Jack Durrance

Who was Jack Durrance?

Dr. John R. "Jack" Durrance was a pioneering American rock climber and mountaineer.

He learned to climb while attending high school in Germany, and later founded the Dartmouth Mountaineering Club in 1936 while attending Dartmouth College. Some of his classic first ascents include the North Face of the Grand Teton and the "Durrance Route" on Devils Tower. His successful completion of the Grand's Exum Ridge and West Face, along with his contributions to the development of bouldering, stand among his other climbing achievements.

In 1939 he attempted to climb K2, the second tallest mountain in the world. He became embroiled in controversy after four members of the expedition died and the expedition leader, Fritz Wiessner, blamed Durrance. A book seeing to shed light on the event, K2: The 1939 Tragedy, was published in 1994. The authors, William Putnam, a former president of the Alpine Club, and Andy Kaufman, a former director, relied on a Durrance diary that surfaced for the first time fifty years after the event to place responsibility for the deaths on Wiessner.

During the 1939 climb, Durrance saved the life of an expedition member who was suffering from pulmonary edema. The man's family thanked Durrance by getting him an internship with Dr. James J. Waring, an international expert on tuberculosis. Durrance took the internship and later became a pulmonary physician at a Denver hospital. In addition to climbing and medicine another passion of his was hybridizing irises.