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

by Jennifer Jordan

  After Fritz’s exasperated phone call, George began writing an article for the Saturday Evening Post, an article which would pay him and the expedition needed dollars to help erase their remaining debt to the American Alpine Club. While wanting to be “clear and accurate,” he knew that the expedition, and Fritz in particular, had taken a “terrific shrubbing” and he didn’t want to add any fuel to the fire. The article appeared in March 1940 and was clever, detailed, and without a hint of the controversy underlying the disaster; it merely spoke of how their “brave” friend had perished in the pursuit of his dream to climb K2.

  In late December, three months after he and Fritz had parted, Jack Durrance finally returned to the United States. Clifford immediately wrote and telegraphed him at Dartmouth, trying to schedule a meeting. Jack also found a stack of messages from Fritz, which he ignored. After a month of avoiding the whole mess, he finally telegraphed Clifford and set up a meeting. On February 7, 1940, Clifford and his attorney again traveled to Hanover. Jack called Chap for support, and the four men met at the Hanover Inn.

  From the first moments of the nearly three-hour deposition, Jack indicated that he refused to share what he called his “personal feelings”—about Fritz, his leadership, or the quality of the team as a whole. What he did share was a defiant defensiveness. Clifford watched the young man and couldn’t help but feel that he was “excitable” and nervous, and that the tragedy had affected him deeply. But mostly, what Clifford walked away with was a sense that Jack thought more about Jack than anybody else, and that on the expedition, when he was in charge at base camp, he had thought about his own safety and comfort more than either Dudley’s or Wiessner’s high on the mountain.

  While Jack’s testimony was guarded and defensive, it is clear that he had not been coached by Fritz before speaking to Clifford and his lawyer. In detailing the expedition he openly blamed the failures, and by implication Dudley’s death, on a lack of leadership and communication, both elements clearly in Fritz’s domain. Clifford likewise was convinced that a lack of sahibs on the mountain properly instructing the Sherpas led to the severing of the lifeline of supplies between the high camps. He repeatedly asked Jack why there were not more “white men” in charge on the mountain, and wouldn’t it have been better if there were? Jack agreed, but said that it simply wasn’t possible.

  Jack Durrance: Circumstances had it different. There was no one able. We had been on the mountain too long. No one [at base camp] knew anything about how far they [the summit team] had gone, how they were going to run a summit attempt, because there were no communications.

  Clifford then started to ask him what the general plan of the expedition had been, but Jack interrupted, impatient and short.

  Jack: I do not know anything about the plans. I didn’t know I was going until a Friday and left the next Tuesday, and I never did get the plans.

  When Clifford pressed him on Dudley’s fitness as a climber, Jack admitted that Dudley was stronger and more suited to altitude than he, but he asserted his belief that Dudley had no business being on the mountain:

  Jack: I know he knew he couldn’t go alone and depended always on someone to take him on a rope which the rest of the people were able to do themselves…I think Dudley’s ambitions got away from him.

  And finally:

  Jack: He was always taken up and Wiessner did it. I think it was a frightful mistake that he went up.

  Clifford: You feel that Dudley made up his mind to climb the mountain, come what may?

  Jack: I think that exactly.

  No matter what did or did not happen on the mountain to cause the tragedy, Jack was Clifford’s only witness who actually spoke his truth. George, Chap, and Cromwell all skirted the issue and swallowed their anger and blame, evidently to protect Fritz, and possibly themselves, from a lawsuit. In writing his thoughts on the tragedy to George Trench, Clifford got as close to a reasonable explanation of what happened high on the mountain as anyone ever would: “It might have been that Wiessner came down the mountain for help [with Dudley] rather than to look for further supplies.”

  In the end, Clifford walked away dissatisfied from his months-long investigation. While he entirely blamed Fritz for the gross negligence that had led to Dudley’s abandonment and death, he was without recourse, learning the hard way that Himalayan expeditions are lawless societies because they are totally without objective witnesses. Neither the men nor the altitude allow for rational, clear thought, to say nothing of memory failings weeks and months after the fact. Unless someone is found with a smoking gun or a dripping knife, there are no rules, and while someone’s reputation may suffer, no one is ultimately accountable. The only bottom line is the loss of life, but even that is often shrouded in mystery, shame, and, always, a lot of blame.

  After the immediate crisis passed, the American Alpine Club had hoped the matter would fade away, but once the conflicting and accusatory reports started coming out of Srinagar from Groth, Wiessner, and Cromwell, and then with Clifford Smith gathering legal testimonies, they realized they too had better pay it some official attention. In late December the club formed its own committee of inquiry into the “K2 matter.” They enlisted five club stalwarts, including two of Fritz’s would-be teammates, Bestor Robinson and Bill House, who reported that the committee gathered fat folders of oral and written reports from each expedition member. Oddly, both Jack Durrance and Fritz Wiessner later told interviewers they had never been contacted by the committee. The committee also gathered information from the 1938 teammates and several club members who had climbed with Fritz and could attest to his personal character. Chief among them was Charlie Houston, who, upon hearing of his “dear friend” Kikuli’s death and of Fritz’s comment about “expecting casualties” on expeditions, immediately and for the rest of his life blamed Fritz personally for the deaths. Houston’s implacable censure cast a pall over the club and began dividing it into factions, pro-and anti-Fritz. The fact that the country was on the verge of entering its second world war against Germany was never far from anyone’s mind and it didn’t help that rumors persisted that Wiessner was a Nazi spy. Furthermore, the club was critically aware of Clifford’s looming threat of a wrongful death lawsuit and did everything in its power to avoid naming names or finding fault. Instead, their eight-page final analysis, much like Fritz’s original report written in Srinagar, detailed the team’s progress up and down the mountain rather than analyzing why it lost four of its members. Citing Dudley’s illness at Camp VII as his reason for not descending, the report points no fingers of blame or recrimination; rather, it opaquely suggests that a “weak administration” led to a failure in communication so that those at base were unaware of the peril of the summit team above. Years later, Bill House revealed that the committee focused on two causes for the tragedy: first, that Wiessner continued his assault on the mountain even after the team was critically weakened by the loss of Chap, George, and Jack as climbing members, and second, that it considered Jack’s stripping of the camps inconceivable and devastating to the safety of the members above him. However, they decided to “back off” publicly blaming Durrance because they considered him to have been mentally compromised by the altitude and not totally responsible for his actions. Above all else, the committee and the club wanted to avoid any dissent which the investigation and growing controversy could start.

  Remarkably, in the midst of the club’s investigation of what at least one of the team members was calling a murder, the club saw fit to charge the so-called “murdered” man’s family his unpaid $15 membership dues for 1939. Clifford Smith once again wrote a check.

  Even as “whitewashed” as some club members later claimed the report to be, Fritz immediately filed an objection, writing a sheaf of letters to the committee members, his friends in the club, and renowned climbers all over the world arguing his case—that Dudley was not ill when Fritz left him, that he in fact had “insisted” on staying on the mountain for another try at the summit, that Fritz’s le
adership of the team had been strong, clear, and direct, and that the team failed because the camps had been stripped.

  While he previously had been content to place the blame on Tendrup for “fabricating” the story of the summit team’s death and taking it upon himself to strip the upper camps, Fritz evidently now decided to take Tony’s tack and began blaming Jack for what he called the most egregious error of the entire expedition: the stripping and abandonment of the camps. Fritz even said he had found a note which Jack had left at Camp II stating his goal to clean the mountain of gear (a note which has never been found). What’s odd is that it was clearly and inarguably Tony Cromwell who gave the directive to clear the lower camps, not Jack. Why Fritz targeted Jack and not Tony for blame is unknown. But the blame stuck, mostly because Jack Durrance refused to defend himself in the wake of the attack; instead, he withdrew to the mountains of Colorado where he finished medical school, worked, and raised his family for sixty-three years.

  On row after row of dusty shelves in a narrow file room at the American Alpine Club reminiscent of the last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, boxes contain table assignments for the club’s annual dinners from the 1920s and 1930s and every letter sent or received by the club president at the time. Yet the entire K2 Committee of Inquiry investigation materials—scores of oral and written accounts, letters, interview notes, phone conversations, everything—are missing from the archives. The official eight-page report remains, but the documentation concerning how the committee reached those conclusions has been lost or destroyed.

  IN THE MONTHS after the expedition, while Fritz repeatedly urged others to approach Clifford Smith to pay the expedition’s debt, he ignored his own oral agreement with Smith to settle his personal $1,300 debt to Dudley. Finally, in October 1940, Clifford sent Wiessner a letter asking for payment in full. While the money was insignificant to Clifford, he couldn’t let Fritz just walk away, neither from Dudley on the mountain nor from his financial debt. Collecting it, however, wouldn’t be easy.

  After several more months of delays, Fritz sent his first $50 in July 1941. Further months passed with no payments. In responding to Smith’s reminders, Wiessner bemoaned his failing business and the poor financial climate, yet at the same time he was writing to Roger Whitney that he would be able to pay his stockholders dividends because of his “very heavy” season. Ironically, given Fritz’s ugly speculation that Jack had wanted to have the sleeping bags from the high camps so he could “use them with women,” it was Fritz who ended up selling the expedition’s bags to those who inquired, one of them to a Miss Selma Jones.

  With each of the few sporadic payments he made, Fritz asked Clifford for Dudley’s original films and photos, particularly those taken on the mountain.* Incredibly, given his growing hatred of the man, Clifford gave him copies of the negatives and film footage.

  In March 1942, the two met in New York, where Fritz asked Clifford if he could settle his remaining $950 bill for just $300, arguing that he had been delayed at great expense for several weeks getting out of India and that Clifford should take that into account. Clifford couldn’t quite believe his ears. Hadn’t Wiessner’s lack of judgment led to Dudley’s being left on the mountain in the first place? But after consulting with Gwen, who also wanted to be rid of “this Wiessner person,” the family agreed to settle the remaining debt for $500. Another six months later, Fritz paid the estate $250. It was the last payment Clifford Smith received. In two years of monthly letters and reminders from Clifford, Fritz ultimately paid less than half of the $1,300 he owed Dudley.

  At the same time Fritz was bemoaning his penury to Clifford, he was actually becoming financially successful for the first time in his life. He was working for the large firm Ultra Chemical—one contract with Sears, Roebuck and Company was reportedly worth $1 million (or $15 million today)—and, in 1942, his ski wax business received an enormous order from the US Army: 600,000 tubes for its 87th Mountain Infantry Battalion, which in 1944 became known as the 10th Mountain Division. Not only was the order huge but it was “rush,” enabling Fritz to charge the army even more. Fritz later told his biographers that although he was thrilled at the size of the order, he was “shocked” at its size and thought it typical of the wasteful US military because the battalion’s 30,000 troops would never be able to use that many tubes.* That year he reported his combined income from the chemical firm and his wax business between $500 and $800 a month ($7,500–$12,000 today).

  Unaware of Fritz’s windfall, and, thinking that he was trying in vain to get blood from a stone, Clifford ended his vendetta and walked away, hoping never to hear of Fritz Wiessner again.

  In closing out Dudley’s estate and notifying his beneficiaries, Clifford received many letters of condolence, shock, and thanks. One, from Dudley’s Harvard classmate Albert Gould, expressed the emotions of many:

  But how sad it is that he had to leave us! Yet he was doing the thing he liked when the end came, and was filled with the spirit of high adventure. I like to recall the many happy hours I have spent with Dudley ashore and afloat and to think that in his death as in his life he was engaged in manly pursuits which required courage, endurance, and imagination, as well as the ability to endure hardships with a cheerful spirit.

  Dudley’s friend and sailing colleague John G. Alden wrote, “If there were others more like him, the world would be better off.”

  THROUGH SETTLING Dudley’s estate Clifford came to know his brother more deeply in death than he had in life, and learned of Dudley’s remarkable friendships and generosity. In his will, Dudley bequeathed $75,000 to endow a new wing at the Knox County Hospital, $150,000 to Bowdoin College to establish a Smith Fund in his grandfather and great-uncles’ names, $25,000 to Harvard, $100,000 and his sloop, the Highland Light, to the US Naval Academy, even $25,000 to the Old Sailors’ Home in Boston. He also remembered his favorite mountain guides and sea captains, a handful of college buddies, his secretary Henry Meyer, each of his three nephews, and finally his Wolf cousins in London. In the end, even with his share of B. F. Smith’s trust left untouched, he gave away most of his personal estate, close to $500,000 ($7.5 million today).

  YEARS LATER, in 1983, Wiessner sold Dudley’s expedition film footage—the same footage that Dudley had tried to protect forty-four years before—to National Geographic for $440. On the contract, Fritz Wiessner claimed he was the sole owner and rights holder of the film.*

  After the firestorm finally died down, Fritz returned to his life: running his business, having his family, and climbing challenging rock walls well into his eighties. During the fifty years after the expedition he thought not of Dudley’s death and his own part in it but of his lost victory on the summit. While he would admit to his children and some of his climbing partners that he had been physically unable to get the incapacitated Dudley off the mountain, he nonetheless publicly continued to blame others in the disaster, and specifically Jack (but not Tony) for stripping the camps and breaking the lifeline. In 1953 he wrote, “I lost the summit (which was a setup for me) in 1939, through no mistake of mine but through the phantastic [sic] errors made by others…”

  Chapter 13

  The Reckoning

  Whenever found, [Dudley and the Sherpas] will be buried at the foot of the mountain. [If they are never found] K2 still remains a greater monument than man could ever build to four such brave and courageous men.

  —CLIFFORD WARREN SMITH, Dudley Wolfe’s brother

  Dudley Wolfe standing on the glacier below Broad Peak, K2’s 8,000-meter neighbor, on the last day of the 330-mile march into base camp. (Courtesy of the George C. Sheldon Family)

  For over sixty years, the puzzle of why Fritz left Dudley and in what condition and why Wolfe and the Sherpas died on K2 developed into one of Himalayan climbing’s greatest mysteries. Did the Sherpas reach Dudley and then all four die on their descent? Did the Sherpas regain Camp VII only to find Dudley already dead? Or were the Sherpas killed by an avalanche before they regained Camp VII, le
aving Dudley waiting hours, then days, until his body gave out?

  While we will never know exactly how long Dudley survived, we know he most likely died alone in his tent, which was eventually brought down to the glacier by a massive avalanche and found sixty-three years later. Because Dudley’s skeletal remains were found lying in the debris of a canvas tent and scattered vintage climbing equipment, it is all but certain that he came down in the tent. Otherwise he and his equipment would have been long since separated by the wind, weather, scavenging birds and snow foxes which prowl the area, and the violent freezing, thawing, and churning movement of the glacier. We also know he refused or was unable to descend by the time the three Sherpas reached him. But given his love of solitude and the quiet joy he found in nature, both on the ocean and in the mountains, we can hope that he died at peace. He was where he wanted to be, and from high-altitude experts we know that he gently slipped into a coma as the last of his life forces slowly left his body.

  When he finally made it off the mountain, days, weeks, maybe even years later, he was in his tent, surrounded not by the trappings of wealth but by the barest essentials—a Sherpa’s thin, filthy sleeping bag several sizes too small for his frame, a cooking pot, and a Primus stove rendered useless by his lack of matches and the strength to get it lit.

  K2 REMAINED unvisited for the next fourteen years, as war and then the turbulent partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 closed the area. The first team onto the mountain after 1939 was the third American expedition in 1953, once again led by Charlie Houston. When Houston reached 23,400 feet on the mountain, he found the ruins of the 1939 team’s Camp VI, where Tsering had waited in vain for two days for Kikuli, Kitar, and Phinsoo to return: two destroyed tents, sleeping bags rolled into one corner awaiting the three Sherpas who had gone to rescue Dudley, a stove, gasoline, and a small packet of Darjeeling tea wrapped in a handkerchief and tucked under the stove. Another of Houston’s 1953 expedition members, Bob Craig, found several letters and rolls of film Dudley had left at Camp V on his ascent. It’s unknown if those letters or film ever made it back to his family in Maine. The only remnants of Camp VII ever found were found at the base of the mountain in 2002.