1939 American Karakoram expedition to K2 turned to one of the team, Jack Durrance. When Durrance at last made his manuscript expedition diary available in 1989 it seemed instead that the primary failings had been with the deputy leader, Tony Cromwell, as well as with Wiessner himself. In 1961 Fosco Maraini described it as "one of the worst tragedies in the climbing history of the Himalaya". K2 is on the border between what in 1939 was the British Raj of India (now Pakistan) and the Republic of China. At it is the highest point of the Karakoram range and the second highest mountain in the world.
I'd Climb the Highest Mountain I'd Climb the Highest Mountain The film stars Susan Hayward and William Lundigan with Rory Calhoun, Barbara Bates, Gene Lockhart, Alexander Knox and Lynn Bari. The movie was shot in the Appalachian Mountains of Georgia, an unusual and out-of-the-way location at the time. (By an odd coincidence, star Susan Hayward moved to another part of rural Georgia a few years later, settling down to farm and ranch with her second husband when she was not making films. The couple are buried near the town of Carrollton.) William Thompson (William Lundigan) is a minister from the Deep South who has recently