Jack Durrance; Mountain Climber & Iris Grower
Hyfler/Rosner
Grower
By STEPHEN MILLER Staff Reporter of the Sun
Jack Durrance, who has died at age 91, was a premier American mountaineer
of the 1930s who scouted new routes in the Tetons and Rockies and was
involved in a tragedy on the slopes of the mountain K2.An American playboy
and three Sherpas perished in an early and failed assault on the world's
second-highest peak.
He also led a rescue of a publicityseeking parachutist atop Devil's Tower
in 1941.
Later in life, as a pulmonologist in Denver, he became a passionate iris
grower who developed 30 new hybrids, one of them perfectly red. With typical
insouciance, he named it "Gorby" for Mikhail Gorbachev, the one-time Soviet
leader.He was also renowned in Denver for gardening by flashlight at 3 a.m.,
for speed-demon driving, and for poaching on private property.
It is at first surprising to realize that a man so at home in the peaks
was born in Florida (highest point: 345 feet).The mystery superficially
deepens: Durrance's brother, Dick, was a junior ski champion who competed in
the 1936 Olympics and helped create downhill skiing in Aspen, Colo.The
answer: Dick was a junior ski champion in Germany, after the family had
moved to the Bavarian Alps.
Durrance's mother, named America Fair Pillans, was a high school teacher
in Tarpon Springs, Fla., who married her school's principal and quickly
produced five children, Dick and Jack, born July 20, 1912, being the eldest.
Pillans is remembered by her descendants as headstrong and impulsive. She
taught Durrance to drive when he was 10 by propping him up with books on the
front seat of the family's Cadillac.
When Durrance's father, who had switched careers in response to a boom in
Florida real estate, took up with his secretary,Pillans divorced him.In
1927, hearing that Germany had the world's best schools, she instantly
determined to move there with her children. She hadn't decided where in
Germany they would settle until they were at sea. She had a travel brochure
depicting Zugspitze, the highest mountain in Germany, towering over the
Bavarian village of Garmisch. When they got there, they knocked on doors,
looking for rooms to rent.
Despite struggling in school - none of them had any German - the boys
excelled at high-altitude sports. In 1932, Dick became German junior
champion in downhill racing, then a sport in its infancy. Jack learned
alpinism from the masters, and worked part-time in a munitions factory to
help support the family when money ran low.After the Nazis took power, the
rest of the family moved back to America, while Jack remained in Germany. He
had fallen in love, but soon returned to America to receive medical training
at Dartmouth.
In 1936, the great American mountaineer Paul Petzholdt hired Durrance to
work as a guide on climbs in the Tetons. It put him in a position to make
several first ascents, including the Exum Ridge on Grand Teton. The path he
followed on his first ascent on the north face of the Grand is named for
him.That hike was initiated on the spur of the moment after he heard that
Fritz Wiessner was planning to attempt it the next day. Durrance's party
left at midnight, sneaking past Wiessner's tent. Wiessner was reputedly
among the greatest mountaineers in the world.
Three years later, Wiessner and Durrance teamed up for the assault on K2.
Also in the party was Dudley Wolfe, a wealthy but out-of-shape American with
a yen for adventure. The woefully under-equipped climbers set up base camp
at about 16,000 feet and Wiessner and Wolfe attempted the 28,274-foot
summit, relying on a string of camps every few thousand feet.
Things went wrong when Wiessner and Wolfe had to turn around due to harsh
conditions above 25,000 feet. Someone - it remains unclear who - had given
the order to strip the intermediate camps of food and equipment. With Wolfe
unable to continue, Wiessner descended to get help. Three Sherpas died
attempting to rescue Wolfe, who also died. His body was discovered in 2002
by a team shooting a documentary. K2 would not be summited for another 15
years.
Wiessner subsequently blamed Durrance in print for ordering the camps
stripped. Durrance refused to comment for many years, and also refused to
shake Wiessner's hand at an alpinist meeting. When interviewed by the Rocky
Mountain News in 1995, Durrance said, "The blame belonged to all of us."
Durrance's journals, reproduced in the 1992 book "K2: The 1939 Tragedy"
(Diadem), point to another expedition leader as the culprit who ordered the
camps stripped. The book also puts more responsibility for the tragedy on
Wiessner. Durrance also implicitly blamed Wolfe for his own death by
accusing Wolfe of wanting to impress Wolfe's ex-wife.
Asked why he for years failed to defend himself, Durrance answered, "I
just didn't want the harassment and publicity." In an interview with the
Denver Post, he said, "I knew I was not responsible for those men dying. But
I never felt I could argue against Wiessner."
This explanation did not satisfy many in the climbing community who noted
that Durrance's journals only appeared after Wiessner's death.
Returning to America, Durrance made two more first ascents at Grand Teton
in 1940 alone. In October 1941, while he was studying at Dartmouth, a
parachute enthusiast named George Hopkins landed atop Devil's Tower, the
iconic 865-foot, flat-topped Wyoming monolith. Hopkins garnered plenty of
publicity, but had apparently never considered how he would get down. Igor
Sikorsky considered bringing in one of his experimental helicopters, and a
blimp eventually showed up, too, to no avail.After an initial rescue party
failed in its attempt to scale the icy Devil's Tower, Durrance was called
in. He had been part of the second-ever team to scale the peak. (Wiessner
had been the first to climb it, in 1937.) With thousands on hand to witness
the rescue, Durrance, shod in tennis shoes, led his team of climbers up
Devil's Tower and helped Hopkins to rappel down as night came on. The
headlights of onlookers' cars illuminated the last 400 feet of the descent.
The stunt made headlines around the world. Durrance never climbed again.
During the K2 climb, Durrance had saved the life of another climber,
Chappel Cranmer, and Cranmer's family thanked him by helping him to secure
an internship at the Webb-Waring Institute at the University of Colorado.
The institute specialized in diagnosing and treating tuberculosis in an era
before penicillin. After the internship, Durrance went to work as a
pulmonologist at the Veterans Administration hospital in Denver,and also
taught at the university medical school. He became the hospital's chief of
medicine and hosted an annual chest conference in Aspen.
He collected cars and was especially proud of a gull-winged Mercedes
300SL, which he eventually crashed. He loved to drive fast, and woe to
anyone who dared to pass him. His family recalled that he occasionally
swerved his Cadillac across open fields to chase rabbits.
He was an avid bird hunter, and reveled in sneaking onto private land
without asking the owner's permission, according to his daughter, Joanna
"Bird" Lacoursiere, who often accompanied him. When caught, "He prided
himself on telling the worst lies - things that would have nothing to do
with why we were hunting," Ms. Lacoursiere said. "Most of the sport was
talking people out of shooting our heads off. He was kind of a lawless
person."
Durrance was also renowned for the more pacific hobby of horticulture,
and had vast beds of roses,gladiolas,and especially irises. He served as
chairman of the International Iris Society, and three times chaired the
American Iris Society convention in Denver. He recorded his experiments with
hybrids with the meticulousness of a medical man. At one point he even
convinced a radiologist colleague to irradiate some seeds to see what
mutations would emerge.
Always eager to provoke, Durrance bestowed odd nicknames upon his five
children - "Ant," "Worm," "Bird," "Yum Yum," and "Dee Dee." They survive
him, as does their mother and his brother, Dick, the skier.
Bill Schenley
> Tragedy on K2 - and Iris Grower
> By STEPHEN MILLER Staff Reporter of the Sun
Pretty cool obit., Steve.
<snipped>
Of all the cop-outs from both Durrance and Wiessner ...
Durrance blaming Wolfe was the weakest, IMO.
After all, they only took him along because he was wealthy.
They *both* knew he was overweight and in poor physical
condition. Still ... Those demons, youth and adventure seem
more responsible than Durrance or Wiessner.
> Asked why he for years failed to defend himself, Durrance
> answered, "I just didn't want the harassment and
publicity."
> In an interview with the Denver Post, he said, "I knew I
was
> not responsible for those men dying. But I never felt I
could
> argue against Wiessner."
<snipped>
Again ... Nice job.