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

by Jennifer Jordan

  Picking up her pen, she tried to sound light and playful.

  “My dear Dudley Francis,” she began as she often did, poking gentle fun at his stuffy Brahmin name, and wrote a chatty letter about nothing in particular, hoping to convey all of her affection and none of her worry. After all, she wasn’t even married to the man any more.

  She closed the letter, “Write me often. Always, Your loving Alice.”

  DOWN THE COAST a few miles in Glen Cove, Maine, Clifford paced back and forth across the long porch which overlooked the ocean. As June turned to July, Dudley’s letters had come less and less frequently, and they were more and more troubled. At the start of his trip, the letters were newsy and cheerful, and Clifford had responded to each immediately, filling Dudley in on the stagnant markets and his ardent desire to see Roosevelt ousted from the presidency before he took the country down his socialistic drainpipe with him. But somehow telling Dudley about their sister Gwen’s boys in summer camp near Wiscasset and the caretaker’s repaving the drive seemed silly in comparison to leprosy-ridden villages, river crossings on goatskin boats, and avalanches sweeping thousands of feet down the mountain and across a two-mile-wide glacier. Even though he had resented Dudley’s sudden and prolonged absence, Clifford had had to admit, What a hell of an adventure he’s on.

  Then in early July, Clifford had received news that one of Dudley’s teammates was close to death. Death! They weren’t even on the mountain yet! Clifford had tried to contact the US consulate in Calcutta, but he’d gotten nowhere. He supposed no news was good news, but how could a boy die at base camp? Didn’t they have a doctor on board? To make matters worse, just last week Clifford had received an odd call from Dudley’s secretary, Henry Meyer, and he couldn’t get it off his mind. Meyer had received a letter from Dudley warning him not to let anyone have access to the film he had shot on the expedition, “not the leader of the expedition or any member of it.” Meyer had quoted the letter over the phone. It was rare for Dudley to speak so vehemently, and Clifford did not at all like imagining what had provoked it.

  His film? Why on earth, Clifford wondered, is he worried about his film? First one of his teammates nearly dies of pneumonia and now he’s worried about being robbed or swindled by his own teammates?

  Clifford stopped to look east across the moon-drenched Atlantic. Dudley’s letters had become increasingly—well, almost paranoid, as if he didn’t trust the men with whom he was climbing a mountain many considered unconquerable. For the thousandth time Clifford wished he had objected more strenuously to his brother’s insanely dangerous adventure. He also wished he had insisted on meeting this Fritz Wiessner before the expedition. Clifford didn’t even know the man to whom he had entrusted his brother’s life. And now, with things apparently disintegrating, Clifford was powerless to help. He did not like the feeling.

  Clifford remembered that Dudley had stayed on in Europe after the war in order to help gain his brother’s freedom from the German prisoner-of-war camp that held him. Dudley had spent months writing letters to the American field offices, imploring any officials he could think of for help, and cabling the family back in Omaha and Maine every day with updates. Clifford wondered now if he had ever truly thanked his brother for his efforts, and worried that he hadn’t.

  He walked to the edge of the porch and looked out over Penobscot Bay and the Atlantic Ocean beyond it, thinking, What the devil is going on over there?

  STILL FARTHER away, Gwen Wolfe Sharpe sat in Minden, Nevada, looking out over her new husband’s ranch in the hot Great Basin desert.

  She and Dudley had always exchanged a lot of letters and postcards, and she cherished a stack of them she’d received from the front lines in the war and now from his adventure to the Himalayas. But recently there had been an odd and unsettling silence. Cliff had explained how difficult it was to send and receive mail, and yet this absolute lack of communication was very troubling. They had always had a connection, even through the war; this void was painful.

  Thankfully her boys, Dudley and Paul, were in summer camp in Maine, so she didn’t have to constantly answer their questions about whether another postcard had arrived from Uncle Dudley with a colorful foreign stamp for them to fight over. Today’s mail had again brought nothing. Maybe tomorrow she’d go into Carson City and check at the big post office and see if they had anything.

  Looking out beyond the dry sagebrush, she saw the first glint of the moon rising over the distant Sierra Nevada. She thought of her brother, half a world away, on a peak two or three times as big as the ones on her horizon, and she could only close her eyes and say a prayer for his safety.

  Come home to us, dear Dud, come home.

  Chapter 8

  The Highest Men on Earth

  The tops of mountains are among the unfinished parts of the globe, whither it is a slight insult to the gods to climb and pry into their secrets, and try their effect on our humanity. Only daring and insolent men, perchance, go there.

  —HENRY DAVID THOREAU

  View below Camp IV. (Courtesy of the George C. Sheldon Family)

  After Tendrup and Kitar dumped their loads of food, fuel, and reserve sleeping bags at Camp VIII at 25,300 feet on July 14, Fritz sent the Sherpas back down to Camp VI for more supplies. As they disappeared down the lower slope, Fritz and Dudley watched a storm approach from the northwest and retreated to their tent for cover. Despite the weather, they could feel success within their reach. While trying to keep hydrated and nourished for the summit attack to come, the men sat back, satisfied at what they had accomplished and excited about treading on ground no man had ever touched. They were the highest men in the world and, looking up toward the summit cone of K2, they raised their tin drinking cups of tea to their achievement.

  But even as they celebrated, Fritz realized he too was now worried about Dudley’s ability to go higher. He and Dudley had been on the mountain six weeks, longer and higher than any of the other team members. For the first time in the expedition’s three and half months of progress toward the summit, which was still 2,000 feet above them, Fritz finally acknowledged that his team of six had dwindled to only the two of them, of whom one, Dudley, was critically inexperienced, had spent too much time idle in the high camps, was suffering frostbitten feet, and was increasingly weak from lack of proper food and fluids. While Fritz himself still felt strong, he knew he might have to leave Dudley in camp if he became too slow for Fritz’s progress toward the summit. Even though he considered it an unpleasant alternative, he might have to continue alone with a Sherpa, most likely Pasang Lama, although he wished it could be Kikuli, Charlie Houston’s trusted sirdar, who had performed so well the year before. Kikuli was more refined than Pasang, who was too “native” for Fritz. But the situation couldn’t be helped. Kikuli was nowhere in sight. Where was Kikuli, by the way, Fritz thought in irritation? Where were any of them?

  The one option Fritz never considered was descending; the rest of his team was gravely weak, but he was determined to continue, with or without them. If I’m going to climb this mountain, I’m going to have to do it my way.

  TWO DAYS LATER, the storm cleared and the three resumed their climb. Almost immediately out of camp, they encountered a trough-like crevasse filled with snow. When crevasses, or large cracks, form in the ice of a steep slope, avalanches and snow partially fill the gap. This creates a terrifying unknown for climbers; not knowing how deep the crevasse is, any step could take them one or 100 feet into the dark void. Going first, Fritz hoped to feel the crevasse floor under his feet, but instead sank into the snow up to his neck. He fought the urge to panic but knew that every minute he spent in the crevasse he was exposing himself to unspeakable dangers. He pushed and pulled through the snow, looking a lot like a swimmer walking through a pool of crushed ice. Finally he reached the other side and pulled himself up the trench’s overhanging lip of ice. Gasping from the effort, he got himself into a seated belay position with the rope around his waist for purchase, and guided Pasang
through and up after him. Exhausted and out of breath in the thin air, the two men looked back at Dudley. It was his turn.

  Dudley had watched the other two struggle. Fritz took two hours to cross the treacherous hundred-foot section and Pasang, on the rope and with Fritz’s help, took another hour. He could see that it had taken everything they had to make it through the snow and climb over the protruding lip of ice at the far side. Even if he were able to get across the crevasse, could he get over its thick edge? It was a difficult move for the lithest rock climber, to say nothing of one at 26,000 feet. But he had to try.

  Dudley started across and immediately sank even deeper into the snow than Fritz or Pasang had. Trying to imitate their moves, he freed his arms and used them to swim through the upper layers, only to feel his legs disappear into the trough below. While his bulky power had always been his strongest suit, suddenly he felt every muscle like a barbell strapped to his legs, pulling him down rather than helping him power through. The heavy snow was like quicksand and he struggled against a feeling of terror as it seemed to drag him down.

  From above, Fritz urged him on, but it was no help. The passage was only 100 feet but it might as well have been a thousand. Even if he made it across this hole of snow, there was no way he would be able to manage the overhang, particularly given that there were no footholds for him to push up against. Like most skiers, his strength was primarily in his legs, not his arms, and this move demanded a rock climber’s upper-body agility and strength, not a workhorse’s leg power.

  He looked below him at the 10,000 feet he’d climbed to get here. Hell, it was more like 26,000 feet since he’d started at the ocean. And here was the end of it all; a small, almost trivial ditch of snow. Maybe with help from more Sherpas he would be able to do it, but not with an already exhausted Pasang and Fritz.

  “It is hopeless, Fritz, I just cannot make it. I’ll go back to camp,” Dudley said.

  Fritz did not argue.

  Dudley told Fritz he would try again when Tendrup and Kitar came up to restock Camp VIII. Then he turned and retraced his steps through hip-deep snow back to the tents. Carefully putting his rucksack outside the tent, he sat down next to it, made himself comfortable and watched the two men climb.

  It wasn’t all bad. It was a beautiful day and although the crevasse had bested him, he’d made it higher than any other man on the team except for the two above him, and nearly as high as Charlie Houston and Paul Petzoldt had made it the year before. Not a terrible showing, all things considered. He desperately wanted a cup of tea, but the Primus was tricky to light in the best of circumstances, and 26,000 feet was hardly optimum. Besides, until more supplies came from below he had only a limited supply of matches, so tea would have to wait until after dinner. He settled back against his pack and watched Fritz and Pasang inch up the slope above him.

  BELOW THEM, the rest of the team had become even more unraveled. Much like Fritz’s failed Nanga Parbat expedition in 1932, the summit team was cut off from the support team below it without radio contact or even the vaunted smoke signals, and the men lower on the mountain had no idea what was happening with the summit party above. As curiosity became worry and then annoyance, and with their planned departure date looming, instead of climbing up to find out if everything was all right, the men at base camp began organizing the team’s march away from the mountain. As Fritz had instructed and they had agreed, with the summit team still on the mountain, the team would have to split and leave in two groups, with Jack staying to wait for the summit team to descend, while Tony would go out with the first group of porters.

  With the men at base camp now energized by packing for their departure, Chap Cranmer and George Sheldon decided there was no reason for them to hang around. Chap had finally recovered enough to hike above base camp, but his one trip to Camp I in early July took him nearly twice as long as the rest of the men and left him utterly exhausted. Now he was just biding his time. George had descended from the mountain for what turned out to be the last time on July 8. Ten days later, enough was enough. He and Chap had never expected to be marooned at base camp without knowledge of what the rest of the team was doing high on the mountain. Their dream adventure had turned into a nightmare of sickness, frostbite, and boredom. With the excuse of a geological exploration of the lower glacier, they told Tony Cromwell they were leaving base camp and, with no one challenging them for abandoning the rest of the team, they went on with their plan. Exclaiming that it was “a wonderful feeling to be on the way back” home, they headed away from the mountain on July 18.

  After he watched them leave, Tony decided he too had had enough. He had neither forgiven nor forgotten Fritz’s public dressing-down the week before. They had started out as close friends and comrades, but somewhere along the way Tony came to see Fritz as an ugly tyrant, or worse, an ugly German. Ordering the men around like his servants, parading through camp like a commandant, Fritz, in Tony’s opinion, was a humorless, overbearing bully, hell-bent on his own achievement of the summit. The rest of them were merely pawns to that end. Picking up his pencil and pad, Tony wrote a note to Jack in Camp II announcing that it was time to start packing up the lower camps for the team’s departure from the mountain on the 24th and to “salvage all the tents and sleeping bags you can.”

  Thus began the clearing of the high camps, an action that would be the subject of controversy for decades to come. With Tony’s instructions in hand, Jack began organizing the camps’ clearing. When he and Kikuli had retreated from the mountain a week before, he had treated Kikuli’s re-frostbitten feet daily, massaging them with histamine to stimulate blood circulation. Layers of dead skin flaked off and, more worrisome to Jack, the skin around Kikuli’s toes was limp and lifeless, like the skin of a Concord grape. Kikuli was definitely out of commission for work high on the mountain. He might even lose his toes. Nonetheless, needing him to help carry loads, Jack sent Kikuli and Dawa up to Camp IV for its tents, food, and sleeping bags (Camp III had been eliminated and the supplies at Camp V had already been moved up the mountain).

  At Camp IV, Kikuli found Kitar and Tendrup, whom Fritz had instructed four days earlier to descend only to Camp VI for supplies and then immediately re-ascend to Camp VIII. But, without sahib supervision and afraid of the steep slopes above Camp VI, they had descended all the way to Camp IV—not only was it 2,000 feet lower on the mountain than Camp VI, it was a larger and relatively more comfortable camp. Kikuli was furious at their insubordination and immediately commanded them up to Camp VIII with more matches, fuel, and food for the summit team’s bid for the top. Reluctantly, Tendrup and Kitar headed up, heavily laden. Kikuli and Dawa then headed back down the mountain with Camp IV’s extra sleeping bags, air mattresses, and food.

  As he packed up Camp II, Jack decided that he too would leave his lonely outpost and head down with Kikuli and Dawa. He had continued to suffer from insomnia and exhaustion, he hadn’t heard from the summit team since he’d left them at Camp VI on July 13 six days earlier, and now he was finished. No amount of eleventh-hour pep talks from Fritz could re-energize him now. He was going home.

  When Jack, Kikuli, and Dawa descended to base camp on July 19 they had with them 170 pounds of tinned beef and ham, two Yak tents, and nearly a dozen Sherpa and sahib sleeping bags.

  As Jack walked toward base camp, he thought the barren, squalid outpost looked like the Garden of Eden after his six weeks at or above Camp II. Stripping off his clothes to take his first bath in fifty days, he stood naked on the glacier waiting for his bathwater to heat and realized it was his twenty-seventh birthday. “Happy Birthday to me,” he thought, relieved to finally be off the mountain but also feeling slightly sorry for himself that he was so far from any semblance of celebration. He looked down at his skeletal frame, picking at his ribs with his fingers like a raven at roadkill, figuring he’d lost about thirty pounds. He could only imagine what Fritz and Dudley looked like. The once stocky Dud, whom Jack had derided and whose physique he had ridiculed as not b
eing that of a mountaineer, was still up there, thousands of feet above where Jack had wasted away to a weight he hadn’t seen since he wore short pants in the Florida Everglades.

  As Jack sat in his basin of warm water at base camp and Dudley rested inside his tent at Camp VIII, the Sherpas whom Kikuli had sent up with supplies reached Camp VII. Three of them refused to go any further. The slope ahead was treacherous, they were alone, had heavy loads and no crampons, and they were unwilling to take the risk. They had been virtually alone on the mountain for weeks, they hadn’t seen any of the sahibs taking loads above Camp VI, and suddenly they’d had enough. Tendrup, the team’s most reliable climber next to Kikuli, was left to do the carry to Camp VIII himself. He started up, but got only a few yards out of camp before a steep wall of blue ice stopped him. Although there were only 600 vertical feet separating Camps VII and VIII, without crampons and a safety rope and with no sahib in sight to instruct him in step-cutting, he didn’t know what to do. Finally, he decided not to risk it. Putting his load down, he called up the slope to see if anyone from Camp VIII would appear over the edge to help him or to come down for his load. No one did. He called again, Bara Sahib! Wolfe Sahib! Pasang! Silence. There was a slight breeze and his words seemed to evaporate in the thin air, like a handful of flour in the wind. Wolfe Sahib! Bara Sahib! Pasang! Again, nothing. Perhaps they were dead? Perhaps they’d fallen or been swept by an avalanche off this very ice slope which now stopped him? He tried calling out a third time and then stood on the barren slope waiting in the otherwise quiet wind. Nothing.

  With little else to go on but the silence, the avalanche slope, and his own fears of the mountain spirits, Tendrup decided that the three above them must have perished. Returning to Camp VII, he told Kitar and Phinsoo of his fears that the sahibs above were dead. They talked at length, trading their theories and fears, and kept coming back to one undeniable truth: they hadn’t seen nor heard from any one of the three in nearly a week. Surely something must have happened. What could they do? They were too afraid to stay here, particularly if the mountain spirits had already been angered by the sahibs—they could be next. There was nothing left to do but descend, and because the sahibs had told them repeatedly how valuable the sleeping bags were, they knew they had better take them and the larger food tins with them as Kikuli, Dawa, and Doctor Sahib had done further down.