The Last Man on the Mountain: The Death of an American Adventurer on K2 (25 page)

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.
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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.
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Clifford sat up straight and indicated to Henry he’d like to ask a few questions.

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.

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.

Still Clifford persisted:

And finally Clifford asked the question that was at the root of the disaster:

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.

F
OR 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.

F
RITZ 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.”

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.

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