K2_ Life and Death on the World's Most Dangerous Mountain - Ed Viesturs [86]
On October 27, shortly after Wiessner had returned from India, the AAC launched an official investigation of the expedition. The club had never done such a thing before; nor was it at all a normal procedure. In 1922, seven Sherpa had been killed in an avalanche on Everest, in an accident that arguably involved real negligence on the part of Mallory and his fellow climbers; but the Alpine Club of London had never considered launching an inquiry. Cynical observers would later suggest that had only Sherpa been killed on K2 in 1939, the AAC wouldn’t have lifted an eyebrow. But Dudley Wolfe was a Boston Brahmin, a blue blood from New England—as were many of the AAC’s luminaries and officers. And Fritz Wiessner was a German-American, at perhaps the worst time in the twentieth century to be one.
The AAC investigation took months to complete, since the members of the committee had such differing views about assigning blame for the tragedy. The final draft claimed a disinterested motive: to “point the way towards a greater control of the risks undertaken in climbing great mountains.” But the report came to some patronizing conclusions. It claimed that the expedition’s “human administration seems to have been weak;” that there was “no clear understanding” of plans between Durrance and Wiessner when they parted; that it was an “error in judgment” to leave Sherpa alone in the middle camps; and that an ill climber (Wolfe, who was not in fact ill) should not have been left alone to make his own decisions. The brunt of all these criticisms fell on Wiessner. The committee gave the actions of Durrance and Cromwell an implicit but total whitewash.
A summary of the report was sent to all AAC members. In the accompanying letter, the committee congratulated itself for its “valuable contribution” in the way of guidance “if Himalayan expeditions are undertaken again.”
Charlie Houston had declined to serve on the committee. But there was no doubt about his views. On September 28, 1939, he wrote his old Harvard friend and Alaskan teammate Bradford Washburn a letter about the expedition:
I feel as you do about K-2. The report makes it clear that the party was driven beyond their powers, extended much to[o] far along their line of attack, and very poorly prepared for the very bad luck which they kept enduring. There is no doubt that bad luck is far worse when you aren’t prepared to cope with it.
Wiessner is to blame for most if not all of the mishap, and I don’t believe I can ever forgive him. I didn’t know Wolfe, but I knew and dearly loved Pasang [Kikuli] and P[h]insoo, and what they so gallantly did, alone, I can’t forget.
Two members of the AAC committee strenuously disagreed with the report and wrote dissenting views. One was Al Lindley, the strong mountaineer who had made the second ascent of Mount McKinley and who had been on board for the 1939 expedition until, at the last minute, he’d had to back out. Lindley argued that Wiessner was being dealt a serious injustice by the report, for the simple reason that “the action of the Sherpas and Durrance in evacuating these camps was so much the major cause of the accident that the others are insignificant.” The other dissent came from Robert Underhill, who, though a New England blue blood himself, had applied techniques he had learned in the Alps to bold first ascents in America. Underhill’s long rebuttal came to a stirring conclusion:
What impresses me most is the fact that thruout all the bad weather, the killing labor and grievous disappointments, [Wiessner] still kept up his fighting spirit. Except Wolfe, the rest of the party were excusably enough, finished and thru—quite downed by the circumstances; toward the end they wanted only to get out and go home. Wiessner, with Wolfe behind him,