In early 1938 Wolfe and his wife held a party in their Fifth Avenue apartment in Manhattan to show friends photographic slides of their climbing and skiing activities in Europe. Fritz Wiessner, the famous German-American mountain climber, had been invited and he was on the lookout for wealthy mountaineers who might be willing to join in, and pay for, an expedition he was organising to attempt to climb the second-highest mountain in the world, the K2. At the time, none of the 14 mountains over 8000 metres had been climbed. When Wiessner broached the subject with him Wolfe was immediately hooked, despite his inexperience in climbing high mountains.