The Last Man on the Mountain: The Death of an American Adventurer on K2 (13 page)

When Fritz and Tony finally returned to base camp from their recon of the Northeast Ridge, George and Dudley rushed to meet them on the glacier with the news of Chap’s illness and (much to Jack’s annoyance) of their parts in the doctoring.

Fritz shook his head in frustration. He considered Chap his “best man” on the team, and it now looked as if he might be out of the climb before a single high camp had been established. But Fritz still had hope that Chap would regain his strength. The year before, Charlie Houston had been forced to stay in Askole with his teammate Paul Petzoldt, who had suddenly become delirious with high fever and crippling back pain.
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While the rest of the 1938 team had continued on toward base camp, Charlie tended to Petzoldt, not knowing if he would live or die. Petzoldt had not only recovered, he had climbed to 26,500 feet on the mountain, higher than any member of the team. But unlike Petzoldt, a feisty Wyoming mountain guide with a reputation for tough and brawny machismo, Chap never got back his strength or, apparently, his interest in climbing the mountain, and instead was content to lounge in base camp for the duration of the summer.

Fritz’s team was effectively down to four: Jack Durrance, George Sheldon, Dudley Wolfe, and Fritz himself, with Tony Cromwell and Joe Trench only helping to supply the low camps. Just two of the men, Wiessner and Durrance, had any real mountaineering experience as guides, not clients, and only Fritz had been tested above 15,000 feet. But even with his experience on Nanga Parbat, Fritz was uncomfortable, even fearful, of steep ice faces, much preferring the more stable and predictable surface of rock.

Nonetheless, his grossly inexperienced team, which had just become critically weakened with the loss of Chap, had to begin its work to climb the formidable mountain.

B
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J
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5 Chap was well enough to take care of his own bodily functions. The team left him with Noor, their base camp cook, and started carrying loads of gear to the base of the mountain. The plan was a simple if arduous one. The team would climb up the mountain to where last year’s team had found suitable space for the high camps—not always easy to find on the steep, rocky ridge. There they would carve out tent platforms in the ice and snow, erect a tent, bring up supplies from the camp below, and then move up to where the next camp would be built. From camp to camp, the team would build a supply chain up and, more important, down the mountain. As necessary as the camps were for the ascending team, they would be crucial for those descending, particularly if the summit had been reached. By establishing a veritable lifeline of food, fuel, stoves, tents, and sleeping bags, the team would be able to descend the mountain without the added weight of supplies. Given what their exhaustion was going to be, every ounce not carried in their rucksacks was an ounce of energy in their bodies which could mean the difference between survival and death.

In order to avoid the worst of the heat as well as the threat of avalanches sweeping down both K2 and its 8,000-meter neighbor, Broad Peak, and across the glacier where they would be walking, the team rose in the predawn chill, packed food and equipment into 50-pound loads for the Sherpas and 35-pound loads for the sahibs, and trudged the six miles up the glacier to the base of the Abruzzi Ridge. While most of the going was straightforward, as the men neared the base of the ridge, where the glacier turned a sharp corner, they encountered a mile-long field of house-sized blocks of ice. Much like rapids in a river, these ice falls form where the glacier drops sharply in elevation and where it narrows or bends around the base of the mountains, thus constricting the flow of frozen water and buckling and breaking it into blocks. Always changing and constantly shifting, ice falls can be one of the most dangerous sections of a mountain to climb. (Some consider the ice fall on Everest to be the mountain’s deadliest mile.) Finding their way through its often circuitous caverns, Fritz and the team finally established what they hoped was a safe route for their frequent trips between base camp and Camp I.

Returning from carrying a load to Camp I, Jack and George got into one of their competitive races, even though they were at 18,000 feet. Predictably, when George sped up, he forced Jack and Fritz to match the breakneck speed and, once at base camp, all three men felt the ill effects of “jogging” at altitude. Fritz sharply chastised the men, George in particular, for their little stunt.

As Dudley crawled into his tent that night and lay in his sleeping bag, he realized with some sadness and alarm that the team was not coming together as he had hoped. He had worried both on the boat and again at the ski hut in Gulmarg that the boys seemed ill-prepared, both physically and mentally, for the task at hand. Today’s game of tag on the glacier only squandered their already compromised energies. He was glad Fritz had finally said something, although he doubted they took it seriously—they had made schoolboy faces behind Fritz’s back after his rebuke. Dudley often felt he was in the middle of a fraternity house prank rather than a Himalayan expedition. But he would have to put that out of his mind. He was here to climb the mountain, and so was Fritz. If necessary, they would do it without the others.

The next day, as the team was returning from another carry through an ice couloir below Camp I, Fritz suddenly disappeared ahead of them down the route without a word. The Sherpas took over the lead and helped the less experienced sahibs navigate the icy section. After they all made it back safely, Jack approached Fritz and asked what that was all about.

“It was a test,” Fritz said sharply. “To see how you all did without me.”

Jack looked at him with alarm. Testing the men with a potentially dangerous stunt was even more brazen than Jack had thought Fritz to be. Never eager for a showdown, Jack walked away without challenging Fritz, but, like Dudley, his apprehension grew every day.

On June 7 Dudley, the team, and the eight Sherpas
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carried their third load of food and gear (including one thousand cigarettes) from base camp to Camp I. There, Jack, Dudley, and George drew straws to see which of them would accompany Fritz on a reconnaissance climb and load carry to where their Camp II would be situated. Jack won and started out with Fritz. Soon, he felt like crying out loud in pain as he struggled with his heavy pack in the thin air. After finding a suitable spot for Camp II, they dumped their pack loads and retreated back to Camp I, where the rest of the men waited. When they all returned to base camp the following night they felt the satisfaction of their hard work. Climbing into their sleeping bags with a pipe and a book after dinner and wearing layers of clothes and gloves on their hands against the bitter nights, the men relished their exhaustion. But as they tried to settle into deep sleep, they were frustrated by it being a series of naps rather than solid slumber. Not only was the altitude causing headaches, dizziness, light nausea, and insomnia as their bodies adjusted to the thin air, but they were frequently awakened by the glacier beneath their heads. Its constant movement caused it to buckle, crack, groan, pop, and snap with such violence and volume the men feared it would open up and swallow them, tents and all. It reminded some of them of skating on a partially frozen pond and hearing and feeling the vacuous booms as the ice cracked and moved beneath them. Disconcerting at best, terrifying at worst, the glacier’s noisy shifting was a natural occurrence but difficult to sleep through, particularly when the great echoing explosions of ice beneath them could be felt through every inch of their bodies stretched out in their sleeping bags.

For Jack, the days on the ice weren’t much better. His only winter experience in the mountains had been on skis, not in hobnailed boots, and he was nervous with every step as he negotiated over the crevasses on the daily trips to Camp I. Shaking his head to clear it of the dull ache and fuzziness that had begun to plague him, he tried to learn as fast as he could about glacier technique. The groaning, cracking, almost belching world of ice was foreign to him, and he didn’t much like it. At one point, Fritz and he doubled the safety rope between them and ventured out to the middle of the glacier, testing its strength and scouting for hidden crevasses into which the men might disappear without warning. Once back on the thicker edge of the glacier nearer the mountain, Jack was enormously relieved and hoped he wouldn’t have to repeat the mission. From his first moments at base camp, he had started to fear that he wouldn’t survive this unpredictable, frightening landscape. He knew it was crazy and premonitions had never been his style, but regardless, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he wouldn’t live through the summer and this world of capricious, almost evil ice which he now called home.

After only a few days working to cache gear low on the mountain, the already weak organization of the team began to deteriorate further. Rather than packing loads and helping keep the mess tent orderly on their rest days at base camp, most of them would nap and read (
War and Peace
in George’s case,
Betrayal in Central Europe
in Dudley’s). Jack was left to do a lot of the grunt work and his resentment flourished. Time and again he found himself the only one cleaning up after meals or preparing loads, as well as tending to the medical needs of the Sherpas, his other teammates, and the ever-ailing Chandra. Joe Trench in particular irked him. The British officer had proven to be not only lazy and complaining, he had developed a “sahib attitude” toward Jack, ordering him around like his “Indian servant.” Adding to Jack’s and the team’s frustration with Joe was the fact that although he was supposed to be their liaison to the local porters, he hadn’t bothered to learn their language. He was, in Jack’s thinking, a “total waste of baggage” and a clumsy, even dangerous, load on the mountain—one which Jack was forced to lead up and down the rope when they carried loads to Camps I and II.

On June 9, before the first light of morning appeared, the men at base camp awoke to the hiss of the stove being started as Noor began breakfast for the team. Nearby, Dudley sat up in his tent and lit his lantern, careful to avoid touching the sides of the tent which had gathered condensation overnight and, if bumped, would rain down on him. All of his clothes and gear sat in neat piles. Today was it. He and Fritz, and hopefully George and Jack, would climb from base to Camp I and then continue on to establish Camp II. With Camp I fully stocked it was now their job to move themselves and the supplies farther up the mountain.

Like most climbers at base camp, Dudley wore his long underwear day and night except to occasionally give himself what his buddies in the war had called a “French whore’s bath”—quickly swabbing his armpits and groin with soap and water. Still seated in his sleeping bag, he pulled on a plaid wool shirt over the long underwear, then his heavy Irish knit sweater, and on top of it, his fleece-lined anorak. Next, he pulled on a pair of thin wool socks and over them a pair of his heavy ski socks. Finally, he reached for his double-layer khaki pants and scooted into them, half sitting and half lying on the sleeping bag. Fully dressed, he kneeled on the air mattress and began carefully folding and rolling the sleeping bag as small as he could before tying it tight with a leather strap. Sitting back, he picked up his heavy, leather climbing boots, and, even though he had sharpened them the night before, made sure the hobnails had a good edge. He then looked at the gear he would take high on the mountain. Each man could only take what he could carry himself; the Sherpas would not be able to carry any of the sahibs’ personal gear. Leaving his two larger cameras and his movie camera, Dudley put his smaller Leica and a few rolls of film near his rucksack. Quickly but carefully he chose the personal items he would take: toothbrush, small tube of paste, half a cake of soap, metal file to sharpen his hobnails and crampons, small leather journal, pencil, pocket knife, stainless steel match case, and one needle and a spool of heavy black thread from his sewing kit. Then his climbing equipment: crampons, goggles, and windproof double-layer parka and trousers. He would live in the clothes on his back, but took an extra wool shirt and a pair of socks, just in case. He had traveled the world with trunks of clothing and accessories; this time, everything he needed would be on his own back.

He put the gear into the rucksack, mindful of what he might need during the day’s climb, which he put in last. He tied his sleeping bag to the pack and put on his boots and knee-high gaiters, adjusting the leather foot straps so they weren’t touching a hobnail. He took one last look around the tent to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. Satisfied, he untied the tent flap, turned and blew out the lantern, climbed out backwards on all fours, and reached back in for the rucksack. Standing straight, he slung the rucksack onto his back, put on his leather and canvas gauntlets, and reached for his ice axe, which was stuck upright in the snow by the tent. He was ready to climb K2.

As the team made its slow progress up the rock and ice slopes, Fritz soon realized he had no one else on the team he could trust to establish the route and anchor the safety rope through the steepest sections. None had the experience or technical ability. He had to assume the entire responsibility. As the history of K2 became written in the years to come, Fritz’s feat in leading and anchoring all but a few of the rope lengths on the mountain is unparalleled. With so much exhausting work ahead of him, Fritz tried to delegate logistical responsibility to his deputy, Tony, giving him a list of directives and instructions that in his absence were to be carried out lower on the mountain: what supplies were to be carried to what camps and when, which of the Sherpas could be trusted with which loads, and so on. But Tony immediately balked, and, while Fritz and Dudley were exploring what was above them on the mountain, he did none of the work Fritz had requested. When Fritz and Dudley descended back to Camp I from their reconnaissance a few days later, they found the entire team lolling about napping and resting. The large Logan tent was a chaos of gear and garbage, no dinner was prepared, no loads readied, and no evident movement had been made toward actually climbing the mountain. Unleashing his infamous temper, Fritz put the blame squarely on Tony, accusing him of insubordination, laziness, and ineptitude. As was his style, after his tantrum Fritz assumed that since he was no longer angry, no one else was either, and that they all went to bed that night “friends.” But Tony was mortified and outraged by Fritz’s attack and decided then and there that he was finished on the mountain, with the expedition, and, in particular, with Fritz. Unknowingly, Wiessner had lost another foot soldier. He had also lost, in every sense of the word, a team player.