The Last Man on the Mountain: The Death of an American Adventurer on K2 (21 page)

The debate about mountain ethics, and what one climber’s responsibilities are to another, is as old as the ropes and pitons of the earliest adventurers. Many, including Charlie Houston, believed that the glory of climbing is found not on the summit but in the shared experience of getting there, and back, alive. Judging by their behavior, just as many other climbers believe that it’s “every man for himself,” and that no one can or should rely on anyone else to take care of them in a place called the death zone. The question is not without its sea-level equivalents. Like the captain of a sinking ship, is it the leader’s responsibility to make sure every man is off the boat (or the mountain) before he saves himself? And does it matter, morally, if the leader is so incapacitated by exhaustion and mental haziness that the mountain may end up claiming not just one, but three lives if he doesn’t save himself?

While we will never know what the two men said to each other as the first slate gray of dawn appeared in the sky, what we do know is that a decision was made for Dudley not to continue descending with Fritz and Pasang. There are two possible reasons. Either Dudley thought he was strong enough for a summit bid and wanted to rest in preparation for it, as Fritz later testified, or Dudley acknowledged that after two months on the mountain he was too weak, too inexperienced, and too hobbled by frostbite to get down safely, and that Fritz alone couldn’t provide that help.

Because there was adequate food for a summit assault between what remained of Dudley’s Camp VIII stash and what they found at Camp VII, food was not the reason for Fritz and Pasang to descend. And because there were extra sleeping bags at Camp VIII, sleeping bags were not the issue. The only viable reasons for Fritz to continue descending were his and Pasang’s mental and physical deterioration, their lack of crampons to climb above the Bottleneck, and the need for help in getting Dudley down safely. But that’s not what Wiessner later said.

In all of Wiessner’s accounts after the expedition, verbal and written, he said he descended to Camp VI in order to resupply another summit bid, and he left Dudley at Camp VII to rest (without explaining why, if rest were the issue, he hadn’t left him at Camp VIII). He also never specified what supplies he needed, and no one ever asked.

While it seems heavy-handed to label Dudley’s decision to stay at Camp VII “sacrificial,” his staying with only Pasang’s cheap sleeping bag, which was just two-thirds as tall as he was, and only two or three days’ worth of matches poses the question: Did he remain on the mountain because he realized he was a liability to the others and didn’t want to risk their lives as well as his own?

T
HE FRIGID,
miserable night left the three men disoriented and exhausted. In the morning, Fritz and Pasang readied themselves for their descent but in their weakness and delirium it took them nearly six hours to pack up and put on their boots. When they were ready, Fritz counted out the remaining matches and handed Dudley fifteen of them, taking the last full box for his and Pasang’s descent. Dudley put his fifteen into his stainless steel match case, careful to tighten the screw top firmly back into place. As they left camp, Fritz turned and saw that several matches remained scattered in the snow.

“Dudley!” he called.

Dudley stuck his head out of the tent.

“You’d better collect those matches and dry them out. You may need them.”

Dudley waved and nodded that he understood.

With a promise that he’d be right back, Fritz turned and headed down the mountain.

A
T THAT MOMENT
, Tendrup, Kitar, Phinsoo, and Tsering were resting at Camp I at 18,600 feet, after an exhausting descent the day before all the way from Camp VII, laden with gear and feeling guilty over their decision to vacate the high camps without orders from the leader. Almost reluctant to return to base camp, which had become a fractious place, they finally left the tent by midday and made it into base camp that evening.

As they neared camp, sentries who had been waiting for any signal from the summit team saw the Sherpas coming and a cry went up that four members were moving down the glacier toward the tents. The entire team rushed out to meet the men as they approached. There Tendrup told Jack, Tony, and Joe that he and the other three Sherpas had not seen or heard from Bara Sahib or Wolfe Sahib since July 14, the day after Jack had left them above Camp VI. In fact, Tendrup told them, he believed that the summit team was dead, telling how he had gotten to within 500 feet of the Camp VIII tents and had called for help to cross the slope, but no one had responded. He also showed Jack and Tony that the four of them had brought down all the sleeping bags and valuable foodstuffs from Camps VI and VII, just as Jack, Kikuli, and Dawa had done from Camps II and IV.

If Jack and Tony were concerned that the team’s laborious work in stocking the high camps had just been entirely erased, they never mentioned it. Instead, they listened to the Sherpas and were perplexed. The weather, save for a storm on July 15 and 16, had been relatively good, and they figured that from Camp VIII at 26,000 feet, all Fritz and Dudley would have needed was three days to reach the summit and return to a lower camp, maybe even all the way to base. Here it was the 23rd and no one had seen or heard from the summit team in nine days.

Where are they? they wondered, looking up at the mountain.
Could they in fact be dead?

Jack and Tony went to Dudley’s base camp tent, got his powerful nautical field glasses from the leather case embossed with
Highland Light
, and scoured the mountain for any signs of life, or death. They saw none—just oceans of snow, rock, and ice. As they searched, Chandra, the schoolteacher and translator from Srinagar, approached and told them he was concerned that all of the bags had been removed and thought that at least a few should be returned to the high camps for the retreating summit team.

They looked at the man in annoyance. He had been nothing but a complaining hindrance to the team and a frightful gossip all summer. Joe Trench thought him a laughingstock who was desperate to befriend Fritz for future work and who would agree “black was white if Wiessner said so.”

Jack and Tony needed time to figure out what to do. The last Sherpa to get within shouting distance of Camp VIII had concluded that the summit team was dead. The porters had arrived, as scheduled, to take the team out of base camp. And now this bothersome man was telling them to rush back up the mountain and restock the camps which had been stripped in preparation for the team’s departure, a departure they hoped was imminent.

Hoping to quell Chandra’s instinct for wagging his tongue, they told him they were going to survey the glacier in the morning for any signs of the summit team and instructed him not to share his concern about the clearing of the camps with any of the other Sherpas. The last thing they needed was a rumor starting a revolt.

With that, Jack and Tony returned to their private conference about what to do next, leaving Chandra standing on the glacier angry and embarrassed at having been spoken to like a child. The schoolteacher had had a long summer suffering the arrogance of the Americans and the bigotry of Trench, the man hired as the porters’ supposed liaison who couldn’t be bothered to learn their language. Bruised and resentful, Chandra returned to the Sherpas’ tents where he, true to form, kept the men busy chatting with speculation, accusation, and second-guessing Tony and Jack’s management of their splintered team. Even if Jack and Tony had been able to silence Chandra, it would have done little to calm the babble at base camp, where, when disaster strikes, those not on the mountain are mostly left to speculate about those who are. The trouble above is simply too far out of anyone’s reach to do anything constructive. All that’s left is talk.

That night, with little else they could do, Jack and Tony, the men in charge, went to bed. In the morning Tony headed up the glacier with Kikuli and Dawa to examine the ropes and upper campsites from the base of the climbing route. As Tony went to look for concrete evidence that their teammates were dead, Jack stayed in base camp to manage the thirty porters who had arrived to take the men home.

Whether through malfeasance or simply because they didn’t think to do so, neither of them ever mentioned returning any gear to the high camps for the descending summit team.

The highest-known photo from the expedition, taken most likely at Camp VIII.
(Courtesy of the Fritz H. Wiessner Collection)

W
hen Fritz and Pasang reached Camp VI at 23,400 feet on the afternoon of July 23, they found it too was deserted. Fritz was at a critical juncture. He could either re-ascend the 1,400 feet back to Camp VII and bring Dudley down, or he could continue down the mountain hoping beyond reason that someone was still in either Camp IV or II who was able to rescue a failing man (he knew Camps V and III had been dismantled and served only as supply depots). Without the strength to climb back to Camp VIII, where the only extra sleeping bags were, going back up would have meant another miserable night on the mountain with three men again sharing one bag. Evidently, for Fritz, that was an unthinkable alternative. By now, he was near or at the end of his tether; he had to get down. Up was no longer possible. Instead of going back for his last man, Fritz continued down, taking Pasang with him.

As they descended, they found more of the same: the remnants of Camp V at 22,000 feet, an evacuated Camp IV at 21,500 feet, and the old equipment depot which they called Camp III. With all evidence to the contrary, Fritz still held out hope that Jack and a few Sherpas remained at Camp II, the mountain’s main staging area at 19,300 feet. But as Fritz and Pasang drew near the tents, Fritz’s last flicker of optimism was extinguished. Camp II was clearly empty. Its tent doors were open and blowing in the breeze with no sign of life or sound of a hissing stove cooking dinner.

With night falling and unable to put one foot in front of the other, further descent that day would have been suicidal. With their arms and legs feeling like lead, Fritz and Pasang took down one of the remaining tents and wrapped themselves in it. They huddled together for yet another frigid, wretched night in the cold.

It’s hard to imagine what physical and mental state Fritz and Pasang were in after their weeks on the mountain, the last five days above 26,000 feet clawing for the summit. Climbers who have spent similar amounts of time at that altitude, straining every fiber of muscle and brain matter to reach the top, have experienced a range of miseries when they finally turned to head back down the mountain: cerebral edema, hallucinations, fatigue so severe that the only desire is to lie down and sleep even though every last ounce of their survival instincts is screaming, “NO!! If you sleep, you DIE!” It’s a tribute to the men not only how close to the summit of K2 they climbed, without any support, but what they accomplished on descent. During those two desperate days of retreat from the uppermost summit slopes, they survived severe dehydration and malnutrition and were exposed to the raw and frigid elements, exhausted beyond measure.

While Pasang was simply grateful to be alive, Fritz felt they had been utterly deserted and he was tortured by thoughts of their abandonment.
They left us on the mountain for dead. Forgotten. Perhaps even sabotaged.
His grand plan for K2 and his future seemed destroyed. Not only had he not made the summit, he still had a man high on the mountain. And not just any man, but Dudley Wolfe, one of the richest men in America, a man who could have meant a lot to his financial and climbing future, a man whom he could have talked into returning the next year, and then to any number of expeditions in the Himalayas. But Fritz had left him on the mountain. He’d send help to bring Dudley down as soon as he got himself to the base; but still, it wouldn’t look good to the outside world and for his future as an expedition leader.

As he and Pasang stumbled down, each in a semi-coherent trance, Fritz began to silently chant to himself,
Come on, keep it going
. Fight it. It became almost a mantra as he focused intently on the ground at his feet.
Keep going. Fight it
. A misstep now would surely mean death. Neither he nor Pasang had the strength to hold the other in a fall. Thankfully, with every foot he descended, the thicker air became food and energy for his ravaged body and brain. While he grew weaker and more desperate for sleep, he nonetheless knew now that he would make it down and survive.

On July 24, Fritz and Pasang finally reached the glacier, mere shadows of the men who had left weeks before. Wiessner was so emaciated he could encircle his ankle with his thumb and fore-finger. Pasang, doubled over in pain and passing bloody urine, had bruised a kidney in the fall below Camp VIII, and every step felt like a knife in his back. Each man clung to the other as they lurched across the glacier, often falling to the rocks.

Further up the glacier, Tony Cromwell was returning from the base of the Abruzzi Ridge, where he had hoped to get a glimpse of the three men on the mountain, or a sign of what might have happened to them—avalanche or fall. Finding neither, he had started back when he saw two men far off the usual route to base camp. Each was stumbling, falling to the rocks and struggling to get back up.

It was Fritz and Pasang. Tony approached the men and exclaimed how glad he was to see them. Everyone at base camp was worried there had been an accident.

Looking up from the rocks, Fritz struggled to stand. Then, still holding onto Pasang, he pointed a shaky finger in his deputy’s face and demanded, “Why was the mountain stripped? What is the meaning of this!? You know, Dudley could have you put in jail for this insubordination! This sabotage!”

But his voice was gone. The words came out a crackled rasp. Still he raged on, as perhaps his guilt over having left Dudley yielded to the much easier emotion of blame.

Tony was stunned and infuriated. How dare Fritz accuse him of anything? Wiessner was their supposed leader and he had been on his own crusade for the summit, ignoring the team and its increasing problems, for his own vainglory! Now he was accusing
him
of incompetence and neglect? Besides, where the hell was Dudley?

Fritz waved his hand toward the mountain.
He is at Camp VII. Someone needs to go.

Whom did you have in mind?
Cromwell demanded. He told Fritz that everyone on the team was either exhausted, suffering frostbite, or had already left for home.
There’s no one left!
he shouted.
Besides, Sherpas are not high-altitude guides, they are high-altitude porters! They are not trained or equipped to make such a rescue.

We’ll send the Sherpas up
, Fritz persisted, as if not hearing.
And then, when I’ve recovered, I’ll try again for the summit. I was nearly there…I could see the summit. It was right there. I nearly did it!

As Fritz described his summit attempt and how close he had been to the top, Tony, disgusted and enraged, turned on his heel and headed back to base camp. Fritz stumbled along behind with Pasang.

W
HEN THE REMAINING
team at base camp saw the men approaching, they came running from every direction to greet them. Many had thought they were dead and were enormously relieved to see their friend, Pasang, and their leader, Bara Sahib, safe and back at base camp, although he was just a frail whisper of a man. But he didn’t act frail. Fritz immediately confronted the smiling Sherpas.
Why didn’t you come up to Camps VIII and IX with supplies as I ordered?
he demanded, leaning into their bewildered faces.
Why did you strip the camps?
he screamed at them in a screechy rasp.

Tendrup, the man considered by some on the team to be their best Sherpa aside from Kikuli, tried to explain what had happened. They had been afraid of traversing the slope above Camp VII without steps, and he had called but no one had appeared from the tents in Camp VIII. They had not heard a sound or seen any signs of life from the mountain above them for more than a week and thought them all dead. They were cold, exhausted, frightened, and running out of food and fuel. With no sahib to give them direction in Camp VII, they did the one thing they thought most important for the team: they saved the last of the valuable equipment and fled for their lives.

Finding a target for his rage, Fritz attacked Tendrup. Tendrup had robbed him of the summit and caused Dudley to now sit thousands of feet above them waiting for rescue.
It is all Tendrup’s fault!
As far as Fritz was concerned, the summit had been stolen from him through others’ actions, not his own. He had been within a few hours of the top but their laziness, insubordination, and sheer evil intent had ruined the mission. Not only would he never forgive them, he would have their hides and Dudley would sue them all.

Dudley! He is going to have you all put in jail!
Fritz raged.

As Fritz paused for breath, Tony pounced.
Us, put in jail? You’re the one that owes him $1,300 and left him on the mountain! If anyone is getting sued and going to jail, it’s you!

As Fritz reeled from the accusation, others took their opening and started questioning him.
Why did you leave Dudley alone? How could you leave him with only a Sherpa’s thin bag and a handful of matches? Why didn’t you turn back at Camp VI, when you saw that it was empty, and go get Dudley?

Fritz explained, through a throat so dry and swollen that every word was painful, that Dudley was okay but that he was weak, his feet were blistered, and he needed help to get down. Finally, unable to answer the last of the questions and feeling increasingly cornered, Fritz countered that Dudley had stayed at Camp VII because he “insisted” on going for the summit—that he was in fine shape, totally fit and strong, and all he needed was a rest. That provoked a question for which he had no answer:
If Dudley wanted to go for another summit bid, then why did he descend from Camp VIII?

Fritz had no answer. It didn’t make sense for Dudley to leave Camp VIII if he in fact wanted to go for a summit bid. He’d had enough food and fuel at Camp VIII for a few days, particularly since he had run out of matches and been unable to cook food for two days until Fritz and Pasang arrived with a new supply of matches.

Fritz was trapped, and like all trapped animals he lashed out. “After all, a Himalayan mountain is like war! You must expect a few casualties!”
^*

The men stood staring at him, their mouths agape. Had he really just said Dudley was expendable? Death was to be
expected
on high-altitude expeditions? No one said a word as the statement hung in the still, cold air.

A
LTHOUGH THE TEAM
still had a rescue to launch, Fritz ordered Tony and Tendrup out of base camp, commanding them to leave in the morning with Joe Trench and the first group of porters and wait for him in Srinagar. Jack, who stood nearby, thought the banishment out of place; every man was needed to launch the rescue of Dudley, particularly their strongest Sherpa, now that Kikuli was hobbled by frostbite. But again he said nothing and Tony and Joe packed their bags.

The confrontation seemed to drain Fritz of his last energy. Soon after, he crawled into his tent and fell into a coma-like sleep. Later he wrote:
^*

The next day, Tony headed down the glacier and back to civilization in a rage, already formulating his version of the ill-fated expedition. With him went Joe, Tendrup, and twenty-two of the porters laden with most of the team’s gear. As they walked, Joe and Tony compared their notes, their thoughts, and their memory of what had just happened. Tendrup, thoroughly dismayed and confused by Fritz’s angry accusations and banishment, followed close behind.

With Fritz physically and mentally exhausted and Tony gone, Jack was left to organize the rescue. At 9 a.m. on the 25th, he set out with Dawa, Kitar, and Phinsoo to get Dudley. They reached Camp II by 3 p.m. and reset the tent that Fritz and Pasang had huddled beneath the night before. The morning of the 26th they left Camp II as soon as the sun hit the tents. But above camp they found that much of the length of the fixed safety ropes was unusable because the hot midsummer sun had melted out many of the anchor pitons. Another increasing hazard in the warm sun was rockfall, ranging in size from marbles to steamer trunks, which melted out of the snow and showered down around them with increasing frequency and velocity. One, sounding like a sewing machine at full throttle, missed Jack’s head by inches and whizzed by him so fast he felt its whoosh rather than saw its size.

As they moved from Camp II to Camp IV the next day, Jack once again began to feel sick and dizzy. Given his previous collapse above Camp VI, Jack knew that his chances of getting much higher than where he was now on the mountain were slim. Beside him, Dawa complained of a pain in his back and chest, and Kitar simply refused to go any higher without Jack or Dawa. Once again Jack turned to the Sherpas, ordering Kitar and Phinsoo to go for Dudley, while he turned and descended with Dawa. On their way down the mountain, Dawa recovered sufficiently at Camp I to gather old cigarette butts from around the camp and make Jack a “horrible” cigarette out of their remains and a sheet of brown paper.