The Last Man on the Mountain: The Death of an American Adventurer on K2
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Source Materials
UNPUBLISHED DIARIES (each from the family’s private collection)
Fritz Hannes Wiessner, Jack Durrance, George C. Sheldon, Chappell Cranmer, and Alice Damrosch Wolfe.
UNPUBLISHED LETTERS
Dudley Francis Wolfe, Alice Damrosch Wolfe, Clifford Wolfe Smith, Gwendolen Wolfe Sharpe, Mabel Smith Wolfe, Marion Smith, Lucien Wolf, Arthur Wolf, Janice Smith Snow, Fritz Hannes Wiessner, Jack Durrance, George C. Sheldon, Chappell Cranmer, Lt. George Trench, Oliver Eaton Cromwell, Henry Hall, Joel Fisher, Walter Wood, Lawrence Coveney, Robert Underhill, Charles Houston, Robert Bates, William House, Bestor Robinson, Al Lindley, Lincoln O’Brien, Lincoln Washburn, Bradford Washburn, Adams Carter, Dr. Hans Kraus, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, Paul Petzoldt, Major Kenneth Hadow, Roger Whitney, Betty Woolsey, Christine Reid, Rosi Briscoe, Dorothy Dunn, Capt. R.N.D. Frier, E. L. Shute, Percy Olton, Lowell Thomas, Pete Schoening, Galen Rowell, Dee Molenaar, Sterling Hendricks, Yvon Chouinard, Nick Clinch, Hank Coulter, Dr. Karl Maria Herrligkoffer, Dick Burdsall, and Hassler Whitney.
LEGAL DEPOSITIONS
Fritz Hannes Wiessner, Jack Durrance, Oliver Eaton Cromwell, Pasang Lama Sherpa, Dawa Sherpa, George C. Sheldon, Chappell Cranmer, and Joel Fisher.
INTERVIEWS AND CORRESPONDENCE
Charles S. Houston, Gail Bates, Andy Wiessner, Polly Wiessner, Joanna Durrance, Charis Durrance, John Durrance, Jeanie Cranmer Clark, Bruce Cranmer, Forrest Cranmer, Allen Cranmer, Betty Cranmer, Holbrook Mahn, George Sheldon, Susan Sheldon, John E. Cromwell, Bob Craig, Dee Molenaar, Charley Mace, Thomas Hornbein, William Putnam, Bernadette McDonald, Alisa Storrow, Sidney Howard Urquhart, Maggie Howard, Janice Vaughan Smith Snow, Crocker Snow Jr., Zaidee Parkinson, Jed Williamson, Henry Barber, Steve Roper, Ed Webster, Paul Sibley, Conrad Anker, Michael Brown, Ted Wilson, Dr. Peter Hackett, Dr. Colin Grissom Dr. Paul Rock, Dr. Louis Reichardt, Dr. Lorna Moore, Dr. Erik Swenson, and the high altitude research team at NASA.
AMERICAN ALPINE CLUB ARCHIVES
Andrew Kauffman Files, Henry Hall files, the 1938, 1939, and 1953 American K2 Expedition files and with the invaluable assistance of the AAC Library’s Beth Heller and Gary Landek.
ALUMNI, HISTORICAL, AND PROFESSIONAL SOURCES
Robert Glatz, Harvard Varsity Club
Barry Kane and Pat Dyer, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University
Andrea Bartelstein, Dartmouth College
Suzy Akin, Hackley School, New York
Charlene Swanson, Pomfret Academy, Connecticut
Ruth Quattelbaum and Tim Sprattler, Phillips (Andover) Academy, Massachusetts
Jennifer Neuner, Manlius Pebble Hill School (formerly St. John’s School at Manlius)
Todd Knowles, Family History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Salt Lake City
Jack Driscoll and Bob Dunn, New England Ski Museum, Franconia, New Hampshire
Gunnar Berg, Institute for Jewish Research, New York
Flora Rodriguez, New York Junior League
Michael Kennedy, Alpinist magazine
Matt Samat, Climbing magazine
Niels Helleberg, Alden Boat Designs
Dave Graham, Corinthian Yacht Club, Marblehead, Massachusetts
Morten Lund, Ski magazine
Ted Hennes, Knollwood Country Club, Elmsford, New York
Union Boat Club, New York
Cannell, Payne and Page, Yacht Builders, Camden, Maine
Diane Shoutis, National Outdoor Leadership School
David Little, historian, 10th Mountain Division Resource Center, Denver
Adriane Hanson, Princeton University Archives
Selected Bibliography
BOOKS
Auerbach, Paul, ed. Wilderness Medicine. St. Louis: Mosby Publications, 2001.
Bell, Helen G. Winning the King’s Cup. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1928.
Child, Greg. Thin Air: Encounters in the Himalayas. Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Books, 1988.
Conefrey, Mick, and Tim Jordan. Mountain Men: Tall Tales and High Adventure. London: Boxtree, 2002.
Curran, Jim. K2: The Story of the Savage Mountain. Seattle: Mountaineers Books, 1995.
Curran, Jim. K2: Triumph and Tragedy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989.
Finletter, Gretchen Damrosch. From the Top of the Stairs. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1946.
Fuess, Claude M. Phillips Academy, Andover, in the Great War. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1919.
Hall, Lincoln. Dead Lucky: Life after Death on Mount Everest. Adelaide: Random House, 2007.
Hornbein, Thomas F., and Robert B. Schoene, eds. High Altitude: An Exploration of Human Adaptation. New York: Marcel Dekker, 2001.
Houston, Charles S. Going Higher: The Story of Man and Altitude. 4th edn. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1987.
Houston, Charles S. Going Higher. 5th edn. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2005.
Houston, Charles S. High Altitude, Illness and Wellness: The Prevention of a Killer. Guilford, CT: Globe Pequot Press, 1998.
Houston, Charles, Robert Bates, et al. Five Miles High. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1939.
Houston, Charles S., MD, Robert Bates, et al. K2: The Savage Mountain. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1954.
Houston, Charles S., John R. Sutton, and Geoffrey Coates, eds. Hypoxia and Mountain Medicine: Proceedings of the 7th International Hypoxia Symposium Held at Lake Louise, Canada, 1991. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1992.
Isserman, Maurice, and Stewart Weaver. Fallen Giants: A History of Himalayan Mountaineering from the Age of Empire to the Age of Extremes. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.
Kauffman, Andrew, and William Putnam. K2: The 1939 Tragedy. Seattle: Mountaineers Books, 1992.
King, John, and Bradley Mayhew. Karakoram Highway. Hawthorn, Australia: Lonely Planet Books, 1989.
Knowlton, Elizabeth. The Naked Mountain. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1933.
Lawrence, Ruth. Genealogical History of the Smith Family. New York: National Americana Society, 1932.
Mason, Kenneth. Abode of Snow. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1955.
McDonald, Bernadette. Brotherhood of the Rope: The Biography of Charles Houston. Seattle: Mountaineers Books, 2007.
Neale, Jonathan. Tigers of the Snow: How One Fateful Climb Made the Sherpas Mountaineering Legends. New York: Thomas Dunne Books (St. Martin’s Press), 2002.
O’Connell, Nicholas. Beyond Risk: Conversations with Climbers. Seattle: Mountaineers Books, 1993.
Potterfield, Peter. In the Zone: Epic Survival Stories from the Mountaineering World. Seattle: Mountaineers Books, 1996.
Ridgeway, Rick. The Last Step: The American Ascent of K2. Seattle: Mountaineers Books, 1980.
Rowell, Galen. In the Throne Room of the Mountain Gods. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1986.
Shipton, Eric. Blank on the Map. London: Hodder and Stoughton Limited, 1938.
Smith, Benjamin Franklin. A Maine Family of Smiths. Glen Cove, ME: privately published, 1922.
Styles, Showell. On Top of the World: An Illustrated History of Mountaineering and Mountaineers. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1967.
Viesturs, Ed, and David Roberts. K2: Life and Death on the World’s Most Dangerous Mountain. New York: Broadway Books, 2009.
Webster, Edward. Snow in the Kingdom: My Storm Years on Everest. Eldorado Springs, CO: Mountain Imagery, 2000.
Whittaker, Jim. A Life on the Edge: Memoirs of Everest and Beyond. Seattle: Mountaineers Books, 1999.
Wickwire, Jim, and Dorothy Bullitt. Addicted to Danger. New York: Pocket Books, 1998.
Willis, Clint, ed. High: Stories of Survival from Everest and K2. New York: Balliett and Fitzgerald, 1999.
ARTICLES, PAMPHLETS, AND PAPERS
“Interview with Fritz Wiessner.” Ascent 1, no. 3 (May 1969): 15–19.
Cranmer, Chappell, and Fritz Wiessner. “The Second American Expedition to K2.” American Alpine Journal 4 (1940–42).
Cromwell, Eaton. “Spring Skiing in the Vale of
Kashmir.” Appalachia 23, no. 2 (1940).
Dietz, Thomas. “Altitude Tutorial.” International Society for Mountain Medicine, 2001. www.ismmed.org/np_altitude_tutorial.htm.
Dill, D. B., E. H. Christensen, and H. T. Edwards. “Gas Equilibria in the Lungs at High Altitudes.” American Journal of Physiology 115 (April 1936): 538–8.
Edwards, H. T. “Lactic Acid in Rest and Work at High Altitude.” American Journal of Physiology 116 (1936).
Grocott, M., et al. “Arterial Blood Gases and Oxygen Content in Climbers on Mount Everest.” New England Journal of Medicine 360:140 (2009). Houston, Charles S. “The Effect of Pulmonary Ventilation on Anoxemia.” American Journal of Physiology 146 (1946): 613–21.
Houston, Charles S., and Richard Riley. “Respiratory and Circulatory Changes During Acclimatization to High Altitude.” American Journal of Physiology 149 (1947): 563–88.
Pugh, L. G. “Physiological and Medical Aspects of the Himalayan Scientific and Mountaineering Expedition, 1960–1961.” British Medical Journal 2 (September 8, 1962): 621–7.
Roberts, David. “The K2 Mystery.” Outside IX, no. 9 (October 1984).
Sheldon, George C. “Lost Behind the Ranges.” Saturday Evening Post 212, no. 38 (March 16, 1940).
Wiessner, Fritz. “The K2 Expedition of 1939.” Translated from the original German. Appalachia 31, no. 1 (June 1956).
Zimmerman, Mark D., et al. “Survival.” Annals of Internal Medicine 127, no. 5 (September 1997).
* Araceli Segarra of Spain, Hector Ponce de Leon and Armando Dattoli de la Vega of Mexico, and cameramen/climbers Jeff Rhoads and Jeff Cunningham of the United States.
* Observation by Betty Woolsey, who was in attendance.
* Again, an observation by Betty Woolsey in attendance.
* Although he remained childless in his marriage, Francis Smith sent $50 a month (roughly $1,120 today) to a woman, Imogene Tappan of Concord, New Hampshire, to support a girl he called his ward, Helen Tappan, from 1884 until 1905 when she turned twenty-one. There is no record to determine whether in fact Helen was his daughter, although such ongoing support suggests she was. Also, the fact that Francis kept the receipts as well as Helen’s written confirmation of the final payment, releasing him from further financial obligation, indicates he wanted an assurance against any future claims to the Smith estate which a child, even if illegitimate, might bring.
* Joseph’s brother was Nebraska state senator Howard Hammond Baldrige, his nephew was US Congressman Howard Malcolm Baldrige, and his grand-nephew was H. Malcolm Baldrige, secretary of commerce under George H. W. Bush.
† While commonly known as Andover Academy today, at the turn of the twentieth century the school was known as Phillips Academy at Andover, which remains its formal name.
* In 1901, B. F. had lost his only son, and Mabel her only sibling, Clifford Warren Smith, to a burst appendix. When he died, Clifford left a son, Clifford Warren Smith, Jr.
* Lucien Emmanuel Wolf was a prominent Jewish diplomat, foreign affairs expert, journalist, and historian. After the outbreak of the Russian pogroms in 1881, Wolf took a leading role in the effort to aid persecuted Jews in eastern Europe and began warning the allied leaders of an ugly anti-Semitism raging throughout Europe which, if left unchecked, would only spread. However, because of his anti-Russian efforts he was perceived as pro-German. After World War I he lost his standing as a diplomat and effectively ended his career in journalism.
* It’s not clear whether Mabel or B. F. knew the truth of Dudley Senior’s Jewish heritage, although it’s hard to imagine a man as savvy and successful as B. F. wouldn’t know. In a book B. F. commissioned about the Smith family in 1932, it says that Dudley Senior was “the son of a prominent wool merchant,” not a Jewish pipe-maker and tobacconist, who had spent much of his youth in India.
* “Boche,” a term of derision meaning “rascal” or “pig-headed,” was used to describe the German soldiers.
* The enlistment delay turned out to be providential for Dudley, as most of the legionnaires died in battle.
* Harvard in the 1920s was more lenient in its academic standards for applicants, and Dudley’s ability to pay cash for his education couldn’t have hurt his application process. In any case, he was in.
† The Owl Club would later claim Senator Edward Kennedy as a longstanding member, until political pressure forced the senator to resign in 2006 from the still all-male society.
* Kraus, an early proponent of using physical therapy and exercise rather than surgery to treat weak and wounded spines, went on to become President John F. Kennedy’s primary back specialist.
* As early as 1577, astronomers were measuring not only the distance of stars but the elevation of mountains, and by the time the British Trigonometric Society sent out its cartographers to the ends of the earth in the nineteenth century, the world’s highest peaks had been measured to within inches of their actual height.
* From the early Egyptians to present-day Tibetans and Nepalese come tales of spirits and monsters which live in and, some believe, protect the mountains as the seat, house, or throne of gods. To trespass on that sacred land, particularly the summit, is a fool’s endeavor. Nepal’s Kangchenjunga, the world’s third highest mountain, is considered by the Nepalese to be the most sacred of all the 8,000-meter peaks and for many years after climbers first reached the top, they respected that belief by not setting foot on the actual summit. However, many recent climbers have violated that respect and left their footprint, and their vainglorious keepsakes, on the true summit. Some believe that, as a result, Kangchenjunga remains one of the most difficult to ascend, and survive, of all the fourteen 8,000-meter giants.
* Correspondence between Henry Hall and Wiessner, December 1938.
* Germany’s 1934 attempt on Nanga Parbat is generally considered unparalleled for sheer agony; ten expedition members, including Willy Merkl, died of exposure and sickness. Only one other team has lost more lives in the long and deadly history of Himalayan climbing: Germany’s 1937 attempt on Nanga Parbat, in which no fewer than fifteen members and Sherpas died in a single avalanche. Small wonder Nanga Parbat is known as the Man-Eater in many climbing circles.
* The only expedition in American climbing history which carries more respect and admiration than the 1938 trip is Houston’s 1953 return to K2, where, trying to rescue a fallen comrade from high on the mountain, he and the rest of his team survived a freak fall and in the process defined for many what the true “fellowship of the rope” is.
† Petzoldt stayed on in India after the expedition, having become enamored with Eastern religion, as well as a fetching American missionary’s wife. In a still mysterious accident, Petzoldt and the missionary were arguing when the missionary fell, hit his head, and died. Petzoldt made a frantic appeal to Houston back in New York for money to buy his way out of jail, which Houston sent.
* Here Dudley fudged a bit, as the invitation was proffered back in New York the previous fall.
* $37,500 today. Expeditions in the early twenty-first century to K2 cost each climber less than half of that, or approximately $15,000. But in 1939 it took months versus weeks to get there.
† Fritz had given Dudley a list of team members whose experience and maturity boded well for the expedition. Unfortunately, none of those men ended up going on the trip.
* House filled out a questionnaire for a biography on Wiessner in the 1980s. That biography was never written.
* Letter from Fritz Wiessner to Henry Hall at the American Alpine Club, December 28, 1938.
* Letter from Fritz Wiessner to Henry Hall, December 28,1938.
* $1,500 was evidently considered the rock-bottom amount required to get Durrance onto the expedition.
* $19,509 today. It’s no wonder Dudley was getting nervous.
* George never saw Susie again, but years later when his only daughter, Susan, learned of Susie’s existence, she wondered if her father’s long-ago shipboard romance had been the source of her name.
* Small breakfast, usually tea and fruit.
† Tony Cromwell, approaching his forty-seventh birthday in September, was the eldest member of the expedition and became “Pop Sahib” to the porters, Sherpas, and fellow teammates alike.
* For all of his good intentions and effort, when they arrived at base camp in 1938, Houston found the canisters were empty. Whether old or merely defective, they were nonetheless useless.
* Part of the Sherpas’ compensation was a climbing package of boots, sleeping bag, and steel-frame pack. Although each piece of gear was a cheaper version of what the sahibs had, it was more and better than they could afford. They valued their gear as much as the rupees they would receive at the end of the expedition.
* A practice in which a woman is married to several men at the same time, polyandry occurs when a woman marries the eldest son in a family and automatically becomes the wife of all of his brothers.