Free The Last Man on the Mountain: The Death of an American Adventurer on K2 by Jennifer Jordan

limited supply of matches—needed to melt snow for cooking and, more important, drinking water. However, Houston said later that even if he had had more matches, he could not have gone farther. He had reached his climbing ceiling. Those moments at 26,000 feet, his personal altitude record, were crystallized in his brain as the most emotionally charged minutes of his life, as he struggled to control his racing pulse and mixed feelings of regret and relief at deciding to turn back.
    Charlie and his “brotherhood of the rope” returned to the States and were celebrated coast to coast as conquering heroes, feted with extravagant dinners and given a lucrative book contract. Their reconnaissance of the mountain had been successful, and Charlie and the team reported that the Abruzzi Ridge up the east spine of the mountain provided the best chance at the summit. While steep, unforgiving, and providing little by way of proper campsites, the route was, except for a section between Camps VI and VIII between 23,000 and 25,000 feet, relatively free of avalanche danger.
    With Houston’s team home and priceless new information about the route in hand, it was now Fritz’s turn. Charlie shared every detail of his own expedition with Fritz, from the grueling 330-mile trek to the mountain to 26,500 feet on the Abruzzi Ridge, the point he and Petzoldt had reached before turning back. Houston even wrote Wiessner a two-page, single-spaced note in which he delineated the climbing route from base camp, up the glacier to the base of the route, through each of the high camps, to his and Petzoldt’s high point, explaining every major rock formation, obstacle, tent platform, and avalanche-prone slope on the 12,000-foot ascent. He also sent photos and amended the Duke of Abruzzi’s maps of the mountain, explaining in careful detail where and why they chose the route and camps they did. Fritz now had a virtual blueprint for his climb.
    Fritz turned his attention to building a strong team. He was at a crossroads in his life and he wanted K2. He needed K2. He was thirty-eight years old, single, and not yet an American citizen. He was living in a small apartment in the Columbia Heights section of Brooklyn and his ski wax business was barely covering his bills. With business only getting worse as the Depression rolled on, he was forced to send solicitation letters to friends and colleagues, many of them in the Alpine Club, asking them to invest in his company. When they did, it was rarely more than twenty-five dollars. To make ends meet and to stay in shape, he worked several jobs, including washing windows on the Empire State Building. Every day he dealt with the growing anti-German sentiment, not only in the club but in the country as a whole, as another world war looked more probable every day. He had always hoped to find a rich American widow and live the good life, but so far that hadn’t happened. K2 was his chance to move beyond his modest life and to make something of himself. After Knowlton’s success, he saw that America had a fascination with the Himalayas and that a living could be made climbing them. If he were to climb this so-called unclimbable mountain in India, he would be set for life, possibly even as a guide for his well-heeled friends in the AAC who were itching to explore the giant peaks. He had been dreaming of K2 for years, mapping out every aspect of the expedition in minute detail. But with only a couple of months before he was to leave for the mountain, he still hadn’t nailed down his team or its funding. His whole dream could vanish if he didn’t recruit enough teammates to cover the $15,000 cost of the undertaking.
    Then Fritz received a note from Alice Wolfe inviting him to attend a black-tie dinner party at the Wolfes’ Fifth Avenue penthouse where her husband, Dudley, would show some of his climbing slides from Europe.
    Suddenly, the expedition’s future looked much brighter.

Chapter 4
The 1939 American K2