Read Online The Last Man on the Mountain: The Death of an American Adventurer on K2 by Jennifer Jordan - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Jennifer Jordan
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Knowlton, lacking climbing experience, when summit day came Woolsey was relegated to the support team, and was not one of its stars going for the top.
After weeks of preparation lower on the mountain, on July 26 Fritz and Bill House rose at 2:45 a.m. and began their thirteen-hour assault. Climbers who had already tried to reach the summit and failed watched the two men’s progress through field glasses, spying them at 10:30 a.m. carefully traversing a narrow snow patch that clung to an almost vertical face. At 3 p.m., the glint of an ice axe near the summit was spied from ten miles away. And finally, at 3:40 p.m., Fritz was seen inching his way along a knife-edged snow ridge the final feet to the summit, with House close on his heels. Two Americans had conquered Canada’s most sought-after peak and Wiessner’s reputation as a fearless climber only increased.
Wiessner quickly followed that exploit by aiming for Wyoming’s Grand Teton and its unclimbed north face. After examining topographical maps of the mountain and repeatedly climbing to the base of the route to stare at its jagged cliffs, he finally decided on his course up the sheer rock wall. On August 10, 1936, he positioned himself at the base of the route and, again with the formidable Woolsey there for the press rather than as a summit partner, organized his gear for the morning’s climb.
Earlier that evening, Wiessner had run into a Teton guide whom he pumped for information about the route and the conditions on the mountain. The guide, Paul Petzoldt, answered all of his questions, bid him goodnight, then raced down into the valley to roust his brother, Eldon, and his summer hired hand, Jack Durrance, out of bed. Explaining that Fritz Wiessner was at the base of the Grand and poised to make its first ascent, Petzoldt insisted that they, not Wiessner, should have the honors of the great North Face prize. Less than an hour later, packed and ready for the assault, the trio tiptoed past Wiessner’s quiet tent, where he and Woolsey slept. Working through the night and into the morning, with Durrance leading the route most of the way, the three men made the much-coveted summit by midday. When Wiessner rose he learned that Durrance and the Petzoldts had in effect stolen his first ascent. He went ahead anyway, making what was then the second ascent. The insult so infuriated Fritz that two years later, when Paul Petzoldt applied for membership in the American Alpine Club, Fritz lobbied hard against his inclusion, telling a club official that Petzoldt was “not the kind of man we want as a member.” *
After his bittersweet success on the Grand, Fritz set his sights on an odd geological rock formation in eastern Wyoming which had beguiled countless generations of Native American Indians and pioneers: Devil’s Tower. Looking somewhat like a ruined Bundt cake on an empty banquet table, the 2,367-foot plug of igneous rock juts out of the ground in the middle of the plains thirty miles from the South Dakota border. According to Sioux legend, the tower was created by the Great Spirit, who lifted the rock high above the Belle Fourche River Valley to save three maidens being pursued by bears. As the bears tried to reach the maidens on the elevated rock, each slipped and fell, leaving claw marks that give the rock its distinctive, fluted surface. After the bears fell to their deaths, the maidens slid down from their lofty perch on a rope of wildflowers.
The first recorded climb of Devil’s Tower was in 1893 when two ranchers, dressed in overalls and cowboy boots, assembled a ladder of individual wooden pegs which they pounded into the deep cracks, remnants of which can still be seen. On the top, they left a large American flag.
Theatrics aside, the man most famous for his ascent is Fritz Wiessner, who in 1937 not only climbed it without a ladder (or flag), but without any protective gear save a single piton near the top which he later regretted, saying it was
After weeks of preparation lower on the mountain, on July 26 Fritz and Bill House rose at 2:45 a.m. and began their thirteen-hour assault. Climbers who had already tried to reach the summit and failed watched the two men’s progress through field glasses, spying them at 10:30 a.m. carefully traversing a narrow snow patch that clung to an almost vertical face. At 3 p.m., the glint of an ice axe near the summit was spied from ten miles away. And finally, at 3:40 p.m., Fritz was seen inching his way along a knife-edged snow ridge the final feet to the summit, with House close on his heels. Two Americans had conquered Canada’s most sought-after peak and Wiessner’s reputation as a fearless climber only increased.
Wiessner quickly followed that exploit by aiming for Wyoming’s Grand Teton and its unclimbed north face. After examining topographical maps of the mountain and repeatedly climbing to the base of the route to stare at its jagged cliffs, he finally decided on his course up the sheer rock wall. On August 10, 1936, he positioned himself at the base of the route and, again with the formidable Woolsey there for the press rather than as a summit partner, organized his gear for the morning’s climb.
Earlier that evening, Wiessner had run into a Teton guide whom he pumped for information about the route and the conditions on the mountain. The guide, Paul Petzoldt, answered all of his questions, bid him goodnight, then raced down into the valley to roust his brother, Eldon, and his summer hired hand, Jack Durrance, out of bed. Explaining that Fritz Wiessner was at the base of the Grand and poised to make its first ascent, Petzoldt insisted that they, not Wiessner, should have the honors of the great North Face prize. Less than an hour later, packed and ready for the assault, the trio tiptoed past Wiessner’s quiet tent, where he and Woolsey slept. Working through the night and into the morning, with Durrance leading the route most of the way, the three men made the much-coveted summit by midday. When Wiessner rose he learned that Durrance and the Petzoldts had in effect stolen his first ascent. He went ahead anyway, making what was then the second ascent. The insult so infuriated Fritz that two years later, when Paul Petzoldt applied for membership in the American Alpine Club, Fritz lobbied hard against his inclusion, telling a club official that Petzoldt was “not the kind of man we want as a member.” *
After his bittersweet success on the Grand, Fritz set his sights on an odd geological rock formation in eastern Wyoming which had beguiled countless generations of Native American Indians and pioneers: Devil’s Tower. Looking somewhat like a ruined Bundt cake on an empty banquet table, the 2,367-foot plug of igneous rock juts out of the ground in the middle of the plains thirty miles from the South Dakota border. According to Sioux legend, the tower was created by the Great Spirit, who lifted the rock high above the Belle Fourche River Valley to save three maidens being pursued by bears. As the bears tried to reach the maidens on the elevated rock, each slipped and fell, leaving claw marks that give the rock its distinctive, fluted surface. After the bears fell to their deaths, the maidens slid down from their lofty perch on a rope of wildflowers.
The first recorded climb of Devil’s Tower was in 1893 when two ranchers, dressed in overalls and cowboy boots, assembled a ladder of individual wooden pegs which they pounded into the deep cracks, remnants of which can still be seen. On the top, they left a large American flag.
Theatrics aside, the man most famous for his ascent is Fritz Wiessner, who in 1937 not only climbed it without a ladder (or flag), but without any protective gear save a single piton near the top which he later regretted, saying it was
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