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

by Jennifer Jordan

  Fritz had also decided to invite the two other young Dartmouth men to join the team: twenty-one-year-old George Sheldon, whose inclusion Fritz called a gamble given that he was untested for the “terrific and long strain” of a Himalayan expedition, and Chap Cranmer, a scion of the Denver Cranmers for whom Cranmer Park is named. At just twenty, he was the team’s youngest member and considered by many to be “Fritz’s boy” after he had climbed well with Wiessner in Canada the previous summer. Although Cranmer had been on various climbs in the Alps with his family, K2 would be his first experience on a mountain above 15,000 feet. His performance in Canada notwithstanding, his inclusion had more to do with his loyalty to Fritz and his ability to pay the fee than with his mountaineering skills. Not only were his credentials lacking, but he had suffered from poor health since childhood, spending many family vacations in the care of a nurse while the rest of the Cranmer brood explored the sights of the world, from the pyramids of Egypt to the Coliseum in Rome. Hoping to alleviate his concern, Fritz asked Chap to have the doctor who gave him his physical check for heart and lung problems in particular. Although the doctor gave Chap a clean bill of health, both Mrs. Cranmer and Fritz worried about him heading into the wilds of India; the last thing Fritz needed was a medical emergency two weeks away from the nearest telegraph station. In fact, having been to Nanga Parbat and seen first-hand how primitive that area of India was, Fritz knew that if something catastrophic were to happen to Chap’s health, there simply wouldn’t be time to get him to a hospital. But by Christmas of 1938 Fritz was out of options; he had to take both Cranmer and Sheldon and hope that their youth, hunger, and relative strength would serve the team adequately.

  The final member of Fritz’s lopsided team was Oliver Eaton “Tony” Cromwell, a Yankee blueblood born into great wealth. Others said of him that he was of the “idle rich,” and he used a lot of that money traveling to Europe and around the United States, where he had climbed a long list of rock walls and mountains—invariably at the end of a guide’s rope. Fritz and Tony had been friends and occasional climbing partners for several years, but Fritz tended to invite the well-heeled Cromwell on trips with a larger budget. Divorced, with a grown son, and nearly forty-seven years old, Cromwell told Wiessner when he signed onto the K2 expedition not to count on him for climbing or carrying loads above Camp IV. Instead, he would help Fritz with organization, both before and during the expedition. (One of his early contributions was to urge that Fritz refuse Paul Petzoldt as a member of the team because of Petzoldt’s increasingly outlandish behavior.*)

  The team was now a dangerous mix of unearned arrogance and grievous inexperience, and it suddenly got much worse. Just a few weeks before Fritz’s departure, disaster struck. Bestor Robinson fell while skiing and broke his leg. After all his indecision and concerns over his schedule, Robinson was now most definitely not going on the expedition. Although many feared the team was too weak for a Himalayan climb and questioned whether it should be scrapped, Fritz wouldn’t consider it.

  One of the last things Fritz took care of before he left New York was to finally become a naturalized citizen of the United States. Now the team was officially an American one.

  When Fritz embarked for Europe a few weeks later, Hall and Fisher worked furiously to raise money so that Jack Durrance could go. Hall also urged Fritz to reconsider the addition of Paul Petzoldt, advising that so long as the teammates did not let Petzoldt near the finances, they should be able to avoid trouble. Fritz again refused, even though he knew, after Nanga Parbat, that in order to climb a peak of K2’s size, a veritable army of support was needed. Instead of that desired regiment, Fritz had Dudley Wolfe and Tony Cromwell, both of whose mountain experience was limited to guided climbs in the Alps, and Chap Cranmer and George Sheldon, two men who were barely old enough to vote—and in fact Chap wouldn’t turn twenty-one until after the expedition in October 1939.

  With time running out and the American Alpine Club nervous about the team’s lack of experience, Joel Fisher and Henry Hall decided that Fritz needed Jack Durrance on the team. Fisher cabled Jack at Dartmouth and told him he was in. Fisher and Hall had been able to raise only $900 of the necessary $1,500 of his expedition fee* and Fisher asked whether Jack could raise the last $600 from friends and family. Within a few phone calls, Jack had received four pledges totaling the $600. After selling three pairs of skis for “pocket money,” buying a life insurance policy, and breaking the news to his girlfriend, Maria, and his mother, America, in Florida, he was on his way to K2.

  On the night of his departure, Fisher held a dinner party in Jack’s honor at his Fifth Avenue apartment overlooking Central Park in New York. Sitting at Fisher’s dining-room table that night, Jack listened as another guest, Charlie Houston, voiced his concerns that Fritz’s team was “seriously weak in its composition and experience.” Although he was a year younger than Jack, Houston commanded the conversation around the long table, his bright blue eyes sparkling.

  A year before, Houston and Bob Bates had painstakingly chosen from scores of would-be teammates the six men who would perform well as a team, on and off the mountain. Houston knew that above all else, the friendship and respect between members went a lot farther than mere climbing resumés to get a team safely up and off an 8,000-meter peak. He didn’t see either on Fritz’s ragtag team. Privately, Charlie also worried that his old friend had dangerous ambitions. Before leaving, Fritz had told him, “If I can climb this mountain, I’ll be set for life. Then I can come home, marry a rich girl, and retire.” Charlie couldn’t help but think it was an odd way to approach a mountain, any mountain, and K2 was not just any mountain; to set such ironclad goals for so unforgiving a peak was pure folly. But Fritz was struggling, privately and professionally. It was a bad time for Germans in America, and Fritz seemed to need K2, rather than just desiring it. That, Charlie thought, made this a doomed undertaking.

  As Charlie looked across the table at Jack Durrance, he sized up the man. He liked him, liked his confidence and his movie-star good looks. But he also worried that the handsome medical student and brash skier had a swagger about him that might clash with Fritz. Charlie knew that there can only be one leader on an expedition and on this expedition that leader was Fritz. It had been one of the reasons he had not wanted to go to K2 with Fritz; as much as he liked the man, he knew that he and Fritz would lock horns over who was in charge.

  Finally, Charlie offered Jack some valuable high-altitude medical tips, as he would be the assumed expedition doctor heading into the wilds of the Himalayas. Frostbite, Charlie told him, would be the team’s biggest concern. The treatment was basic: descend to base camp at once and keep the damaged skin dry, clean, and in the sun, without doing further damage through sunburn.

  With that, Charlie rose from the table without ceremony or excuse, thanked Joel and Mrs. Fisher for dinner, wished Jack well, and quickly left the apartment. His failure to reach the summit of K2 the year before still irked him. He had been so damn close and it still ate at him that it had come down to a handful of matches, matches that he himself had miscalculated. Years later Houston would admit that he had climbed as high as he was able, but in 1939, only months after he returned from the mountain, he still believed it had been in his grasp. That evening, seeing Jack heading to what had become his K2 suddenly felt more painful than he cared to admit. He walked the deserted streets of Manhattan’s Upper East Side for hours, alone and lost in his thoughts.

  After a glass or two of celebratory cognac, Fisher escorted Jack to the harbor where the SS Europa was loading its passengers for a midnight departure. Fisher showed him around the boat and then stood waving on the shore while the steamship slipped from the pier toward Europe. At about only half the cost of what the other team members paid, and almost none of it from his own pocket, the young pre-med student was on his way to the other side of the world. It was March 21. The cable from Fisher had come only three days before. He hadn’t even had time to get a proper pair of boots; they would ha
ve to be bought in Switzerland on his way to embarkation in Italy.

  Jack traveled third class on the German ship, which had an unfortunate reputation as a rust bucket and a vibration from the engine that rattled Jack’s molars. It had few or no comforts outside of first class, including a ban on butter many thought to be at Hitler’s dictate. Even though it was an uncomfortable journey, Jack was pleased that he did not suffer the seasickness that he had on his other passages to and from Germany, writing in his journal that he “failed to nourish the aquarium.”

  Once on dry land, he headed to Paris and enjoyed champagne lunches and wine-soaked dinner parties with an odd assortment of expatriate Americans. After dinner he and some Dartmouth classmates frequented Parisian speakeasies where “girls dressed only in panties swarmed” the handsome young Americans as they sat at the bar. The air was full of talk of la guerre and his friends told Jack that every Thursday night there was a city-wide blackout and air raid drill. Jack found the French girls “pretty,” the lifestyle rather “aimless,” and the French men effeminate to the point of being “fairy.”

  From Paris he took the train to Bern, Switzerland, for forty-eight hours of all-day skiing and all-night drinking. Unsuccessful in finding a proper pair of boots, he ordered a pair which would have to catch up with him at base camp. He then downed countless pints of the local beer with his guide, Fritz Oggi, before stumbling semiconscious onto a train for Milan, where he connected to Genoa to meet the team.

  Last to leave America, Jack was first to arrive at the pier in Genoa where the Italian steamship Conte Biancamano waited. It was the same ship that Dudley had spied eleven years before as he and the Mohawk raced to Spain in the King’s and Queen’s Cup. When Jack was shown to his room, he was thrilled to realize that, rather than descending into the boat’s steerage, he was being to led to the first-class deck. Dudley, although concerned that he was contributing more than his fair share toward the expedition, had upgraded everyone’s accommodations to first class, not just his own.

  Throwing himself onto the luxurious bed after his alcohol-soaked and exhausting journey from Hanover, Jack had barely closed his eyes when a “uniformed dark eye” ship steward rapped on his door and told him that an elderly gentleman was asking for expedition members and was waiting in the Smoking Room. Assuming it was Fritz, Jack quickly changed his clothes, combed his unruly hair, splashed water on his face, and sprinted up to where a diminutive and distinguished man awaited him. It was not Fritz Wiessner.

  Instantly recognizing the elf of a man, who resembled Sigmund Freud with his white hair and goatee, Jack stretched out his hand and bent ever so slightly in a sign of respect.

  “Signore Sella, I am honored to make your acquaintance,” Jack said as he took the man’s frail hand into his own.

  Vittorio Sella had made a name for himself by beautifully capturing in photographs the magic and majesty of K2 during the explorations of the Karakoram by Luigi Amadeo di Savoia, the Duke of Abruzzi, in 1909, thirty years before. As Sella pumped Jack’s hand and excitedly asked about the expedition, he became emotional in trying to convey his feelings for the far-off peak, wiping away tears as he spoke. Jack tried his best to understand Sella through his thick accent and hurried speech. As Jack leaned toward the old man, listening so intently it hurt his already aching head, he was suddenly aware of another presence and looked up to see Fritz approaching with a man Jack took to be Dudley Wolfe.

  Fritz quickly stepped into the conversation, extending his hand to Sella and assuming his role as trip leader. After he had introduced Wolfe to Sella, he introduced him to Jack. While Fritz was disappointed that Bestor Robinson, his old partner and proven talent, was not going to be with them, he nonetheless had Jack Durrance, a professional mountain guide, on board. Although the younger man was not as experienced on ice, Fritz had lobbied hard for his inclusion knowing that he was a workhorse in the mountains who had more than proven himself on steep and unforgiving terrain, something they had a lot of in their future.

  Last to meet up with the team were Chap Cranmer, George Sheldon, and Tony Cromwell, all of whom embarked in Naples and marveled at the opulence of the boat, with George and Chap whooping and clapping each other on the back as they found their way to their sumptuous cabins. Once settled, the men gathered at the oak and leather bar for several rounds of celebratory drinks, most of which ended up on Dudley’s bill.

  As the great ship’s horn blasted notice of their departure, the 1939 American K2 expedition raised the first of many glasses of the Biancamano’s house Chianti. The steamship pulled away from the pier and the men were en route to the definitive summer of their lives.

  Chapter 5

  The Getting There

  Is it not better to take risks…than die within from rot? Is it not better to change one’s life completely than to wait for the brain to set firmly and irreversibly in one way of life and one environment? I think it is…taking risks, not for the sake of danger alone, but for the sake of growth, is more important than any security one can buy or inherit.

  —CHARLES S. HOUSTON, K2 diary, 1938

  Never was a country more ruggedly beautiful and at the same time more wretchedly ugly.

  —GEORGE C. SHELDON, K2 diary, 1939

  Crossing the Braldu River on approach to K2. (Courtesy of the George C. Sheldon Family)

  Although 200 feet shorter and half the weight of the Titanic, the Conte Biancamano resembled the famed ship in its five-star service. From the potted palms lining the promenade deck to the painted ceiling of the music salon to the leather wing-backs and oriental carpets of the library and bar, the boat celebrated luxury with every carved pillar, recessed ceiling, and arched entranceway. As with most steamships before and since, its many meals were the focal points of each day. At dinner the men would dress in dinner jackets and gather in the dining room for the finest wines and culinary fare, its two-story ceiling with a trompe l’oeil vault and its carved balconies resembling an opera house.

  In April 1939, the ship was crowded with tourists as well as one thousand German Jews fleeing the Third Reich and heading for Shanghai. While many could only afford third class, those who were in primo classe entertained the other first-class passengers by singing songs and playing the piano and the accordion into the small hours of the night. While Jack dubbed the ship “Little Jerusalem,” Dudley, remembering the exuberance of his Jewish cousins in London, thought these refugees were “the only people on the boat with any personality at all.”

  The team enjoyed the week-long passage, particularly George Sheldon, who had never traveled outside the United States. Film footage shot by Dudley reveals a group of boisterous companions, frolicking like the college men some of them still were, playing deck tennis and golf, more than once scorching their skin in the Mediterranean sun, doing back flips into the swimming pool and mugging for the camera on the aft deck. The younger men drank hard and danced late, sweat soaking through their white linen jackets. At every port they all left the ship and toured the exotic harbors and villages along their route, becoming accustomed to the “baksheesh beggars” who pleaded with the rich Americans for money. As the boat left the Mediterranean Sea and began its passage past Port Said and Ismailia and into the Red Sea, Jack marveled that the sea was as “placid as castor oil” under the full moon. They absorbed one exotic vista after the next and the Dartmouth men relished the fact that their classmates in Hanover were in the late doldrums of a New England winter halfway around the world. Finally, they passed Massawa, Ethiopia, sailed through the Gulf of Aden, and headed out across the open Arabian Sea to Bombay. For the most part, the men were pleased with their fellow teammates, although Chap thought Tony rather dull, adding not even a touch of “sparkle” to the group.

  For his part, Dudley wasn’t feeling his best. He was suffering from his second typhoid inoculation and the hot days and crowded ship only made him feel more miserable. He spent most of his days resting in the privacy of his stateroom, writing to Alice and Clifford and rere
ading a small stack of old letters Alice had written over the past year. She was still very much in love with him, missed him terribly, and warned him again and again to “please be safe, my darling Dudley.” To make matters worse, the confrontation with Fritz over money had only escalated once they were gathered on the boat, where the boys seemed to assume he would pick up more than his share of the bar bills. Feeling like the team’s cash cow, Dudley approached the men and asked to be written a formal receipt for the money he had already advanced. On April 3 Fritz wrote the chit on behalf of the team, adding a bit of facetious edge:

  My dear Dudley,

  The books of the Expedition, as they appear today, show advances from you totaling $1,300.57.* It is mutually agreed by the other members of the Expedition, that this sum shall be repaid you, from the Treasury of the Expedition, as soon as my subscription is paid in, which will probably be by the middle of the summer.

  It is understood that this account is not final, and that suitable adjustment will be made later, if necessary.

  Believe me always,

  Very sincerely yours,

  F. H. Wiessner, Leader

  Dudley sent the note to Henry Meyer asking him to put it in the safe. Although somewhat satisfied, he stepped back from the financial transactions, and Fritz was forced to go to Cromwell and Cranmer, his two other wealthy members, to spend money the expedition didn’t have.