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were, in the words of historian James Ramsey Ullman, “as sheer horror stories, unmatched by anything in the history of mountaineering.”) The dead in 1934 included the team’s leader, Willi Merkl (the finest German Himalayan mountaineer of his time), two German teammates, and five Sherpa. Kikuli narrowly escaped the same fate but suffered serious frostbite. It’s a testament to what a powerful and devoted climber Kikuli was that he continued to go on so many dangerous expeditions. In 1939, he was the sirdar again, as he had been in 1938, and he became Wiessner’s “personal” Sherpa, just as he had been Houston’s the year before.

The 1939 team faced the same 360-mile hike to base camp from Srinagar that Houston’s party had performed. But before the Americans even left the Vale of Kashmir, Wiessner arranged for eight days of acclimatization, during which the members practiced skiing on the nearby hills, combined with cushy living in houseboats in that colonial paradise. It was an ideal warm-up for the expedition. Describing the outing in a letter to the AAC treasurer, Wiessner was full of enthusiasm:

Our party is really exceptionally congenial. We have lots of fun. I am terribly pleased with it. Today’s ski ascent seemed exceptionally easy to everybody, and it makes me very happy and hopeful to see that the physical condition of the party is so good.

On May 2, the team left Srinagar. The overland journey proceeded smoothly, as the caravan averaged fifteen miles a day. The climbers’ letters home (many of which are quoted in Kauffman and Putnam’s K2: The 1939 Tragedy) report continuously high spirits. The members’ sense of participating in an extended lark matched that of their predecessors the year before. On May 6, George Sheldon wrote,

You probably want to know how we individually are getting along. Fritz, despite an enormous amount of work, is doing nicely. We have named him Baby Face Sahib. Chap, wise and silent as the owl, is brown as a berry. Jack and his lusty sense of humor, which once in a while draws howls of disapproval, is the acting doctor because he is considering the medical profession. Tony, or Pop Sahib, is the Voice of Experience and doing very well at it. He came out with this amazing statement today; “Climbing is fun.”

Two days later, Wiessner wrote to the AAC executive:

The boys are such a nice lot, taking everything from the easy side and hitting hard when necessary, it is fun to be a member of such a congenial group. Sometimes they may be a little too carefree but one word suffices to make them do their duty and work hard. I feel quite certain they will do well on the mountain.

Without mishap, the team reached Askole on May 21. From that last village, having hired 123 porters—forty-eight more than the 1938 team had employed—the expedition marched eastward, camping at Paiju and Urdukas, then on the Baltoro Glacier. Even before reaching the glacier, Pemba Kitar came down with a mysterious and persistent illness and had to be sent all the way back to Skardu to see a doctor. Though he would rejoin the team, the Sherpa who had played a critical role in 1938 would play none in 1939.

A pair of short-lived porter strikes (the second caused by a shortage of snow goggles) delayed the team slightly, but by May 31 they were installed at base camp. In terms of schedule, they were two weeks ahead of the 1938 expedition.

The agreement crafted with the porters as they were paid off and sent back to Askole would turn out to play a vital part in what went wrong on the expedition. Kauffman and Putnam summarize the exchange:

Absent new instructions, [the porters] were to return on July 23 for the homeward journey. This gave the team fifty-three days in which to ascend the mountain, ample time Fritz believed; by then someone would have reached the top or the attempt would have been abandoned.

So far on the expedition, nearly everything had gone well. But no sooner had the team settled in to base camp than Chappell Cranmer came down with a serious illness. His temperature rose to 102 degrees, and, as Durrance