With K2 (8,611m) also succumbing to high mountain tourism, it’s hard to imagine the mighty stories of bravery, betrayal and pain that unfolded here in 1939 and 1954, the dates of the first ascent of the second highest mountain on the planet. When Nazi Germany wanted to conquer Europe, Fritz Wiessner, a German chemist and mountaineer with dual American citizenship, became obsessed with K2. On July 19, 1939, night fell when he and the Nepalese Pasang Lama accompanying him were barely 240 meters from a slope that they were already stroking. They didn’t have artificial oxygen with them, but the weather was perfect, they weren’t exhausted and they only had a few easy snow slopes left to reach the summit. But Pasang, afraid of the demons of the night, remained steadfast: he would not climb the peak until the next day in sunlight. Understanding and tolerant, Wiessner agreed to turn back. He would regret it all his life, unable to imagine at that moment the chain of misfortunes that would change his existence forever.
The 1939 US expedition was to be the definitive one after one took place in 1938 to survey the mountain and establish the Abruzzo route as the best option for the ascent. Wiessner was a great climber and mountaineer. He discovered the United States on a business trip and eventually decided to stay to pass on everything he learned in the Alps to the local community. His strength and technical ability were enormous for the time. He would be the leader of an expedition to K2 but lacked funding. Each of the climbers paid for the adventure out of their own pocket, putting wealthy guys ahead of real climbers. Wiessner embarked on an expedition with a veritable group of clients, including Dudley Wolfe, as rich as she was inexperienced in climbing, as headstrong as she was limited, as enthusiastic as she was dependent. The march to the giant of the Karakorum took a month (a week today), but once there, the supply chain with food, petrol and various materials for the numerous high-mountain camps worked reasonably well. Until, for reasons that are not entirely clear to this day, everything went to hell.
Ironically, a logistical problem (during the successful Italian expedition to K2 in 1954) also led to one of the most uncomfortable affairs in Himalayan history. Then (and now) the Sherpas were responsible for providing the high-altitude camps with what was necessary to inhabit the mountain and stay protected in the event of a storm. If the Sherpas now rule K2 (this year they set the ropes to record 200 summits in the same season, more than half of those reached in 68 years), in 1939 western climbers ruled. But then the most qualified leader, Fritz Wiessner, reached a high point on K2 from which the summit was within reach: when he started his attack on the summit, the machinery stopped below 7,500 meters. Where the Sherpas should have continued to provide resources, they began to disappear. The orders were given poorly or not understood. The fact is that the umbilical cord that connected the fields was severed. Above, isolated without knowing it, were Wiessner, Lama and Wolfe. Meanwhile, the remaining high camps below were systematically dismantled.
In 1954 the last high-altitude camp also disappeared: when the young Walter Bonatti and the high-altitude porter Mahdi arrived at the agreed place to transport vital supplies and oxygen bottles for the summit attack, neither Lino Lacedelli nor Achille Compagnoni were there, not their business. The last two had placed it higher, out of sight, and the night made it impossible to find. Bonatti was hoarse to locate them, and when he did, the screams he heard left him petrified: they ordered him to leave the charges there and go. There was no room in the store for anyone else. Unable to descend without lights, Bonatti and Mahdi endured a horrific night in the open air at an altitude of 8,000 meters. Mahdi, severely frozen (he would lose all his fingers and toes), survived thanks to the help of Bonatti, who never recovered from this inhuman betrayal despite becoming the most iconic mountaineer who ever lived.
Fritz Weissner, during the K2 expedition.
The confidentiality agreement he signed when he took part in the expedition prevented him from denouncing the criminal attitudes of Lacedelli and Compagnoni, but years later he spoke his truth, showing in passing that both used oxygen in the capture of K2, despite them swore they hadn’t. . . But these and other equally unfair matters destroyed Bonatti’s trust in men.
For Fritz Wiessner there was no second summit attack: Pasang Lama lost his crampons and was defenseless on the mountain without them. So it had to wait 11 years before man could finally scale a peak over 8,000 meters: it was the Annapurna, an honor bestowed on France. Both began their retreat and to their surprise found in the field at 25,000 feet Dudley Wolfe, who had been alone for a week awaiting supplies from below. Having nothing to light the stove, he had not eaten or drunk for days, and his condition was deplorable. Reaching the next field at 7,500 meters bordered on tragedy: Wolfe couldn’t say any more. Hoping to find supplies and Sherpa workers down the mountain, Wiessner and Pasang settled Wolfe and weakly went out in search of help. They wouldn’t see anyone until they reached base camp, more dead than alive. This is where the crossing of allegations begins. Wiessner accused Tony Cromwell, another member of the expedition, of conspiring to end his life, and Cromwell accused him of abandoning Wolfe, for whom three rescue attempts were organized. The last managed to place three Sherpas over 7,000 meters that no one saw again. Wolfe also disappeared.
Wiessner was treated like a plague sufferer in America, a suspicious German. His character was not rehabilitated until many years later, in 1956, after he recounted the mysterious affair of the dismantling of the fields in a book. Jack Durrance, another member of the expedition, stated after Wiessner’s death (1988) that it was Cromwell who had the high fields collected…but the Sherpas didn’t understand that the 7,000+ meters should remain functional. And Fritz Wiessner never got out of his mind the moment when he unwittingly turned his back on history and decided not to reach the summit, certain as he was then that the dawn would bring him the glory that the demons of the night for always took.
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