The Second American Karakoram Expedition was a 1939 mountaineering expedition which attempted to climb K2 - at 8,611 metres the highest mountain in the Karakoram range and the second highest on Earth. Led by Fritz Weissner, the expedition was dogged by illness and poor morale, yet Weissner came within 200 metres of the summit and almost made the first ascent of an 8000 m mountain. However, a series of misunderstandings and poor decisions led to the weakest member of the team, Dudley Wolfe, being left alone high on the mountain, and the expedition ended with the deaths of Wolfe and the three Sherpas who attempted to rescue him. The recriminations which followed the expedition caused deep divisions in the American mountaineering community, and the events remain controversial to this day.

Background

Prior to the American interest in K2 in the late 1930s, the mountain was little known. Only two attempts had previously been made to the peak. Oscar Eckenstein had led an abortive expedition in 1902, which had reached around 6525 metres on the Northeast Ridge before breaking up due to the illness of a climber and infighting within the team. ^[1] Seven years later Luigi Amedeo, Duke of the Abruzzi made an attempt on the Southeast Spur (alter known as the Abbruzzi Spur) which was abandoned at around 6250 metres due to the spur's steepness, difficulty and lack of camp sites. The duke subsequently declared that K2 was unclimbable, and it would be nearly 20 years before another attempt was made. ^[2]

The driving force for American interest was a German émigré named Fritz Wiessner. A leading member of the fledgeling American mountaineering community, he had made a number of excellent climbs in the Alps and North America, including the first ascent of Mount Waddington, and had first seen K2 from the slopes of Nanga Parbat during a 1932 German-American expedition to that mountain. In 1937, with the help of the American Alpine Club, Wiessner applied to the British authorities in India for permission to make an attempt on K2. It was November before permission arrived for an attempt in 1938, followed by a second attempt in 1939 should the first be unsuccessful. ^[3]

Unwilling to face the pressure of organising an expedition at such short notice, Wiessner declined the chance to lead the 1938 expedition and suggested Charles Houston as a replacement, while making clear that he wanted to lead the 1939 expedition. While he cited good business reasons for his withdrawal, in their analysis of the expedition Andrew Kauffman and William Putnam suggest that he may also not have been averse to letting another team make the first, likely unsuccessful, attempt, then be able to to draw on their experience for his own attempt. A similar spproach had worked for him in the Alps, and on Mount Waddington. ^[4]

Houston led a reconnaissance expedition to K2 in 1938 which surveyed several of the mountain's ridges before making an attempt on the Abruzzi Spur. While the leading climbers turned round at around 8000 m due to dwindling supplies and the threat of bad weather, they reported that the spur did provide a feasible route to the summit, and that a more concerted attempt would have a good chance of success. ^{[5] [6]} Wiessner immediately began planning for a further expedition the next year.

Expedition members

Two major problems dogged the planning of the expedition. The fact that mountaineering was a minority activity in America at the time made the pool of experienced climbers very small, and the recession of 1937 had made public or private sponsorship impossible to raise. The team therefore had to be selected from the limited number of climbers with the means to pay their own way, and this meant that Wiessner was only able to assemble a relatively inexperienced team. None of the previous year's climbers returned and with the exception of William House, whose wealthy family might have paid, none was asked. House and several other leading American climbers, including Sterling Hendricks, Alfred Lindley, Bestor Robinson and Roger Whitney all either declined their invitations or else withdrew from the expedition. ^[7] While all cited good personal or business reasons, there was also an underlying feeling that the sheer force of Wiessner's personality would make a six-month expedition difficult to bear. ^[8]

In the end, Wiessner assembled a relatively weak and inexperienced team. His deputy, Eaton (Tony) Cromwell, had a very large number of ascents, including first ascents in Canada, but his climbs had nearly all been done with professional guides, and he had little experience of making decisions for himself on mountains. Additionally, his commitment to climbing K2 was questionable; on accepting his invitation he stipulated that he would not climb high. ^[9] Chappel Cranmer was a student at Dartmouth College who had accompanied Wiessner on a trip to the Canadian Rockies in 1938 which included an ascent of Mount Robson, but apart from that his experience was limited to weekends on the cliffs of New England. ^[10] George Sheldon was a classmate of Cranmer, and like Cranmer was a promising but inexperienced climber; he had only two season's experience in the Grand Tetons. ^[11]

The most unlikely member to be included in the team was Dudley Wolfe. The son of a wealthy British coffee merchant, Wolfe was rich and owned a large estate in Maine which his nephew describes as "like something out of The Great Gatsby. ^[12] He had taken up mountaineering three years earlier, and was enthusiastic, but lacking in ability. Overweight, clumsy and myopic it often took two guides to haul him up straightforward routes, and worse he was unable to descend even easy ground without constant assistance. ^[13] It is likely that Wiessner invited him mainly for his money, ^[12] but on K2 he would form a close friendship with Wiessner, and displayed a level of stamina and determination unmatched by any of the team except the leader himself.

The final climber to join the team was Jack Durrance, who was a last minute replacement for Bestor Robinson. A premedical student at Dartmouth College, Durrance worked as a guide in the Tetons during his summers and had made a number of first ascents there, including the north face of the Grand Teton. By the time Robinson dropped out, Wiessner and Wolfe were already in Europe buying equipment, and Durrance was hurriedly selected without the leader's knowledge at the suggestion of his fellow Dartmouth students Cranmer and Sheldon. ^[14] When Durrance eventually met Wiessner, who was still expecting Robinson to join the team, he wrote in his diary "Can't quite forget Fritz's look of disappointment at finding insignificant Jack filling Bestor Robinson's boots." ^[15] The relationship between the two men would remain awkward throughout the expedition and beyond.

In addition to the six American climbers, the expedition members included an Englishman, George "Joe" Trench, as transport officer, responsible for the porters who would carry the expeditions equipment from Skardu to the foot of K2, and nine Sherpas from Darjeeling who would act as porters on the mountain itself. The most experienced Sherpa was the sirdar, Pasang Kikuli, who had also been Houston's sirdar the previous year. One of the few Sherpas of the time to have learned genuine mountaineering skills, he was a survivor of the 1934 Nanga Parbat tragedy, and had also been on expeditions to Everest and Kanchenjunga. ^[16] The other Sherpas were Sonam, Pemba Kitar, Tse Tendrup, Pasang Kitar, Pasang Dawa Lama, Tsering Norbu, Phinshoo and Dawa. Five of them had been with Houston in 1938, but none had climbed to great height, or had any other substantial mountaineering experience. ^[16]

Early Stages

The team assembled in India in mid-April and after two weeks spent skiing above Srinagar they began the 300 mile trek to K2's base camp. Apart from a brief porter's strike, the journey was uneventful until the 1st of June when, at a height of 4500m Chappel Cranmer became ill with a disease which would now quickly be diagnosed as high altitude pulmonary edema, but at the time was almost completely unknown. Jack Durrance, who had been appointed expedition doctor on the strength of his future at medical school, despite not yet having attended a single class, did his best to treat Cranmer, who was delirious and coughing up a bubbly fluid. Many years later, Durrance would comment "I never knew anyone could be so sick and stay alive... From the day I entered medical school until now at seventy five I've never had a worse patient than my first." ^[17] It was all Durrance could do to keep Cranmer warm, clean and dry, but after two days he began to improve. Cranmer survived, but his recovery was slow and he would play virtually no further part in the expedition. The already weak team had lost one of its stronger members. ^[18]

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The summit push

The expedition now entered its critical phase. On July 17, Wiessner, Wolfe and Lama pushed from Camp VIII towards the summit, unaware that below them the expedition was in a state of near collapse. However, as they pushed up the shoulder, Dudley Wolfe finally reached the limit of his strength, and was unable to push his way through the chest deep snow. He agreed to return to Camp VIII while Wiessner and Lama continued, expecting to receive more supplies the next day, and optimistically hoping to try again with a second summit party. In fact, he would not see another person for five days. ^[19]

Weissner and Lama pushed on through the snow, and after an intermediate camp, established Camp IX at the crest of the shoulder. Form here there were two possible routes. To the right, a steep snow gully, now known as the Bottleneck and part of the normal route, led to the base of a large serac, from where a difficult traverse led to the summit slopes. The gully appeared to be seriously threatened by icefall and Wiessner rejected it, judging the danger to be unacceptable. ^[20]

Instead, when Wiessner and Lama set off on July 19 in perfect weather, they ascended a steep rock buttress at the left hand side of the ridge. The steep climbing on verglassed rocks proved extremely difficult and time consuming. Wiessner led throughout, as he had done since Base Camp, and was taxed to his limit. He graded the route at Six, which was the hardest grade given in the Alps at the time. ^[20] As nobody has ever tried to repeat his route the grade has not been confirmed, but climbers who have seen the buttress agree that it must have been far harder than anything previously climbed at such altitude. ^{[20] [21]} By late afternoon, only a 25 foot traverse of moderate difficulty separated the pair from the easy snow slopes which led to the summit. Wiessner estimated that they were 800 feet (244 m) below the summit, and could reach it in three to four hours, and was willing to descend through the night. However Pasang Lama refused to continue, and rather than continue alone, Wiessner descended with him. It was later suggested that Pasang Lama feared the summit demons, which he believed would kill them if they arrived on the summit after dark. ^[22] Others have suggested that he simply acted as the voice of good sense; had they continued they would probably have reached the summit, but descending at night with no bivouac equipment would have exposed them to a very high risk of frostbite or death. ^{[23] [24]} On the descent, Lama suffered a short fall, in the course of which he lost both men's pairs of crampons.

Wiessner was determined to try again, and having seen the Bottleneck from higher up had now determined that it was less dangerous than he had first believed. They spent the next day resting at Camp IX. The weather was so still that Wiessner sunbathed naked on his sleeping bag. ^[25] On the 21st they attempted the Bottleneck Couloir, but without crampons the steep ice would have necessitated cutting over 300 steps, an impossibly tiring and time consuming task at high altitude. ^[26] How realistic an attempt it would have been had the pair been wearing crampons is disputed; Weissner always insisted that he could have reached the summit, but other commentators such as Jim Curran have suggested that after four nights above 8000 m this assessment may have been hopelessly optimistic. ^[27]

Descent and disaster

The next day, Weissner descended to Camp VIII with Lama, intending to pick up some new crampons, and another Sherpa to replace Lama, who was now very tired. Lama took his sleeping bag down, while Weissner, expecting to be gone only a few hours left his behind. At Camp VIII they found Dudley Wolfe entirely alone, having seen nobody and received no supplies since they had left. He had run out of matches and was resorting to melting snow for drinking water in a tarpaulin. Wiessner was surprised, but did not seem unduly worried that they had now seen no-one else for nine days. ^[27]

All three men now descended to Camp VII, which they had left in good condition and well stocked nine days earlier. On the descent, Dudley Wolfe tripped on a rope, pulling Wiessner and Lama off with him. All three men were left hurtling down a steep ice slope towards a 6000 foot sheer drop, and only a desperate ice axe arrest by Wiessner saved them all from disaster. In the course of the fall, Pasang Lama suffered broken ribs and kidney injuries and Wolfe lost his sleeping bag. Worse, when they arrived at Camp VII they found it abandoned; all the bedding had been removed, and one of the two tents had collapsed under the weight of snow. ^[28]

The three spent a cold and miserable night trying to share Pasang Lama's small sleeping bag, and in the morning Wiessner took the fateful decision to leave Dudley Wolfe, who apparently wanted to stay behind and make another summit attempt, at Camp VII while he and Lama went further down the mountain. By doing so, Wiessner split his team and left the weakest member alone, with everybody else below him. The wisdom of this decision would become the subject of much acrimonious debate in subsequent years. ^[27]

On their descent to Camp VI, Wiessner and Lama found it in the same state as Camp VII; the tents were still standing, but there were no mattresses or sleeping bags, just a stove and some food. Continuing down they found Camps V and IV in the same condition, and saw no sign of any other climbers. Finally they reached Camp II at dusk. Two tents were still standing, but again nobody was present, and there was a stove and food, but no bedding. They wrapped themselves in one of the tents and spent a second night with no rest, shivering through the darkness. ^[29] Finally, on the morning of July 23 they staggered onto the Godwin Austin Glacier, exhausted and near death. Wiessner could speak only in a whisper, his knees buckled and he was so emaciated that he later said he could close his thumb and forefinger around his ankle. Pasang Lama was in even worse condition, with cracked ribs and blood in his urine. Finally they met Cromwell and three Sherpas who had been searching for them further up the glacier. In spite of his weakened state, Wiessner was apoplectic, accusing Cromwell of attempted murder, threatening lawsuits, and most of all demanding to know why the camps had been stripped. ^[29]

The stripping of the camps

The removal of sleeping bags from Camps II, IV, VI and VII would become, with the decision to leave Dudley Wolfe, the most disputed and emotive aspect of the whole expedition. For a full discussion of the events surrounding it, see below. The outline of the events is as follows.

After Durrance and Pasang Kikuli descended from Camp VI on July 14, the remaining Sherpas on the mountain, the remaining Sherpas on the mountain, lacking supervision, quickly became demoralised. While Weissner Wolfe and Lama were at Camp VIII, Tendrup and Tsering Norbu waited out a a light storm at Camp VII while Pasang Kitar and Phinsoo did the same at Camp VI. Their instructions had been to continue to ferry supplies up the mountain whenever possible, but they did not, perhaps having failed to understand. ^[30] Accoding to the Sherpas, on July 20, Tendrup finally climbed a short distance towards camp VIII, but fearing what he thought were avalanche prone slopes he did not approach the camp. Instead, he shouted towards the tent and received no reply. Looking around, he thought he could see the signs of large avalanches in the snows above, and convinced himself that everyone above must have been killed. The other sherpas believed his story, and agreed that they should salvage what they could and go down. ^[31]

The down sleeping bags were the most valuable pieces of equipment used by the expeditions. They were particularly prized by the Sherpas, as at the end of an expedition left over sleeping bags were traditionally given to the most worthy Sherpas; to use at home, or to sell at market where they could fetch the equivalent of many weeks wages. ^[31] So on July 21 and 22 they descended the mountain, taking the sleeping bags from Camps VII and VI as they went.

Meanwhile at Base Camp the climbers had been awaiting the arrival of a large group of porters due to arrive on July 23 to begin the process of returning home. To facilitate the withdrawal a decision was made (by whom would become a matter of controversy) to remove the sleeping bags from Camps II and IV, on the assumption that the summit team would bring down their own bags on their descent and that, in any case, the camps further up the mountain were still well stocked. And so on 20 July, Durrance, Kikuli and Dawa brought sleeping bags down from the intermediate camps. ^[32]

The rescue attempt

The expedition now faced the task of rejoining Dudley Wolfe, who was alone high on the mountain. Limited manpower remained. Cranmer and Sheldon, who had to be back at college in time for the new term, had left some time previously, while Trench left for Askole with the train of porters who had arrived on July 23. Cromwell offered to stay, but was now so dejected that Wiessner allowed him to leave with Trench. Remaining were five healthy Sherpas (Sonam and Lama were still ill, and the disgraced Tendrup had been asked to leave) along with Wiessner and Durrance. ^[33]

The two Americans were apparently divided in their aims. In spite of his weakened state, Wiessner still talked of making another attempt on the summit with Durrance or another Sherpa, perhaps even picking up Wolfe on the way, and gave no hint that he considered Wolfe's life to be in danger. Durrance, however, believed that the only thing that now mattered was bringing Wolfe down; in his diary he wrote of the need for a "rescue", and made no reference to another attempt on the summit. ^[34]

In the event, Wiessner was still too weak to reascend the mountain, and Kikuli's frostbitten toes had still not recovered, so Durrance made the first attempt to reach Wolfe, taking Pasang Kitar and Phinsoo. At Camp IV Durrance suffered a recurrence of the illness which had forced him to descend earlier, and went down to base camp, telling Kitar and Phonsoo to continue up. They went as high as Camp VI, but fearing the ice traverse went no higher. ^[35]

With both sahibs now too ill to help, the sirdar, Pasang Kikuli, took charge, and took Tsering to rescue Wolfe. Kikuli would have known that by going back up the mountain before his frostbite had healed he risked losing his toes, if not his feet, and one of the many accusations which would later be made against Wiessner was that he had ordered Kikuli to his death. However, Wiessner's diary ^[35] and what is known on Kikuli's character ^[36] both suggest that Kikuli went willingly.

Nearly all of what is known of the rescue attempt is based on the testimony of Tsering, the only survivor of the group of Sherpas. He and Kikuli climbed the 2000 metres from Base Camp to Camp VI in a single day; a remarkable achievement which would rarely be repeated until "speed ascents" became fashionable in the Himalaya in the 1980s. ^[37] The next day, July 29, Kikuli, Kitar and Phinsoo ^[38] ascended to Camp VII where they found Wolfe, who had now been alone for a week, in a terrible state. He appeared not to have left the tent since Wiessner and Lama had left him, he had again run out of matches, and bodily waste soiled his sleeping bag. They got him out of his tent and gave him tea, but he staggered around, told them that he needed more rest before he came down, and ordered them to come back the next day. The Sherpas, for whom blind obedience to the sahibs was deeply ingrained, did as he said and went back to Camp VI. The next day a storm prevented them from going back to Camp VII. On July 31 the weather was little better, but Kikuli, Kitar and Phinsoo again set off for Camp VII, either to haul Dudley Wolfe down the mountain, or to make him sign a note absolving them of further responsibility. They were not seen again. Tsering waited for two days with diminishing hopes before returning to Base Camp. ^{[37] [39]}

The exact fate of the four men has never been conclusively determined, but some clues have been discovered over time. K2 was not visited again until 1953, when Charles Houston led the Third American Karakoram Expedition to the mountain. At the site of Wiessner's Camp VI they found the remains of the tents, which contained the Sherpa sleeping bags neatly rolled up to be brought down the mountain with Wolfe, but further up they found no trace of Camp VII, or any other evidence of what had happened. ^[40] In 1993 the bones of a very small Asian were found on the Godwin Austin Glacier. These were very likely those of Pasang Kitar, who was well below the average height for Sherpas, but they shed no further light on the mystery. ^[41] Finally in 2003, the remains of Dudley Wolfe were found on the glacier, positively identified from the clothing he was wearing. ^[42] Fragments of tent canvas found with the body suggest that Wolfe died in his tent and that the Sherpas never reached him. ^[43] It is unlikely that all three died of exhaustion or exposure, so the most likely possibility is that they fell or were avalanched between Camps VI and VII.

Regardless of the exact circumstances of the deaths, Jim Curran has argued that the rescue attempts was almost certainly doomed from the start. Mountain rescue was in its infancy in 1939, but experience since then, Curran says, has shown that unless a casualty can move himself (as Wolfe would probably not have been able to do), it takes more manpower than the remnants of Wiessner's team could have mustered to carry a man down a mountain, and the Sherpas had no chance of bringing Wolfe all the way down to Base Camp. ^[44] In the first week of August the weather broke down completely, with constant storms and heavy snow, and on August 8 any remaining hope that there might be survivors was abandoned and the remaining climbers started for home. K2 had claimed its first four victims.

Aftermath

The expedition members returned to civilisation to a storm of controversy.

Causes of the disaster

Researchers into the expedition have pointed to a number of caused for its failure. These include the weakness and inexperience of the bulk of the team, poor understanding of the deadly effects of altitude, the lack of effective leadership on the mountain, Wiessner's decision to leave Wolfe alone at Camp VII, the removal of the sleeping bags and mats from the mountain, and Wiessner's choice of route on summit day.

Weakness of the team members

All observers agree that the weakness and inexperience of the expedition members was the root cause of the tragedy. Only Wiessner had climbed in the Himalaya previously, Cromwell and Wolfe had climbed in the Rocky Mountains, but only with guides, and not with any great distinction, Durrance had performed well on rock in the Tetons, but had little experience on ice and snow, while Cranmer and Sheldon were almost untested.

References

magazine article

Guardian story

American alpine club

sympathetic portrait of Wiessner

Glorious Failures citation details for Robers's article, Curran's chapter online

http://www.climbers-club.co.uk/journal/original/1992%20journal_nc.pdf review of Kaufman; suggests blaming AAC

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=E50bIVG3Q5QC&pg=PA47&lpg=PA47&dq=%22K2+the+1939+tragedy%22&source=web&ots=nKycrv-gMD&sig=xNAAOAUvSc_ysWYHw3ldek5w_Xo&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=7&ct=result positive review of Kaufman