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

by Jennifer Jordan

  By the early 1900s, over thirty expeditions had explored the area, but only three had approached the mountain with the intent of climbing it: Oscar Eckenstein’s in 1902, which had among its climbers Aleister Crowley, a fascinating, devil-worshipping character who went by the moniker “666 The Beast”* the Duke of Abruzzi’s expedition in 1909, which reached 21,870 feet; and Charlie Houston’s 1938 team, which reached 26,500 feet. It wasn’t until Houston’s so-called American Cowboys came so tantalizingly close to the summit that the world realized that not only could the mountain be conquered, it could be done by a relatively inexperienced team (only two of Houston’s men had been tested at altitudes above 20,000 feet) and without a battalion of support or supplemental oxygen on its upper reaches.

  Still, even the somewhat bare-bones assault of Houston’s team depended on tons of equipment and a Herculean amount of work to get where they did on the mountain. Learning from Houston’s plan, Wiessner’s designed attack on the mountain was first to place ropes through the most treacherous sections of the 12,000-foot ascent from base to summit, thereby providing climbers with a measure of safety as they ascended and descended the mountain. Then they would build a series of nine or ten high camps roughly every 750 to 1,000 feet up the mountain, at which they would erect tents and stock them with food, extra sleeping bags, stoves, and fuel. Finally, through carrying loads from base camp to the lower camps, each climber would condition his own body for the ravages of the climb and the thin air above. Unlike the 14,000-foot mountains scattered throughout Europe and America, which can be climbed in a day, the Himalayas demand months of preparation, planning, conditioning, building, and then waiting as violent weather rolls through the mountains, often pushed without warning to hurricane force through the narrow valleys and fueled by monsoon rains from the Indian Ocean.*

  All in all, high-altitude climbing is a test of body, mind, and will, in almost equal measures, and the 1939 team’s challenge was no different. Using only rough sketches of the Abruzzi Ridge, identified by both the duke and Houston as the mountain’s most climbable route, and several wide-scale photographs of K2 provided by Vittorio Sella, Fritz Wiessner and his team set about the arduous, weeks-long work of getting the camps set up on the mountain in order to support the men who would eventually attempt to reach the untouched summit. While Fritz didn’t have his desired team of talented climbers, he nonetheless arrived at the mountain with four strong and able men. Unbeknownst to him, half of his team would soon be out of the running, one due to illness and the other to fear.

  WHEN THE 1939 team finally put down their packs and chose the spot where their base camp tents would sit for the next two months, Jack looked up at the mountain and the world of ice and rocks around him and, instead of feeling like a conquering hero, he felt like a fraud. All he could think was, “We’re fucked. We are totally fucked.” The mountain was so much more than he could possibly have imagined. Looking around him at his teammates, he thought that none of them, certainly not himself nor the two other Dartmouth boys, and by the looks of them not the silver-spoon-fed Dudley Wolfe nor the mincing Tony Cromwell, had the experience for anything even half this size. As he busied himself with the work of setting up camp, a chilling thought kept creeping into his head and wouldn’t leave: “I am going to die here.”

  In the morning, he faced the fear of someone else dying: his friend Chap Cranmer.

  On the last day of their 330-mile trek into base camp, a porter had dropped a tarpaulin into a crevasse and, after the porter had failed to find it, Fritz had lowered Chap down to retrieve it. After searching for the tarp for well over an hour in the dark, wet caverns, he finally found it and was pulled to the surface, soaking wet and shaking uncontrollably. For whatever reason, Chap had worn shorts for the entire trek, even though his thin legs often turned an unsettling purple from the sun and the cold. Now, standing on the glacier in soaking wet cotton shorts and shirt, he was dangerously chilled. In the morning he said he didn’t feel well and by noon he was close to death. Thick phlegm choked his lungs, vomiting and diarrhea quickly stripped his body of liquids and nutrients, and a high fever put him in a moaning delirium. With Fritz and Tony having left on a reconnaissance trip to scout the Northeast Ridge and Joe Trench unable or unwilling to assist, that left Dudley, George, and Jack to take turns in the fetid tent, making sure that Chap was breathing and cleaning up after his explosions of excrement and vomit. Chap’s “clumsy nurses” all watched as the pile of rank sleeping bags continued to grow by the side of the tent. Soon they would run out entirely if they didn’t start washing those that had been fouled.

  Through it all, Jack was in charge. At one point Chap began vomiting cupfuls of frothy liquid before the phlegm became so thick that he could scarcely breathe at all, and for two hours Jack gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to keep him alive. Other times he would rock Chap gently for hours, keeping the fluid moving through and out of his lungs. Whether Fritz had been unable or unwilling to hire a doctor to accompany the team is unknown, but in the absence of professional care Jack became the team’s physician. There was also an assumption that given his discounted fee, he would in effect “earn his daily bread” by performing extra duties.* But it was a burden borne heavily by Jack, particularly as Chap’s illness went from grave to life-and-death. As night turned to day and then to night again, Jack sat vigil, holding a pail under Chap’s chin as he choked up cupfuls of viscous sputum and vomit, cleaned up when Chap eliminated streams of thick diarrhea into the sleeping bags, and continuously refilled tea bottles with hot water which he tucked around Chap to relieve some of his convulsive shivering. Dudley and George relieved Jack when they could, but because Chap was close to death, Jack was needed by his side nearly the entire time. He would later remark, “In all my years of medical practice, I never had a patient as sick as my first.” For his part, Chap muttered through his delirium that he felt as if he had only a “one in three chance” of pulling through. Even if he did, Jack feared, the pneumonia and dysentery† had critically weakened him and it was doubtful he would ever be able to climb above base camp. He had also developed a peculiar odor, beyond the obvious effluvium of sickness, which Jack had no answer for although he hoped it wasn’t the smell of death.

  Through all of Chap’s round-the-clock care, Jack became physically and emotionally undermined and his headaches, insomnia, and general ennui got worse. Given what he had been through, plus the 16,500-foot altitude of base camp, it’s scarcely surprising.

  Meanwhile, their volunteer translator, Chandra, had been felled by mountain sickness and rolled about in his tent moaning and crying with a headache and nausea. Joe Trench, hired to be the locals’ liaison and advocate, sardonically commented, “There is nothing quite so sick as a native who thinks he is.” Several days later Chandra adjusted to the altitude but, like many on the team, he never fully recovered and he and the student from the school in Srinagar, Amarnath, often were more trouble than they were worth, as well as being terrific gossips. After several days of demanding more food and threatening legal action against the cook if he didn’t get it, Amarnath was sent packing and left base camp with the next set of mail runners.

  Chap finally began to come around, and although he was still very weak his fever had come down from its high of 103 and he was able to take in fluids, although he repeatedly “blew”* them all over the tent. A fine nurse as well as a promising doctor, Jack brought a wash basin of warm, soapy water to Chap’s bedside and gave him a sponge bath and then brushed his foul teeth and combed his hair. Chap felt almost human again.

  With Fritz and Tony still on their recon of the Northwest and Abruzzi ridges, an increasingly lazy Joe Trench making excuses about having to handle paperwork, and Jack still tending to Chap, it was left to Dudley and George to properly establish base camp. First they moved the tents they had hastily erected upon arrival to better positions on the uneven rocks and further from the ever-threatening rockfall and avalanche-prone gullies. Then, with a much-improved Chap
sitting in the sun in a camp chair wrapped in a sleeping bag, Dudley and George set about digging an ice house into the side of the glacier near the mess tent for the perishable food. As they dug, Jack yelled over to them not to waste too much time and energy building what he called an “unimportant ice chest.” Bruised by his disdain for their work but excited by their progress, Dudley and George kept on. It was hard work, made all the more exhausting by a blazing sun and temperatures close to 95 degrees. Somehow, none of them had thought base camp would be anything but a cold, icy place. But here it was, hotter than any beach they’d ever been on, and yet they were unable to take off their wool shirts and insulated pants for fear of blistering sunburn. Worn out by the stultifying midday heat, they were stunned by the sudden drop in temperature into the thirties when the sun disappeared behind the mountains to the west.

  In the mornings, they broke the ice which had formed on their wash bucket in order to splash their faces. They chewed at their semi-frozen tubes of toothpaste, breaking up the slushy paste, sucking it out of the tube, and spitting it on the brush so that they could clean their teeth. Base camp felt as foreign and hostile as the surface of the moon.

  After lunch on the third day, the men lifted Chap, who was still not walking, into the sun and then pulled their own chairs outside the mess tent and sat drinking tea. Excusing himself to arrange his climbing gear, Dudley retired to his tent. As Jack, Chap, George, and Joe basked in the sun, they saw Dudley’s feet poke out of his tent door wearing black velvet bedroom slippers.

  Dudley’s three cameras, professional lenses, filters, tripods, and films, his nautical field glasses, state-of-the-art barometer and altimeter, endless supply of beautiful clothes and silk handkerchiefs, were certainly remarked on by his teammates, but somehow his extravagances were hard to dislike because he himself was so likeable. He was unfailingly generous. He had upgraded all of the men’s Biancamano tickets to first class and bought more rounds of drinks and dinners than all the other men combined. He also could be a hell of a lot of fun. Although for the most part a shy and retiring man, he would sometimes break into song, regaling the men in what George called a “pleasant but untrained voice” with tunes he’d learned from foul-mouthed sea captains, adolescent prep school boys, and wounded troops on the front lines in Italy. His stories were peppered with fabulous anecdotes of trench warfare, rogue waves off the Grand Banks, and the secret ceremonies of a Harvard Final Club—perfect entertainment for the otherwise mundane and utterly male nights at base camp. In an environment where, according to high-altitude climbers who have suffered many months-long expeditions, all conversation eventually devolves into “food, shit, and sex—what goes in, what comes out, and what goes in and out,” Dud provided an element of class and humor. Still, the slippers raised eyebrows to a new notch.

  When Fritz and Tony finally returned to base camp from their recon of the Northeast Ridge, George and Dudley rushed to meet them on the glacier with the news of Chap’s illness and (much to Jack’s annoyance) of their parts in the doctoring.

  Fritz shook his head in frustration. He considered Chap his “best man” on the team, and it now looked as if he might be out of the climb before a single high camp had been established. But Fritz still had hope that Chap would regain his strength. The year before, Charlie Houston had been forced to stay in Askole with his teammate Paul Petzoldt, who had suddenly become delirious with high fever and crippling back pain.* While the rest of the 1938 team had continued on toward base camp, Charlie tended to Petzoldt, not knowing if he would live or die. Petzoldt had not only recovered, he had climbed to 26,500 feet on the mountain, higher than any member of the team. But unlike Petzoldt, a feisty Wyoming mountain guide with a reputation for tough and brawny machismo, Chap never got back his strength or, apparently, his interest in climbing the mountain, and instead was content to lounge in base camp for the duration of the summer.

  Fritz’s team was effectively down to four: Jack Durrance, George Sheldon, Dudley Wolfe, and Fritz himself, with Tony Cromwell and Joe Trench only helping to supply the low camps. Just two of the men, Wiessner and Durrance, had any real mountaineering experience as guides, not clients, and only Fritz had been tested above 15,000 feet. But even with his experience on Nanga Parbat, Fritz was uncomfortable, even fearful, of steep ice faces, much preferring the more stable and predictable surface of rock.

  Nonetheless, his grossly inexperienced team, which had just become critically weakened with the loss of Chap, had to begin its work to climb the formidable mountain.

  BY JUNE 5 Chap was well enough to take care of his own bodily functions. The team left him with Noor, their base camp cook, and started carrying loads of gear to the base of the mountain. The plan was a simple if arduous one. The team would climb up the mountain to where last year’s team had found suitable space for the high camps—not always easy to find on the steep, rocky ridge. There they would carve out tent platforms in the ice and snow, erect a tent, bring up supplies from the camp below, and then move up to where the next camp would be built. From camp to camp, the team would build a supply chain up and, more important, down the mountain. As necessary as the camps were for the ascending team, they would be crucial for those descending, particularly if the summit had been reached. By establishing a veritable lifeline of food, fuel, stoves, tents, and sleeping bags, the team would be able to descend the mountain without the added weight of supplies. Given what their exhaustion was going to be, every ounce not carried in their rucksacks was an ounce of energy in their bodies which could mean the difference between survival and death.

  In order to avoid the worst of the heat as well as the threat of avalanches sweeping down both K2 and its 8,000-meter neighbor, Broad Peak, and across the glacier where they would be walking, the team rose in the predawn chill, packed food and equipment into 50-pound loads for the Sherpas and 35-pound loads for the sahibs, and trudged the six miles up the glacier to the base of the Abruzzi Ridge. While most of the going was straightforward, as the men neared the base of the ridge, where the glacier turned a sharp corner, they encountered a mile-long field of house-sized blocks of ice. Much like rapids in a river, these ice falls form where the glacier drops sharply in elevation and where it narrows or bends around the base of the mountains, thus constricting the flow of frozen water and buckling and breaking it into blocks. Always changing and constantly shifting, ice falls can be one of the most dangerous sections of a mountain to climb. (Some consider the ice fall on Everest to be the mountain’s deadliest mile.) Finding their way through its often circuitous caverns, Fritz and the team finally established what they hoped was a safe route for their frequent trips between base camp and Camp I.

  Returning from carrying a load to Camp I, Jack and George got into one of their competitive races, even though they were at 18,000 feet. Predictably, when George sped up, he forced Jack and Fritz to match the breakneck speed and, once at base camp, all three men felt the ill effects of “jogging” at altitude. Fritz sharply chastised the men, George in particular, for their little stunt.

  As Dudley crawled into his tent that night and lay in his sleeping bag, he realized with some sadness and alarm that the team was not coming together as he had hoped. He had worried both on the boat and again at the ski hut in Gulmarg that the boys seemed ill-prepared, both physically and mentally, for the task at hand. Today’s game of tag on the glacier only squandered their already compromised energies. He was glad Fritz had finally said something, although he doubted they took it seriously—they had made schoolboy faces behind Fritz’s back after his rebuke. Dudley often felt he was in the middle of a fraternity house prank rather than a Himalayan expedition. But he would have to put that out of his mind. He was here to climb the mountain, and so was Fritz. If necessary, they would do it without the others.

  The next day, as the team was returning from another carry through an ice couloir below Camp I, Fritz suddenly disappeared ahead of them down the route without a word. The Sherpas took over the lead and helped the less
experienced sahibs navigate the icy section. After they all made it back safely, Jack approached Fritz and asked what that was all about.

  “It was a test,” Fritz said sharply. “To see how you all did without me.”

  Jack looked at him with alarm. Testing the men with a potentially dangerous stunt was even more brazen than Jack had thought Fritz to be. Never eager for a showdown, Jack walked away without challenging Fritz, but, like Dudley, his apprehension grew every day.

  On June 7 Dudley, the team, and the eight Sherpas* carried their third load of food and gear (including one thousand cigarettes) from base camp to Camp I. There, Jack, Dudley, and George drew straws to see which of them would accompany Fritz on a reconnaissance climb and load carry to where their Camp II would be situated. Jack won and started out with Fritz. Soon, he felt like crying out loud in pain as he struggled with his heavy pack in the thin air. After finding a suitable spot for Camp II, they dumped their pack loads and retreated back to Camp I, where the rest of the men waited. When they all returned to base camp the following night they felt the satisfaction of their hard work. Climbing into their sleeping bags with a pipe and a book after dinner and wearing layers of clothes and gloves on their hands against the bitter nights, the men relished their exhaustion. But as they tried to settle into deep sleep, they were frustrated by it being a series of naps rather than solid slumber. Not only was the altitude causing headaches, dizziness, light nausea, and insomnia as their bodies adjusted to the thin air, but they were frequently awakened by the glacier beneath their heads. Its constant movement caused it to buckle, crack, groan, pop, and snap with such violence and volume the men feared it would open up and swallow them, tents and all. It reminded some of them of skating on a partially frozen pond and hearing and feeling the vacuous booms as the ice cracked and moved beneath them. Disconcerting at best, terrifying at worst, the glacier’s noisy shifting was a natural occurrence but difficult to sleep through, particularly when the great echoing explosions of ice beneath them could be felt through every inch of their bodies stretched out in their sleeping bags.