Alice felt Dudley’s loss as a great void she could never quite fill. While she soon remarried and lived well into her seventies, years after Dudley’s death she wrote Fritz that she was haunted by his memory. “I still think about poor Dudley lying up there in the snow and probably will until I die.”
IN LATE AUGUST, Gwen Wolfe Rochester Sharpe arrived at Clifford Lodge, the massive house her grandfather had built overlooking the ocean in Rockport, with her sons, Dudley and Paul, whom she had just picked up from their summer camp down the coast. Young Dudley had particularly loved spending the summer sailing on the Kestrel, one of his Uncle Dudley’s sloops which he had loaned to the camp for the summer.
As the car rounded the last bend in the long drive in from the main road, young Paul looked at the enormous house appearing over the hillock and exclaimed, “What is that, a hotel?” Indeed, it looked like one with its three stories, great chimneys at either end of the mansard roof, a striped awning on each window, the wrap-around covered porch, and, on the drive, a grand entranceway through which horse-drawn carriages once delivered guests to the front door.
Clifford Wolfe Smith met them on the top stair of the porch. His face was drawn with sorrow.
“Gwen, I have something terrible to tell you.”
She stopped in her tracks, as did the boys, stunned by the heavy grief in his words. They somehow knew what was coming next.
“We’ve lost Dudley. He’s gone.”
The boys stood and watched as their mother and their Uncle Clifford embraced and quietly wept on the porch for what seemed like hours, although it was only a few minutes. Then, Gwen turned and took young Dudley’s hand and led him up to what was still considered her room in the vast house.
“Please, sit with me, would you?” she asked her eldest son and her brother’s namesake. She adored Clifford and had loved the dashing Grafton, but it was her brother Dudley whom she had cherished most. She felt his loss like a physical blow.
Dudley Rochester sat with his mother, not quite knowing what to do or say in the face of this new aspect of her: grieving sister. He was only eleven years old and he remembered his uncle more as a myth than as a man. His mother had always talked about her brother in terms of great adventure and daring exploits. But he loved what he remembered, and, like his mother, he already missed Dudley. He had last seen him the summer before, when his uncle had arrived out of the blue in his two-seater roadster for a visit at their farm in Arlington, Vermont. It had been a fine visit, but all too short; as the larger-than-life man headed back down the driveway the next day, young Dudley stood on the porch wishing he had stayed longer. Beside him, the boy’s father said something which struck the ten-year-old as very strange:
“I don’t know why, but I think that is the last time we’ll ever see him.”
It was not like his straightforward father to use such melodramatic words, and the boy never forgot them. He turned back to look down the drive and saw his Uncle Dudley’s car disappear around the last bend in a cloud of dust.
Later that month, Gwen and Clifford greeted scores of Dudley’s friends, sailing crews, and college classmates at a memorial service in Camden. Without a body to bury, they sat looking at a formal portrait of Dudley draped in black velvet on the altar, remembering the shy smile and gentle power of the man they all loved.
WITHIN THE WEEK, Clifford began his assault. Not knowing what to do with his grief and anger, he turned to the only action he could think of: he started an investigation into why his brother had been left for dead halfway around the world. How did Dudley die? Why was he abandoned on the mountain? Who was with him? Did they die also? Who was in charge and where was he when Dudley was left at the high camp? And why were they not able to bring his body home?
While he waited for the team to return from India, Clifford did his research. He reread every letter the team had written from base camp back to the American Alpine Club, and every one that Dudley had written to him, Gwen, Alice, and his secretary, Henry Meyer. He had the American Alpine Club investigated and its financing and lease in lower Manhattan looked into. He examined Dudley’s last will and testament, looking for anything out of kilter. And he learned more about the world of high-altitude mountaineering than he had ever cared to.
Once the expedition members started arriving home, Clifford began scheduling depositions, starting with George Sheldon and Chappell Cranmer, who were the first to return to the States in late September.
After Chap and George had left base camp, they relished every step taken away from the mountain and promised each other that their future climbing would be kept to Wyoming, Colorado, and Canada. After hearing that Dudley had been left sick and weak at Camp VII to await rescue, they both shook their heads, fearing he would never be able to make it down alive. “It’s fine to be back,” George wrote in Srinagar, “but it’s not too good having those other blokes still left out to the mercy of Herr Wiessner.” As he and Chap left Bombay for Genoa at the end of August, they received a telegram confirming their worst fears: Dudley and three Sherpas had died. Days later they received another from Jack and Fritz: “WITHHOLD ALL EXPEDITION COMMENT,” it warned. Trouble lay ahead for all of them. The firestorm had begun.
On the crossing from Genoa to New York, they struck up a conversation with a handsome, well-dressed woman who lived in both Austria and New York. She asked what they had been up to in Europe, with America on the brink of war. As they began to tell her of the expedition, her face froze. The woman was Alice Wolfe. After she and the men recovered from the shocking coincidence of their meeting, she bought them all a bottle of champagne to share and asked, begged them for every detail they could remember of Dudley and the expedition. George was pleased, and a bit surprised, at how nice she was to them.
Once George was back at Dartmouth, his frostbitten feet completely healed—except for “feeling the cold,” as all frostbite victims do—but Chap ended up in the hospital, weak from persistent diarrhea. Given his recent exposure to the remote reaches of the Himalayas, the doctors treated him for dysentery and looked no further. It would be years and many more illnesses before Chap’s celiac disease was finally diagnosed.
In early October, Clifford Smith, his attorney, Herbert Connell, and a stenographer traveled to Dartmouth, where they formally deposed George and Chap. Chap arrived forty-five minutes late for the meeting, having been detained in a “Rec”—or Recreation—class. Insulted by what he saw as Chap’s rudeness at keeping him waiting for a game of squash, Clifford was brusque with the two young men. For their part, George and Chap “did a good job of saying nothing,” as they later reported to Fritz. Apparently unaware that Clifford Smith was in fact Dudley Wolfe’s brother, they offered no condolences. Instead, the young men detailed their own climbing resumés and how much climbing they had done without guides, insinuating that Dudley had died because of his inexperience. Clifford wasn’t impressed with them, particularly as he knew that both had spent most of the expedition at base camp. Nonetheless, he questioned them about the expedition, its leadership and planning, the trek, the organization, and the team’s movement up the mountain. Given that the men had left base camp before the crisis, they could offer little as to what had happened to Dudley and the Sherpas. In closing, Clifford asked them about the ownership of the films, showing them Dudley’s letter written from Urdukas about not allowing any member of the expedition access under any circumstances. Chap and George looked at each other and then at Clifford as they handed the letter back to him. Both agreed that until the matter of the ownership was cleared up, they wanted nothing to do with Dudley’s remaining films, and Clifford needn’t bother to send them copies of the film and negatives.
Clifford returned to New York and deposed Joel Fisher, the treasurer of the American Alpine Club, several days later. He began by asking if the AAC had sponsored the expedition. Perhaps fearing a lawsuit, Fisher lied, telling him that each member had paid his own way and bought his own supplies and that the club was not involved in any of
the financing or resulting debt of the expedition. Clifford never learned that the club had advanced the expedition $1,715, most of it to cover Jack’s fees, and that the money had been drawn directly from the AAC ledger.
Fritz finally returned to the United States on October 28, only to be met with a letter from his old friend Bill House, urging temperance in his reaction to what was surely going to be a barrage of questions. Having already read Cromwell’s letter charging Fritz with murder as well as the early reports out of Srinagar, including Fritz’s, House warned his “good friend” to be “exceedingly careful and patient in your explanations of the…accident. I think it quite likely that you have rationalized everything that happened and are convinced that everything that was done within your power was right. I don’t question this, but an appearance of righteousness is sometimes dangerous…No matter how thoroughly convinced you are that your judgments were right please realize that you may have to convince other people and that to convince them you must be patient and understanding.”
News of the K2 tragedy was two months old by the time Wiessner disembarked in New York, and many of his enemies had already come out of the woodwork. One man from the Alpine Club of Canada, whom Henry Hall refused to name when he told Fritz of the charge, accused Wiessner of having abandoned a frostbitten Christine Reid and Elizabeth Knowlton on Mount Robson, the highest mountain in British Columbia, during his descent from the summit the year before. This, like many mountaineering rumors, was unsubstantiated; if anyone had bothered to contact either of the women, they would have learned that Reid in fact blamed herself for gambling with her previously frostbitten feet, and that she considered Wiessner a friend and thought his leadership on Mount Robson had been brilliant.* But no one contacted Reid or Knowlton, so in the midst of the ugly K2 aftermath, the mud stuck.
With his back causing him great pain, and physically and emotionally exhausted by his ordeal, Fritz checked himself into the New York Orthopaedic Hospital on East 58th Street soon after he returned to the city. While he may have considered taking House’s advice to remain patient and calm in the coming storm, he barely had time to take even one measured breath before the onslaught began. Within days of his hospital stay, Clifford Smith arrived at Fritz’s bedside with Herb Connell and the court stenographer, and for the next several hours they “interrogated the witness,” which is exactly how Clifford felt about Wiessner—he was a suspect in a crime, his brother Dudley’s abandonment and death.
In the style of courtroom testimony, Connell grilled Fritz on his name, birthright, citizenship, travels to and from Germany, his credentials as a climber, the team, the climb, and finally, the details of his choice to continue down the mountain without Dudley. At one point in the grilling, Connell presented Fritz with a copy of his own expedition report and demanded that he initial each page, “in green ink,” so as to confirm that he had read it in their presence. Nearby, Clifford sat taking notes. Fritz was then handed Tony Cromwell’s expedition report, a report which the American Alpine Club was distributing as the official version, and asked to read it quickly. In quoting Tony’s report, Connell asked why Fritz had never mentioned that Dudley was ill at Camp VII. Fritz said that Cromwell had been “depressed” and “that he told several stories which were not correct. Not in a bad way but he just made wrong guesses.” Fritz laid the entire blame on Tendrup as being “very bad in his heart, lazy” for telling the rest of the team the summit party was dead so that he could descend the mountain. When asked why Dudley had refused to descend with the Sherpas, Fritz speculated that Dudley had had a “mental breakdown” because of the altitude.
For a German American who had been a citizen less than a year in a country soon to be at war with his homeland, it must have been a frightening two hours. In addition, between Fritz’s debt to Dudley and the team’s to the AAC for its advances and supplementation of Jack’s fees, the expedition and Fritz as its leader owed $3,000 ($45,000 today): a staggering sum, particularly given that Fritz and Jack, the primary figures in the fallout, already lived hand-to-mouth. Achieving the summit of K2 had been Wiessner’s one plan for a solvent future.
From Fritz’s bedside, Clifford Smith took his entourage immediately to Tony Cromwell’s office on Fifth Avenue. As Connell set about his interrogation, Clifford gazed out the window at St. Patrick’s Cathedral across the street and listened to Cromwell’s version of events. He expected to hear the same volatile anger and accusation which was in the letter Cromwell had written to Fisher at the AAC three months before. But it was as if the plug had been pulled on his rage.*
Herbert Connell: Do you know of any friction which existed between the members of the expedition?
Tony Cromwell: Exceptionally little.
Q: Was there any between the white members of the expedition and the native guides?
A: None whatsoever.
Q: Any jealousy existing?
A: Not that I noticed; no.
Clifford sat up straight and indicated to Henry he’d like to ask a few questions.
Clifford Smith: This report I have just shown you states that Dudley was sick. How do you know he was sick or otherwise incapacitated?
Cromwell: I have no personal knowledge of that. When I last saw him he was in very good shape.
It was an odd statement, given that Clifford was quoting from Cromwell’s own (but unsigned) report, which had been furnished by Joel Fisher at the American Alpine Club. But because Clifford didn’t know that Cromwell had written the report, he didn’t press the matter. Instead, he wanted to know why Cromwell had left base camp while Dudley was still on the mountain awaiting rescue. It was an excellent question but, like so many others, it was sidestepped and never answered. Instead, Cromwell spoke at length about how the “coolies” had arrived to take the team out on July 22 and he had had to accompany them back down the glacier. What was left unasked was why Cromwell had accused Fritz of murder in August, but now in November was calling him a “first rate mountaineer.”
Clifford didn’t press Cromwell further, but he returned to Fritz’s bedside the next day to ask again about his decision to leave Dudley at Camp VII, particularly given Fritz’s stated suspicions that things had gone terribly wrong below him on the mountain.
Clifford Smith: Then, when your suspicions were aroused at Camp 7, if Dudley had insisted on remaining at Camp 7, as leader of the expedition why, on account of these conditions, didn’t you forcibly make him descend with you?
No one else, in the entirety of the investigation, asked Fritz this simple question. Like Cromwell when asked why he abandoned base camp, Fritz danced around the question but never answered it.
Fritz Wiessner: When we left Camp 7 we naturally expected food to be at Camp 6,* especially as we had left Durrance and the Sherpas there. The whole plan of the thing was to push toward the summit and when a party comes down from the summit they would be in a very tired and bad condition and they would find these camps and would not have to carry anything between camps. And naturally when we were at Camp 7 we expected everything to be at Camp 6.
Still Clifford persisted:
Q: But you say your suspicions were aroused at Camp 7 when you left Dudley?
A: When we came to Camp 7 we just didn’t know what was…. We were distraught.
And finally Clifford asked the question that was at the root of the disaster:
Q: Knowing the dangers on the mountain, then why didn’t you force Dudley to go down with you even if he wanted to stay at Camp 7?
A: We didn’t think Camp 6 would be cleared out. We had no explanation for Camp 7.
Although Fritz contradicted himself and didn’t address his own concerns about Camp VI being stripped in the face of Camp VII’s abandonment, Clifford concluded his questioning. As he and Connell were packing up their papers, Clifford asked Fritz about his $1,300 debt to Dudley, and in what manner he intended to pay it back to the estate. Fritz asked if he could have a year to repay it in $50 monthly installments, and Clifford agreed.
FOR THE NEXT several months Clifford fumed and fussed and busied himself executing Dudley’s estate while Fritz, still in his hospital bed, began his own crisis control. With unknown but nonetheless curious reasoning, Fritz decided Dudley’s estate should pay the expedition’s debt to the American Alpine Club of $1,700 ($25,500 today). He wrote to Tony Cromwell asking that he, as the expedition’s treasurer, approach Clifford Smith for the money. Cromwell shot back saying he doubted whether Smith would “feel himself under any obligation to assist in reducing” the debt and that the best bet was to go to the surviving members “pro rata” for the money. But, except for Cranmer and Cromwell, no one had anywhere near that kind of money (for his part, George Sheldon said he agreed that Smith should be asked to pay). Undaunted, Fritz next approached Joel Fisher to ask Smith for the money on behalf of the AAC. Fisher responded that asking for the entire $1,700 was not reasonable, but that he would approach Smith and request that the estate reimburse the $423 ($6,345 today) compensation the club had paid to the families of the deceased Sherpas. Clifford agreed and sent a check for $474, which included the costs of the memorial services, telegrams, and holding the porters at base camp an additional week.
FRITZ HAD ONLY just begun. With Jack still out of the country, he contacted George and Chap at Dartmouth, inquiring as to what they had said and to whom on their trek out, in Srinagar, and since they’d been home. In one phone conversation Fritz became particularly angry and “sounded off” at George for talking to the press when he had still been in India, even though Fritz and Jack had warned him to keep quiet about the expedition. First, George had told the Times of India that it had been Fritz who had taken the fall on the icy slope above Camp VII, pulling Pasang and Dudley after him, and, that the fall was stopped by the rope catching on a serac, not by Fritz digging his axe into the ice. George also flippantly described Dudley to the New York Times as a “skier, climber and two hundred pounds of love for loud song and great heights.” In typical fashion, George shrugged off the scolding, even telling Fritz that the reprimand had been “good for me, you’d be surprised.”
The Last Man on the Mountain: The Death of an American Adventurer on K2 Page 22