowed by local populations living at their base—Kangchenjunga, Cho Oyu, Shisha Pangma, and Chomolungma (the Tibetan name for Mount Everest, which is itself an elegant if colonialist name)—K2 has the bare, almost ruthless mark of its first official cartographer.

  In 1856, T. G. Montgomerie was mapping the region for the Great Trigonometric Survey of India and saw two prominent peaks to the north and west. Sitting atop a hill in the Vale of Kashmir, Montgomerie pulled out his sketchbook and pencil and made a rough outline of the peaks, marking them K-1 and K-2, “K” for the Karakoram Range in which they sat. Kara, meaning black, and koram, meaning loose gravel, Karakoram aptly describes the volcanic rubble that covers the glaciers at the base of the mountains. Later, when Montgomerie tried to find a local name for the mountains, he found that K-1 was known as Masherbrum. K-2 however was so remote that although each village had its own name for the great peak—Chogori, Lanfafahad, Dapsang, Lamba Pahar—not one name was widely recognized. Rather than trying to decide which village’s name would become the official one, he simply left it as K-2 for the time being, thinking its proper name would reveal itself in time. Perhaps because the name so simply reflects the mountain’s harsh, cold, geometric presence, K2 has stuck. Now, over 150 years later, it is hard to imagine that any name could fit the mountain as well as the cartographer’s austere notation.