The Last Man on the Mountain: The Death of an American Adventurer on K2 (22 page)

While each of their sahib bosses had quit the climb and now the rescue, Kitar and Phinsoo bravely continued up alone to Camp IV. There they stopped and waited for assistance to come from below.

When Jack made it to base that evening, he immediately went to Fritz’s tent to discuss their next plan. Fritz had hoped to recover within a few days and was even still considering another summit bid. But he had remained weak and totally unable to head back up the mountain. That left Kikuli. After two months on the mountain, most of it managing loads to and from Camp IV, and now with frostbite threatening his feet, Kikuli stepped forward and said he and Tsering would leave at first light. Having seen the ravages of frostbite all too clearly, Kikuli undoubtedly knew this rescue could cost him his toes, even his feet, but still he went, not only for Dudley but for his two friends Kitar and Phinsoo, who would otherwise be abandoned as well.

Fritz gave Kikuli instructions to burn gasoline-soaked paper for a fire signal in case of trouble, and then sent him up the mountain.

In what is considered by many mountaineers to be the most Herculean effort in Himalayan climbing, Kikuli and Tsering reached Camp VI in a one-day ascent of 7,000 feet on what is arguably one of the most difficult, dangerous routes in the world, using ropes which were pulling their anchors and under constant threat of rockfall. On the way, they found Kitar and Phinsoo waiting in Camp IV; once again, the Sherpas had been afraid and unwilling to traverse the ice slopes above without proper equipment or leadership. With Kitar and Phinsoo now in tow, the four men reached Camp VI by nightfall.

In the morning, Kikuli, Kitar, and Phinsoo left the tent, leaving Tsering behind. The rapid ascent had left him with acute mountain sickness, and Kikuli instructed him to rest and have tea and food waiting; they would return that evening with Wolfe Sahib.

Shortly after 10 a.m., the Sherpas reached Dudley at Camp VII, seven days after Fritz had promised to “be right back.” They were stunned at the desperate condition of their refined and gentle sahib, and embarrassed to see that he had relieved himself on his remaining food and in his sleeping bag, apparently unable to crawl out of the tent or even into a corner.

As if awakening from the dead, Dudley slowly focused on the faces staring at him. Reflexively he reached up to smooth his long and matted hair. It had turned totally white and hung in his ashen, gaunt face. He had always taken such pride in his appearance and here he was, reduced to this.

“Wolfe Sahib,” Kikuli said, “it is Kikuli.” He tried to hand Dudley his mail and a note from Fritz.

Dudley feebly took the letters and note but they fell out of his hand. He lay there, his brain trying to comprehend what was happening.

“I ran out of matches,” Dudley said, the words coming as a whisper. They were the first words he’d spoken to another human being in a week.

“Yes, Sahib, no problem. We have matches. Mister Dudley, I help you up,” Kikuli urged, taking Dudley under the arms. He noticed Dudley had sores on his left hand, probably frostbite or even a bad burn from the stove. Kikuli tried to be gentle; he knew sores easily get infected because they can’t heal at high altitude. He had seen it before on Nanga Parbat and Kangchenjunga. Only after the men descended the mountain and started down the glacier did their wounds stop oozing pus and crust over.

Dudley shook his head feebly but struggled to obey. Half crawling, half being pulled out of the tent, Dudley was hauled to his feet. It had been days since he’d stood, and his blistered feet sent shocks of pain through his legs. He was dizzy from starvation and dehydration. Kikuli quickly tied a rope around his waist and secured it to his own but before he could start down the slope, Dudley fell to the snow in a soft pile. Kikuli barked orders at Kitar and Phinsoo to clean up the worst of the mess in the tent and to start the stove and make Sahib some tea.

Kikuli kneeled by Dudley, urging him to try again.

Perhaps embarrassed that the Sherpas were seeing him in such revolting shape, his pants soiled and his hair, hands, and teeth dirtier than they’d ever been in his life, even on the front lines carrying dead bodies to the camion, Dudley shook his head no. “I need to collect myself. Come back tomorrow. I’ll be ready to go down then.”

While a proper diagnosis of Dudley’s horrific physical and mental state will never be made, he most likely was suffering from cerebral edema, a swelling of the brain which causes confusion, dizziness, and irrational, defiant behavior. While medical experts don’t have all the answers as to why it happens, they surmise that it is a combination of the atmospheric pressure, a sodium imbalance in the blood, capillary damage from uneven distribution of blood through the brain, and the body’s tendency to store fluid when confronted with the crisis of dehydration. The only cure is immediate descent. Today’s climbers know that if a person stricken with cerebral edema is not brought to a lower altitude within hours, he or she will most likely die soon.

While he was not able to medically identify Dudley’s condition, Kikuli saw that the gracious sahib was not right and tried again to get him up and to urge him to come with them,
now
. But Dudley again refused. “No. I’ll be ready tomorrow. Not now.”

Kikuli sat back on his heels. It simply wasn’t in his social reference to tell Wolfe Sahib, any sahib, what to do. Servants didn’t command the master, even if the sahib was sick and weak and clearly out of his head. Kikuli had no choice; he and the other two Sherpas had left their sleeping bags at Camp VI and they couldn’t stay at Camp VII overnight without them. They would have to leave Dudley and come back tomorrow. Handing the wretched man a cup of hot tea and a chapati—a pancake-like flatbread which was a staple for the Sherpas and porters because it was easy to prepare and carry—the three men left, promising to return in the morning to bring Dudley down.

The Sherpas descended to Camp VI where Tsering waited with hot tea. Alarmed that they were alone and without Wolfe Sahib, Tsering sat crouched by the stove making soup while the other three told him the sad story of the sahib and his deplorable condition.

The next day the four men were forced to wait out a twenty-four-hour storm. As the storm battered the tent they sat huddled, discussing how to handle their stubborn, weak sahib at Camp VII. He was obviously sick in the head and too feeble to descend, but they couldn’t simply go down without him; there would be too many questions and accusations. They knew all too well how the Sherpas were the first to get blamed during a crisis and the last to get thanked after a victory on big mountains. No, they would go back up when the storm broke and if they weren’t able to get Wolfe Sahib moving or if he still refused to come down, Kikuli would get him to sign a note explaining that he wouldn’t or couldn’t descend. Hopefully that would satisfy the sahibs at base camp.

Finally on July 31, Kikuli, Kitar, and Phinsoo again left Tsering alone in the tent while they roped together and started out across the steep, avalanche-prone slope which had so worried Wiessner a week before.

The only trace of the Sherpas was found fifty-six years later. In 1995, American climber Scott Johnston was walking up the glacier above K2 base camp when he spotted something incongruous sticking out of the ice and rocks. As he neared, he saw that it was what remained of a human torso: bits and pieces of a spine and a pelvis, covered by shards of a blue and white cotton shirt, tattered cotton pants, and desiccated flecks of skin. A threadbare hemp rope was tied at the waist. As with nearly all climbers who fall or are avalanched off K2, the violence of the fall and then the movement through the churning glacier had removed the head from the body. Hoping to identify the remains, Johnston bent and pulled a small black leather wallet out of the pants pocket. It was full of Emperor George V Indian rupee coins, pennies to a Westerner, but hard-earned wages to a Sherpa in 1939.

Match case found near Dudley’s remains in 2002.
(Jeff Rhoads)

T
he study of high altitude and its effect on man is as old as the mountain sickness first suffered by explorers as they climbed out of the valleys and villages and moved upward toward the summits above. While men started experimenting with the density of air as early as the 1600s, the science of high altitude didn’t properly develop until they braved the demons and dragons rumored to live in high mountains and climbed above 10,000 feet for the first time a century later, experiencing headaches, nausea, panting, fatigue, and insomnia. Early scientists believed that 10,000 feet was as high as man could safely go. But as adventurers and naturalists began exploring the mountains of Europe and eventually climbed 15,781-foot Mont Blanc in 1786, they realized humans could survive far above 10,000 feet and possibly go to even greater altitudes. Just how much greater remained a matter of debate for generations to come. By the turn of the twentieth century, balloonists had flown to 28,000 feet, several getting killed in the process because they ascended so quickly that they literally suffocated, but no one believed man could climb on his own feet to those same heights, let alone do it without supplemental oxygen. Simply put, if anyone who lives at sea level is quickly taken to 18,000 feet, he or she will be desperately ill within ten minutes and some will soon grow comatose and die. That same person, taken swiftly from sea level to 25,000 feet, has two minutes of consciousness before lapsing into a coma and dying within the hour.

With modern science, we know that from the moment a climber ascends above 18,000 feet his body is no longer building muscle. Above 22,000 feet, the lack of atmospheric pressure to force oxygenated blood through the circulatory, respiratory, gastrointestinal, and cerebral systems puts the body into mere survival mode. Wounds don’t heal, slower circulation threatens hands and feet with frostbite, chronic coughing can break ribs and often produces frothy or pink sputum, lips and fingernails can turn an unsettling blue or gray, thinking is muddled, coordination and balance are compromised, and although the climber feels lethargic and drowsy, restful sleep is nearly impossible. Above 25,000 feet it gets even worse. At that altitude, the body is in a race against death, slowly suffocating from a dangerous lack of oxygen and languid blood flow. Meanwhile, the heart and lungs are pumping furiously, trying to force enough oxygen through the blood to keep the body alive. Unfortunately, this “panting” throws off a lot of carbon dioxide, making the blood very alkaline. The kidneys compensate for the alkalinity by excreting bicarbonate, thus increasing urine production, which robs the body of even more liquids. Soon, the blood thickens to something resembling the consistency of house paint.

All of the body’s reactions to high altitude are designed to be short-term emergency measures, but if the climber remains in the highest altitudes without proper nutrients and hydration, the brain shunts blood away from the nonessential systems—skin, legs, arms, intestines, and other “less vital” organs—to keep alive the crucial ones: heart, brain, and lungs. Thus, digestion slows, frostbite looms as tissue dies from lack of oxygen, and kidney function sputters to a near standstill.

Mentally, the climber isn’t faring much better. While his heart and lungs are on overdrive, trying to find enough oxygen in the thin air to keep his body alive, his brain is being robbed of the capacity for rational thought. Feeling much like a person with a hellish hangover—headache, nausea, dizziness, and debilitating ennui—the climber in the lethal air above 25,000 feet is stripped of all motivation. Climbers have actually recommended training for high altitude while suffering a hangover so as to fully anticipate the misery that is in their future in the Himalayas. Rest is the climber’s only desire, but it’s an illusion; at those altitudes the body is incapable of rest because it is working so hard to stay alive.

The death zone, as it is known, has earned its name.

Today’s climbers know all too well the lethal dangers of remaining above 25,000 feet longer than absolutely necessary, and that they have to tag the summit and run like hell for their lives. In 1939, Dudley did not know that every minute he spent in the high, thin air, even at base camp, he was slowly depriving his body of strength, muscle, and immunity. He just kept climbing. Looking back with the knowledge gained by seventy years of research and experience, it is remarkable how far he got, how long he stayed, and how relatively well he felt.

W
HEN
D
UDLEY
was left at Camp VII at 24,700 feet, he had already spent all but the first week of the expedition above base camp, and two weeks of that he had spent at 25,300 feet. He couldn’t have known it, but he made history by surviving in that lethally thin air and ruthless environment longer than any man or woman before or since.

It was an achievement for which he would pay dearly. Because no man had been at such heights for such a prolonged period of time, Dudley was charting new territory, not only on the mountain but in his body.

After nearly two months on the mountain with inadequate oxygen, food, and water, Dudley’s mind, like his body, was shutting down, and his ability to distinguish reality from fantasy was rapidly fading. Medical experts agree that at best he could have been only semi-coherent. As he lay in his tent slowly dying, ravaged by starvation, dehydration, and exposure, the last of his bodily fluids leaked uncontrolled from his bowels. For a fastidious man who never was far from a hot bath and a clean, laundered shirt, his final days lying in his own filth must have been devastating.

Day ran into night and back to day as he waited, his only company the waxing moon above in the ink-black sky. Fritz and Pasang had only been able to leave him what little food they scraped up from the snow at Camp VII and a handful of matches. He had tried to keep the stove lit and the snow melting, but the stove was tough to light and he soon ran out of matches entirely. Again. At some point in his vigil, he badly burned his left hand, further incapacitating him. After that, all he could do was lie in the tent and wait, watching the day turn to night.

Few people have survived protracted exposure to the deadly combination of high altitude, starvation, dehydration, frostbite, and loneliness. The small handful who have did so with damaged hearts, livers, missing limbs, and often palsy, epileptic seizures, memory loss, and an abiding paranoia, most likely caused by the severe hallucinations and fantasies suffered during their hypoxic isolation. They also report having had visions so vivid they spoke, often argued, with their “companions” on the mountain during their long vigil. Regardless of the particulars of their experience, each said their mind often took over, taking them places and bringing them visitors as they slowly lost touch with reality.

Luckily for those who perish on the world’s highest mountains, frostbite doesn’t hurt as long as the tissue stays frozen. Further, the body is unaware of its fatal slowing, and as the brain shuts down, it allows only for random moments of dreadful clarity. Death by exposure, as death goes, is not as horrific as some, particularly if the climber gives in, lies down, and closes his eyes. But if that climber fights, if he is aware that sleep is death and that hope might mean survival, as the poet Dylan Thomas said, he “rages against the dying of the light” as he waits for something to happen to enable his living. Maybe rescue will come. Maybe the sun will enable movement. Maybe.

W
HAT
D
UDLEY
saw and the phantom conversations he had in his last days and hours disappeared with him, but, given other climbers’ near-death experiences at the roof of the world, it is not hard to imagine where his brain went as hope of a rescue faded.

Perhaps he replayed his grandfather B. F. Smith’s tales of Indians and gold mining and of sleeping atop his wagonloads at night, listening to the wolves and watching the stars. Just as B. F. described the stars above the prairies of Nebraska, those above Dudley were their own extravaganza of light and color, three and four layers deep, like a dark opera house with millions of diamonds suspended from the ceiling on invisible filaments.

Perhaps he thought of the time he had taken his young nephew, Clifford Junior, out on the open water for the first time and given him the helm. He had watched pure, unspeakable joy transform the boy’s face as it once had his own when he connected the small movements of the tiller in his hands with the creaking melody of that great ship’s turning to starboard or to port, as he willed. Up and down the Maine coast they had sailed that crystalline afternoon, alone together and at peace with the power and grace of the ocean, one among its flock of white-tipped vessels. He had hoped Gwen’s young boys, Dudley and Paul Rochester, would fall in love with the ocean too, and he had even directed that part of his inheritance to them be put toward sailing school.

Surely he reconstructed his brief, tumultuous time with Alice, and its not entirely sad ending. He had loved her—her strength, her resolute beliefs, and her iron will. Maybe he chuckled, remembering how he had tried to impress her with his mastery of the slalom style of skiing, not realizing she had taught it to her Olympic protégées. She had generously and gently agreed to his ending the marriage, but it couldn’t have been easy for her. She had always been the one to end her relationships. This time Dudley had beaten her to it.

Then there were the men below him at base camp. Although he was old enough to be the father of some of them, he had enjoyed their boisterous energy and how they had laughed at some of his raunchier limericks. He knew that when they first met him they had thought him a pampered old fool out to prove something to the world. But he’d seen their respect grow as he had shouldered loads and kept pace with the best of them, on the ski slopes of Gulmarg and then on K2. He hadn’t always been able to carry as much as Jack or Fritz, but he had stayed the course when the others faltered. He had swallowed the pain, lowered his head, and kept going.

It had only been two months since he had first set eyes on the mountain where he now lay. Then, he had felt its power like a great weight in his belly. But after two months on the mountain, perhaps he began to feel its power as a thumping heartbeat far and deep beneath his own, and so long as he felt that rhythmic beat, he knew there was hope of survival.

He lay in his tent, the full moon creating an eerie light through the thick canvas. For a while he had listened to the avalanches thunder down the mountain, each time wondering if this was the one that would take the tent, and him, to the bottom. But after a time, even listening for the avalanches and worrying about their path took too much energy. Then he closed his eyes.

T
HE
T
IBETANS
believe there are eight stages to death. In the first stage, all strength is lost as blood, air, and fire leave the body. The second dries up the nine orifices, causing a terrific thirst. The third brings a cleansing, cool out-breath as the body releases all control over defecation and urination. By the fourth stage, inhalation stops; there is only a constant exhalation. In the last four stages, the mind travels through white, red, and black light, and experiences a series of hallucinations reflective of the person’s karma; a peaceful person will have calm, accepting visions while a violent, angry person will experience aggressive attacks. Finally, the breath stops and there is a deep fainting sensation, even a crushing weight, as the body falls deep into the earth. This stage, in which the person appears dead but consciousness and life force have not yet left the body, can take up to several days. Buddhists believe the body must not be tampered with until it has reached actual death. When death occurs, red and white fluids will release from the nostrils and the mind/spirit experiences a clear vacuity: the light of death.

Modern science describes the stages of death in very similar terms, particularly death caused by cerebral edema. Beginning with a headache, the climber soon experiences a loss of coordination (ataxia) and weakness, followed within hours by decreasing levels of consciousness including disorientation, loss of memory, hallucinations, psychotic behavior, and, finally, coma.

When the Sherpas left Dudley, he was somewhere between the third and fourth stages of Tibetan death and between the last two of medical death, those of incontinence, psychotic behavior, and coma. Whether or not he experienced spiritual peace, he was physically released from his struggle soon after he was left alone. His last physical awareness was probably that of being overheated, as the last of the circulating blood rushed to the surface simulating an intense, prickling heat. Many climbers who have died of exposure are found frozen solid but with their clothing stripped off—hat, gloves, parka, even their shirt cast aside in the snow.

The last hours of Dudley Wolfe’s life remain unrecorded. What is known is that he was lying in his tent as the last of his constricted blood and air trickled to a stop. And if he had similar experiences to those who have technically died and come back to life to tell about it, his last thoughts and visions were of a warm, serene, welcoming place and he was at peace.