The True Story Of the 1939 K2 Disaster

WHY IS A BOOK (K2: The 1939Tragedy, by Andrew J. Kauffman and William L. Putnam), about a climbing expedition that took place more than 50 years ago, being published today? Quite simply, this expedition to the world's second-highest mountain and the trip's aftermath form what is possibly the most historic and controversial subject in twentieth-century mountaineering Led by Fritz Weissner, one of the top U.S. mountaineers, this early expedition attained an extraordinary height, only 800 feet below the 28,253 foot summit. However, on the descent from their failed attempt, Weissner, Dudley Wolfe, and Sherpa Dawang Lama found all their lower camps mysteriously stripped of sleeping bags. Wolfe, for not fully understood, remained high on the mountain. He and three Sherpas who later attempted to rescue him never returned. The puzzling events have been called one of the worst accidents in the climbing history of the Himalayas, and resulted in a series of investigations that failed to unravel the mystery.

Now Kauffman and Putnam, both former executives of the American Alpine Club, have dug up and sifted through the members' diaries and contradictory reports, and claim to have exposed the reasons for the expedition's catastrophic failure.

Three of the seven American climbers were Dartmouth students at the time: Chappell Cranmer '40, George Sheldon '40, and John (Tack) Durrance '39, all of whom returned alive. It was Durrance who had been generally blamed for removing the sleeping bags. Kauffinan and Putnam now say this was a bum rap, and that no single member is responsible for the tragedy.

It is a tale in part Dartmouth, in its entirety human, tragically human.

Durrance, Cranmer, and Sheldon Near Concordia,May 31,1939.